Accouchement

Texas' "Long Tom" Connally, whose Foreign Relations subcommittee sat like senescent setting hens on a nest of postwar resolutions for 202 days, last week hatched the egg--a 75-word Resolution which cheepingly proposed that the U.S. join in supporting international authority and international peace.

The Resolution: "That the war against all our enemies be waged until complete victory is achieved; that the U.S. cooperate with its comrades in arms in securing a just and honorable peace; that the U.S. acting through its constitutional processes, join with free and sovereign nations in the establishment and maintenance of international authority with power to prevent aggression and to preserve the peace of the world."*

On the basis of statistics (one word per two and two-thirds days or every 65 hours), the Resolution seemed to many a Senator and citizen hardly to justify the 29 weeks spent warming it into being.

As a piece of statesmanship it offended at once the proponents of the more forthright B2H2 Resolution (TIME, March 22). Beside it the mild "Mackinac Charter," adopted by the Republicans a month ago, seemed now monumentally grand. Minor Statesman Connally explained feebly: "The best possible . . . that could be secured. Unity and harmony are vital if the Senate is to pass a resolution by a substantial majority."

But the very timidity of Tom Connally's Resolution threatened to bring about the battle he had hoped to avoid. A group of Senators, including Ball and Hatch of the B2H2 Resolution, served notice that unless the full Foreign Relations Committee make the Resolution more definite at once, they will take their fight for "strengthening and clarifying" amendments to the Senate floor.

*Drafters of the Resolution: Connally, Georgia's George, Utah's Thomas, Kentucky's Barkley, Iowa's Gillette, Michigan's Vandenberg, Maine's White. Wisconsin's LaFollette, ill at home, left instructions that he be recorded as voting against any egg hatched.

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