U.S. At War: Mister Speaker

(See Cover)

The Congress went home in the heat—nerves and bodies strained and weary, judgments irritable and unsure. In months of grueling tug of war with the Executive, the Congress had tried to regain some of its old independence, and had partially succeeded.

Now Congress came back in the crispness of early autumn, after two months' rest with the people back home.

Had the march of events and the visits home changed the temper of Congress?

—No Congressman came back white-hot mad. The first sign of trouble came from a regular source of trouble: Montana's acid, acrid Senator Burton K. Wheeler. He was against drafting fathers. The issue boiled briefly, but by week's end. under a mass of cogent argument against it and the pressure of heavy fighting in Italy, Wheeler's support faded utterly.

—North Carolina's stubborn Representative Robert L. Doughton, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, loudly demanded simplification of income-tax returns. "Muley" Doughton, who had helped make things complicated for years, now snorted: he himself had had to hire a "tax expert" to help figure out his Sept. 15 return. But he cooled off; a new tax bill would take a long time.

—Few months ago the Fulbright Resolution, pledging U.S. postwar cooperation, would have thrown the House into an uproar. Congressmen feared it as a bold proposal. Now it seemed to be a very mild little document, less specific even than the Republican foreign policy adopted at Mackinac (TIME, Sept. 20). This week it was set to slide through the House with a whoop.

As a matter of fact, no major issue faced the 78th Congress as it reconvened.

New Mood. What had the representatives of the people found back home?

—Less grumbling over the home front. Texas' New Dealing Lyndon Johnson asked a country storekeeper if he thought OPA should be abolished. The storekeeper pulled out his sugar bin, replied: "In the last war this sold for 30¢. Now it's 7¢. OPA is the difference."

—A firm conviction that Congress should have a major share in postwar planning.

—Sobersided Congressmen reported the temper of the people: Congress should retain every bit of its hard-won independence, but should use its new power to work with the President for the common good.

Franklin Roosevelt, sensitive as a weather vane, had already detected this new mood, had shrewdly addressed Congress in like temper (see p.19).

This was the new mood of Congress and the new mood of Washington. But this was only the first week of the session. On the eve of election year, with politics weighing more day by day, in a House almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, anything can happen. To prevent anything disastrous happening to the Democrats is one job of Texas' Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, 42d Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

But Sam Rayburn has a greater responsibility: to guide, shepherd and rule the sometimes unruly 435 Representatives of the U.S. people.