Mr. Doughton had been in Congress for 33 years, had been chair of the Ways and Means Committee since 1931. At the beginning of the Roosevelt era, he was a solid supporter of the New Deal but in the latter years had returned to his more familiar home, championing fiscal conservatism, now bringing him into sharp conflict with President Truman.

The News had differed with him many times in the past and, predicts the editorial, would likely again into the future, as the octogenarian showed no signs of giving up the fight.

Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach and Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace were supportive of labor's contention that industry could withstand a wage hike without commensurate price hikes, based on the large profit margins developed during the war.

Industry's primary gripe was that it was of little point to engage in negotiations over contracts which labor would later repudiate, a charge to which the workers were susceptible with regard to strikes occasioned by jurisdictional disputes.

Just when it appeared the unions were to achieve a joint victory, the leaders were participating in inter-union squabbles, leading inevitably to loss of labor prestige.

Whether from the desire of manufacturers to obtain higher prices after lifting of wartime restrictions or from labor seeking higher wages, the answer was likely not to be received well. "A frayed collar is as hard on the nerves as it is on the neck."

Someone needs to remind the nation in 2012 that complete emergence from the Great Depression did not finally occur until 1940-41 with the increased production in the country to supply the war effort. Emergence from miserably failed laissez-faire, trickle-down economics takes time. We are glad that the majority understood the fact and decided not to try to return to the past before the present has had a chance to work.

Whatever course was taken, something had to be done as the number of people who would become unemployed by the cotton picker would be large enough to cause a depression in the South, which eventually could spread to the whole country.

He reports that the top secret memorandum stated that the Navy file no. 7001 had disappeared. It contained the logs of three Navy monitoring stations which had received shortwave broadcasts from the Japanese, allegedly containing the receipt on December 4, 1941 of the "East Wind Rain" weather report, the message meaning imminent war with the United States.

Regardless, the report stated that once Admiral Noyes had received the message from ONI of receipt of the "winds" message, he contacted Colonel Sadtler of G-2 on December 5 at 9:30 a.m. and Col. Sadtler notified General Sherman Miles, head of G-2, and Col. R.S. Bratton, Army intelligence expert on the Far East. Col. Sadtler was to return the call to Admiral Noyes to obtain the exact text of the message, but Admiral Noyes contended that he was in conference and too busy to talk to Col. Sadtler, would call him back later.

General Miles then contacted General Leonard Gerow, chief of the War Plans Division, suggesting that the Army in Hawaii be notified that, "War is coming and coming quickly." General Gerow responded that the Army in Hawaii already had plenty of information to that effect.

At Pearl Harbor, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel had, on November 27, received the message that diplomatic negotiations were getting nowhere and to be prepared for war. Other messages were sent on November 28 and 30 to the same effect. Again, however, it must always be borne in mind that war preparation in Hawaii was mainly readying ships and planes for dispatch to trouble spots, not physical preparation for attack on Pearl Harbor itself, thought a remote possibility. If it was to occur at all, the principal fear was of submarine attack, not air. The primary focus was on the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.

Another message was received by ONI on November 30 from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Berlin for transmission to Hitler, denouncing the November 28 modus vivendi of Secretary of State Hull—providing required terms for renewed economic relations with Japan, withdrawal from China and Indo-China and withdrawal from the Axis—and reaffirming the January, 1941 Tripartite mutual defense pact with Germany and Italy, providing that if war were declared on a member by a "neutral country", i.e., the United States, then the others would declare war on that country.

Col. Sadtler next tried to contact then Col. Walter Bedell Smith, at the time an adjutant to General Marshall, but he, also, believed that further warning to Hawaii was superfluous.

Col. Sadtler and Col. Bratton eventually were able to convince the War Plans Division to contact ONI and have them relay a message to Admiral Kimmel who would then alert General Short. But the message regarding supposed broadcast of the "winds" code never went through. (Again, there is no documentary evidence that the "winds" code was ever broadcast. Most historians consider it superfluous in any event, given the general knowledge that war was coming, even in the early fall, certainly realized by all, even the greater part of the press of the day, by late November. The $64 question was always precisely when and precisely where, an easy enough proposition after the fact to permit focus on why there were so many mistakes at Pearl Harbor. The notion that FDR deliberately allowed the attack to occur to bring a recalcitrant and ambivalent Congress, reflective of the pre-December 7 attitudes of the country, to declare war blinks the facts that the President could have sought a declaration of war on Germany or Japan for their unprovoked attacks on American shipping long before December 7 and refrained from doing so.)

It was the Navy's responsibility, continues Mr. Pearson, to do long-range reconnaissance around Oahu and Admiral Kimmel was not engaging in it based on the information he had received.

