The editorial not only applauds the action but finds the amendment itself, championed by the Florida Attorney General, to be a too stringent method by which to curb labor practices.

Of course, within six short months, all of that conception of the world's conventional methods of defenses, especially the antiquated device of fortified lines along rivers and boundaries, would suddenly and dramatically be changed and most of them made obsolete.

Senator Pepper challenged that the Senate had lost the peace after World War I by failure to ratify the Versailles Treaty and permit U.S. membership in the League of Nations. He warned that, with views like those of Senator Wheeler being voiced in the chamber, the mistake could easily be repeated via the process of filibuster.

Senator Millikin took issue with Senator Pepper's view of history and also suggested that he was "scratching an unwholesome itch" when he sought to chill a Senator by distinguishing as divisive one line of argument from another as patriotic.

As 80 percent of the war contracts had gone to a hundred companies and 60 percent to just six companies, General Motors, Alcoa, Bethlehem Shipbuilding, Newport News Shipbuilding, Du Pont, and Curtiss-Wright, the question was who would be awarded these war plants at war's end. The same question had arisen after World War I with erratic results.

Mr. Jones had plentiful ties within the Senate, which enabled him to wield great power in his position as head of the War Surplus Property Board when Secretary of Commerce. His power was not diminished by the fact of his having been questioned vigorously for failure timely to procure raw materials for civilian and military needs prior to the war, despite warnings that, not only rubber, but tin and quinine would be in short supply should the Japanese take Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.

Part of the problem with Mr. Jones, contends Mr. Pearson, was the fact that he had been a banker through most of his adult life, not a planner. He had been fond of penny-pinching when parsimony wound up costing the American people scarce goods such as tires, as when he sought to save 6 cents per pound on rubber by bringing it through the Panama Canal rather than by means of a more expensive, but also a month faster, rail route over the Rockies from San Francisco to New York. And, a few months later, the Government was paying a dollar per pound to obtain rubber from Brazil.

Likewise, Mr. Jones had refused to pay more than a $100 per flask for mercury, a vital component for artillery shells, while Japan was paying $230. As a result, the Japanese obtained more of the mercury out of Mexico than did America before Mexico declared war on Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Such activity, she continues, undermined the entire war effort wherever it occurred. And it occurred plentifully at home as well. She asks whether individualism, therefore, was at last incompatible with a smoothly operating society.

She suggests inculcating pride in accomplishment of work to be the primary method to ward off use of societal compulsion to obtain an adequate labor force. Once fear as an impetus to production is removed by a guarantee of work and adequate living wage, she posits, the only means to insure quality would be by instilling such pride in the work.

That is why heavily unionized America has always, since the war, had each employee personally sign his or product right off the assembly line. And the penalties are severe for forging those signatures. Some employees have trouble writing their names, however, which is why, on occasion, loose nuts and other such items have been heard, then found, rattling around in the factory spot-welded channels within the chassis of Bodies by Fisher, even in Cadillacs, but only in the far distant past, the 1970's. And never, never in Fords. They just used to explode on impact for want of a strap to hold the saddle down when she bucked.

It had been coupled by the statement of the 15 freshmen Senators, six of whom were Republicans, in support of the United Nations organization as well the Vandenberg proposal.

It marked, suggests Mr. Grafton, genuine progress, connotative of the ability finally to hold two ideas at once in mind, that is progress in the war and progress toward a lasting peace while continuing the fight to achieve it.

As example of the intraparty rift, Mr. Childs cites his personal experience of asking a Labor M.P. if he might arrange a meeting with Aneurin Bevan, the most outspoken opponent of British policy with respect to the Mediterranean. The response was that the Laborite member would not speak to Mr. Bevan but would seek to arrange the meeting through another.

Eventually, Mr. Childs did interview Mr. Bevan, a Welsh miner who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, resemblant to the archetype portrayed in the play "The Corn Is Green". He was well aware of the political and publicity value of his opposition to Prime Minister Churchill, a role he relished and played to the hilt on the floor of Commons.

It was the reason, however, that many other Laborites shunned him, as they felt he was making waves just for personal political notice. Moreover, he had been disloyal to Labor as a party. Attacking the Coalition Government meant, implicitly, also attacking positions promulgated, approved, or at least condoned by its Labor members.

But Mr. Bevan was one of the fresher voices in the ten-year old Parliament and thus resounded among the people, such that power within the Labor Party might eventually shift to him and men like him, as Labor had grown old, older than the Conservatives. And Labor Party leaders such as Herbert Morrison, Clement Atlee, and Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin had thankless jobs which did not endear them well to the people, especially in the latter case for Mr. Bevin having to assign men and women to war jobs.

One must, incidentally, maintain distinction between Mr. Bevan, Mr. Bevin, and Mr. Beveridge, the latter known as "the Beaver".