Filibuster!

Mississippi's arch-rhetorical Senator Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo, whose shortest speech is a reasonable facsimile of a filibuster, got to work in earnest. His desk was piled deep with reference books (including one on Japan) ; he was prepared to "talk until Christmas."

Chunky Senator Bilbo and the Southern bloc, who did not have enough Senate votes to beat the bill outlawing poll taxes, intended to talk it to death instead. Senators yawned, read newspapers, shuffled papers, wandered off the floor.

Next day, to save their voices, the Southern Senators changed their tactics: they stayed away in droves to prevent a quorum. Majority leader Alben W. Barkley, stubbornly determined to get action, got the Senate to order the arrest of eight missing members who were known to be in Washington. The sergeant at arms' staff routed Nevada's Senator Berkeley L. Bunker out of his office by using a passkey, captured Tennessee's Kenneth McKellar by inducing a chambermaid to unlock his hotel apartment. South Carolina's Senator Burnet R. Maybank, reached at his home by telephone, agreed to come quietly.

A quorum finally rounded up (after three hours and 40 minutes), The Man Bilbo began speaking again. The Senator, never bothered by the doubts and inhibitions that sometimes assail more sensitive men, blurted happily:

"I desire the country to know that the responsibility for this prolonged discussion does not rest upon those opposing this unreasonable and unconstitutional legislation, because its sponsors knew before it was brought before the Senate that it would involve extended discussion.

"It was of their own choosing that they brought about this impasse in the orderly processes of Government in the midst of a war."

The impasse seemed destined to last. Since this session of Congress ends with the year, the Southern bloc needs talk for only six weeks to bring off the first successful filibuster since the same group talked the anti-lynching bill to death in 1938.

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