Then, late on the night of December 6 through the early morning, the 14-part message to Ambassador Nomura in Washington was transmitted from Tokyo, rejecting the Hull modus vivendi. It was being decoded at ONI as it was being transmitted. According to the Army memorandum, the fourteenth part was so hostile as to be regarded a virtual declaration of war. Nomura received a message in the morning from Tokyo to deliver the 14-part message to Secretary Hull "NM (noon meridian) PM", shortly before the time of the 7:50 a.m. attack on Pearl Harbor, 1:20 p.m. Washington War Time.

Another school of thought wanted to hide it. The President belonged to this camp. But the scientists had already disposed of this argument by asserting that the technology was already in the hands of physicists worldwide such that any nation with an adequate supply of fissionable material could produce the bomb within less than five years.

Then there was the "Aw Shucks, It Ain't So" school. Major Alexander de Seversky, author of Victory Through Air Power, and chief proponent of a strong air force for winning the war through bombing campaigns before sending in land forces, believed that the force of the atomic bomb had been exaggerated in its effects, that the fires which incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not from the bomb but rather from hot stoves. Mr. Grafton parenthetically inserts that perhaps therefore hot stoves ought be outlawed. Major De Seversky asserted that an atomic bomb dropped on New York City would do little more damage than a ten-ton blockbuster. (Perhaps, we should therefore ban video stores or internet movie vendors, or just tv, or just the Fair and Balanced Network on tv.) The Major did concede that the bomb was a "great step" in destructive force and it could be developed further in "great strides".

Mr. Grafton recalls, however, that without any hot stoves being contributory to the results of the blast, the desert near Alamogordo had been turned to glass by the Trinity test on July 16. Moreover, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer had, in response to Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright's questioning, estimated that a single atomic attack on the United States could result in 40 million dead. That, quips Mr. Grafton, "wouldn't leave room for many great strides". Probably, then, would have to go to the moon, maybe Mars, to escape it.

"Maybe the Major is right, but to minimize the bomb, to consider it only a more powerful form of an old weapon, rather than a baby form of a new horror, is one way of fleeing from it."

Last in the topical analyses was "Squaring the Circle", an admission that there was no solution to the problem presented by the bomb, that world government was the most practical solution, but was susceptible to the charge that it was akin to jumping out a window to show that one likes fresh air. For, in the end, to explore patient relations with the allies and try to resolve differences amicably was fraught with the considerable risk of failure.

For to see Russia from one's window was not to deal with Russia and, who knew in 1945 that some, by 2008, would think that one could obtain the groundwork for experience in foreign relations sufficient to be a heartbeat away from the President, even twenty years after the end of the Cold War, by being able to see Russia. Harry Truman never went to college, but he knew that being able to see the Missouri River was a good bit different from navigating a riverboat along its course. For starters, one has to know what "Mark Twain" means.

To fulfill U.N. responsibilities, the Air Forces needed a thousand long-range bombers plus 1,500 fighter planes, and that was the post-war goal.

Congress was reluctant to address the issue of universal training, advocated by both the President and General Marshall, as well as by the Navy. But the Navy was opposed to a Department of Defense to unify the Army and Navy under one civilian head. That debate had streamed into Congress, causing decisions to be waylaid by the uncertainty of the outcome on this critical issue.

"The rest of the world is watching closely. They see Uncle Samson as an involuntary victim of a heedless barber. He is being shorn of his strength while almost no one pauses to notice."

Maybe the same operative rule applied at Pearl Harbor, at Barber's Point... We shall have to consult our friend in the Caribbean.

The communists, he warns, were gathering at Gastonia, stirring up the gangsters there. Time was running low. Draft the young men to police work, regardless of the Constitution.

Yeah, but what if it turned out that a good portion of those so drafted were bootleg whisky drivers or sons of drivers? Then you get that inside paradox, armed and trained in craps, prostitution, and beer-drinking.

Not a good idea. Let them go on to college where they can get the same training essentially, if they want it bad enough.

In fairness to Mr. Smith, whose ideas were usually sound, we have a feeling that he was being somewhat facetious. But it is a little hard to tell. He should have at least given us a hint, to separate himself from the ladies of the WCTU.

Since the movies did not contribute to the Sunday worship service, the ladies of the Dilworth WCTU had voted unanimously to bring the matter before The News, who they hoped would provide it immediate attention.

Yeah, but what if you were Jewish and believed that Saturday was the day set aside for worship? Then you've got no movies on Saturday either. And shouldn't the concessions be serving fish on Fridays? And what about the hamburger stands all over creation and Christendom? Shouldn't they be shut down completely? You have your work cut out for you, ladies. Better get cracking.