Two Out, One to Go

Three prime reactionaries, three prime Roosevelt-haters, three prime pre-Pearl Harbor isolationists are the Messrs. Tink ham, Rich and Fish: George Holden Tinkham of Massachusetts, Robert Fleming Rich of Pennsylvania, Hamilton Fish of New York.

Last week Washington heard that Messrs. Tinkham and Rich were retiring from the House of Representatives, and that Mr. Fish was in such deep political trouble that he might not win back his seat this autumn.

Owner of the scraggliest beard in Congress, George Tinkham has been stalking Roosevelt for nine years, hating the White House and all its works, hating the British as only an oldtime Yankee can, smelling Benedict Arnold in the Destroyer Deal, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter; declaring always for strict neutrality, never thundering against Germans or Japs.

When "Tink" moves back to his native Boston, vans will cart away his horrific stuffed heads of lions, tigers, leopards--trophies of campaigns he won while hunting in Burma, India, Africa. A rich man, "Tink" always paid the election bills, never deigned to campaign, let his friends do the electioneering. But no more. "Tink" says that old age prompts him to retire after 28 years, admits another factor is a Congressional reapportionment in his Massachusetts district breaking up his solid block of adherents in both parties.

When tall, rasping, grim Robert F. Rich, who needs only a plug hat to look like the cartoons of Mr. Prohibition, departs, the House will no longer hear his oft-repeated demand: "Where are we going to get the money?" For years his wrathful voice, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, has trumped a falsetto doom. Rich thinks the New Deal communist to the core, believes Roosevelt led the U.S. into war.

Like Tinkham, Rich faced a redistricting problem and a tough race, bowed out of his own accord. Rich, too, will move back to his birthplace, the bustling mill-town of Woolrich, Pa., where, as general manager and treasurer of the Woolrich Woolen Mills, he is Citizen No.1.

Unlike his two Congressional colleagues, lank, angular Hamilton Fish wants to stay in. Ham had hawked his brand of isolation ism far & wide; had worked hard against the President, against England; often, before Pearl Harbor, advocated a negotiated peace. Stepping out of Joachim von Ribbentrop's plane in 1939, Fish opined that Germany's claims were "just." Two months ago he finally went before a District Court to explain his relations with George Sylvester Viereck, Nazi propaganda agent, and there let the blame fall on his secretary, George Hill, already in jail for perjury in the matter.

Recently, Fish revealed he had requested active service in the Army. He was diplomatically turned down on the grounds that his "age and . . . broad knowledge of military matters" make him "of greater service in the halls of Congress." But trouble brewed in Fish's district. Eight well-known Republicans turned thumbs down on Fish. "A leopard," they said, "cannot change his spots."

Fish may run independently if not renominated. This was exactly what both parties wanted.

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