Moses' Masterpiece

If there is such a thing as a great letter-to-the-editor writer, New York City Park Commissioner Robert Moses is it. His work may not rank with Voltaire's, Ben Franklin's or George Bernard Shaw's, but it commands attention. For or against, he is always long and strong.

Last week he outdid himself with a full-page swipe at (and in) the pro-Roosevelt New York Times. The Republican National Committee paid the Times $2,760 to run it as a political ad.

The burrs that caused Writer Moses to rise in the saddle were two Times editorials: 1) endorsing Term IV; 2) declaring flatly for the President's plan to delegate postwar power to use U.S. armed forces without recourse to Congress. The Times's domestic arguments for Term IV Moses called "contradictory and unconvincing." The international argument, on which the Times based its qualified Roosevelt endorsement, he dismissed as "drivel . . . claptrap of the cheapest sort."

But on the use of force to keep the peace, Commissioner Moses came down hard. Force cannot take the place of patience, persuasion, and cooperation, he insisted; our armed forces will never willingly spend the next 20 years as pawns in an international army; Congress will never back such a fantastic scheme to take away its power to order out troops.

Sandwiched in with his booming points was many a Moses pot shot:

P: "[The President] thought that if he were elected he could say that the people at a solemn referendum had voted him a blank cheque to control our world relations without Congress. . . . Does the Times really think that an affirmative two-thirds vote of the United States Senate could be obtained for this fantastic scheme?"

P:"Mr. Jesse Jones, the Texas banker with the gimlet eye, and Miss Perkins, who has no more contact with realities than the wraith of an ectoplasm. . . ."

P:"Our subtle and plausible President, who delights in casting off men and measures which are no longer serviceable to him . . . who has already made international promises in the Atlantic Charter which manifestly are as dead and unpleasant as last week's herring. . . ."

P:"Up in his ivory tower, the editor of the Times will at last realize that the American people will not be bulldozed, regimented and stripped of their suffrage by fine phrases, chop logic, invitations to the millennium, and the jaded ambitions of indispensable men."

In a small, mild editorial in the same issue, the Times observed: "Mr. Moses is always welcome, and we are used to having him call us names whenever he runs out of arguments. This is an experience which we share with practically everybody east of the Hudson River."

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