Quibbling

Texas' Long Tom Connally, his statesmanlike grey mane slicked for the occasion, rose to open the Great Debate, prepared to defend his Resolution pledging the U.S. to participate in the affairs of the postwar world. But Connecticut's hardheaded, independent Senator John Danaher demanded the floor. John Danaher, his Republican tongue bulging large in his cheek, wanted to propose an amendment, denning word by word the vague terms of the Connally measure. Items:

As herein used, the term "complete victory" shall mean that our enemies have been overcome. . . .

"In securing" shall mean in bringing about and making secure.

"Peace" shall mean an agreement designed, to result in a state of tranquillity. . . .

"Constitutional process" shall mean the course of procedure described in the Constitution. . . .

"Join" means unite in effort.

And so on down to:

"Senate resolution" means a declaration having no legislative effect. . . .

Tom Connally tried to laugh it off: "Is Webster's Unabridged Dictionary offered as an exhibit or appendix to the pending Resolution?" But neither he nor the Senate could laugh off the fact that the long-awaited Great Debate in the Senate had become a quibble.

Making his second start, Tom Connally thundered: "Isolationism has failed. Let us try collective security." He paused, perhaps expecting thunderous applause. There was not a ripple in the somnolent chamber.

Minor Statesman Connally, and those in the Administration who had advised him into timidity, were wrong. They had anticipated heavy opposition from onetime isolationists, realizing no more than Walter Winchell how dead the old-fashioned isolationism is. So Tom Connally had polished and burnished his Resolution down to harmless generalities. But in five days of dull mumbling and set-piece speeches, only one bigtime isolationist--Montana's irreconcilable Burt Wheeler--rose in routine wrath. In fact, Tom Connally was pushed and prodded, badgered and heckled by a bloc of tough-minded internationalists ("The Willful Fourteen") who were set on giving the Resolution some teeth. Notable hecklers: Florida's Claude Pepper and three of the four "B2H2 boys."*

All Things to All Senators. Said Minnesota's serious, jut-jawed Joe Ball: "The Resolution merely would place the Senate on record as having caught up to the will of the American people. . . ."

Cried Claude Pepper: "We all know that this Resolution is one of appeasement to some opposition they dare not arouse. ... All it will do is to afford a political umbrella to those who might like to get out of the rain of public indignation next year."

Scornfully, Claude Pepper pointed out that the Connally Resolution is all things to all men: that to Maine's Wallace H. White it meant endorsement of a world police force; to Michigan's Vandenberg and Vermont's Austin it meant approval of a world court; but Georgia's George, on record against a police force, was also for the Resolution, and so was North Dakota's die-hard isolationist Gerald Nye. The debate droned on, usually before a half-empty Senate chamber. No less than twelve quorum calls were necessary to bring Senators to the floor. Correspondents, remembering the oratory of the senior Lodge, of the great Borah, and of Hiram Johnson in 1919, tried hard to picture the proceedings as historic, failed flatly. Summed up Senator George: the week's oratory had already destroyed half the effect of the Resolution's good (though vague) intentions. And what the Moscow results of this week would do to the little bill was anyone's guess.

* Senators Ball, Burton, Hatch of Minnesota, Ohio and New Mexico.

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