The contribution had enabled the strike, ongoing since October 8, to continue, effectively lending therefore an endorsement to its end of eliminating the stretch-out system.

The piece takes some issue with the generosity, suggesting that it was unfortunate that Santa Claus was visiting these villages with a union card.

Bah, humbug.

He decried the Nazi claim of being "supermen" and insisted instead that the American Army would prove themselves deserving of the moniker.

It suggests that there was nothing ironic in the manner of his death, for it befit the always unexpected nature of General Patton's character—which is another way of saying that it was quite ironic, at least in the abstract.

The tragedy of his death was tempered by the knowledge that he had fulfilled his promise and mission, especially in relief of the 101st Airborne trapped at Bastogne a year earlier in the Battle of the Bulge. He had done so in a mere 24 hours, taking the Army and turning it onto the flank of the Germans after a prolonged winter march.

"And when he came up the road in his gaudy jeep, standing up with his usual scowl behind an array of dazzling stars, exhausted doughboys pulled themselves to their feet and saluted with tears running down their cheeks: old Georgie had come, they said, everything was going to be all right. The memory of their tears is his epitaph."

While the unions were not yet saying "the public be damned", as had Commodore Vanderbilt during the previous century, they were becoming increasingly arrogant, in disregard of public opinion.

The new arrogance was evident in the manner UAW had rejected the Ford offer to compromise wage increases with a 12.4% or 15 cents per hour raise, which a union representative had scoffed as a "mockery". It was only another small step from that sort of scorn to that of Commodore Vanderbilt, especially as any wage increase they would receive would inevitably come from the consumer's pocketbook.

The piece suggests it as a lesson to lawyers in drafting proposed legislation, that it ought not be so complicated that legislators could not fathom it. "Lawyers," it opines, "in private life make their living by leading simple, clear-headed citizens through what Dr. Johnson called the 'anfractuosities' of mind of their colleagues in Government." To ask lawyers to be clear would be to condemn their profession to "a starveling existence as notaries public."

Nevertheless, while not desiring penury for lawyers, it wishes, for the sake of future clarity, Senator Byrd the best in his crusade.

We agree in heart, but, in mind, we must dissent. The public in reading all of the wherefores and aforesaids, even if much of that stilted language has been replaced by equal doses of obfuscation, do not always realize that it is the lot of the lawyer to draft documents, whether legislation, contracts, wills, what have you, with courts and precedent, statutes and statutory construction, firmly in mind, as well, in the case of legislation, Constitutional limits on the power of the legislative body. That is the chief reason for language which is often stabbed with the clear impressure of convolution, trying, as it does, to forecast as many challenges as possible to its frame, and meet those challenges at the river before the enemy can have a chance to forge it.

It is the lot of the lawyer that metaphors and analogies of a literary vein are verboten in these writings, for, as aforesaid, their very essence of being subject to varied interpretations, thus assuring lack of clarity for want of clarifying metaphor.

Mr. Pearson posits that the conflict was not just between his column and Douglas Aircraft but, moreover, impacted how wars were fomented, in derogation of Government policy.

He had believed Donald Douglas in July, 1938, when he emphatically, but falsely, denied that he was selling the blueprints for the airplane to Japan. Having lied then, he was no longer entitled presently to belief on the subject. He had lied to protect his company from public backlash in the face of the condemnation of such sales by Mr. Hull.

The documents Mr. Pearson had obtained showed that the DC-3 had also been sold to the Japanese and that Mr. Douglas was anxious to perform all sorts of favors pursuant to the deal.

He presents a letter dated May 12, 1938 from the vice-president of the company, later, as he had pointed out previously, becoming a major general in the Army Air Forces, showing that the Japanese were receiving confidential information which would allow them to manufacture U.S. planes in Japanese plants. The letter provided, on request, detail to the Japanese of the number of man-hours necessary to construct a DC-3, to enable the Japanese to set up their own line of production, requesting in the process that they hold the information in confidence, stating that it was not usual to disclose the data.

Another letter, dated August 21, 1939, provides hints on what supplies the Japanese should purchase along with the DC-4, recommending especially a pair of Pratt-Whitney engines.

Mr. Pearson promises future revelations in the column regarding other companies profiteering prior to Pearl Harbor in sale of goods useful to the construction of a war machine.

It would take Britain 50 years to pay off the loan and in the meantime it would be forced to give up its preferential trade status within the Empire. The reason for the loan, as explained to the Peerage by Lord Keynes, who had been instrumental in arranging it, was that Britain had lost its status during the war as a creditor nation, a role passed to the United States. So it was to be expected that there would be resentment in the process.

It was no coincidence that the decision had just been made in London to set the U.N. headquarters in the United States.

It was good for the United States to recognize its place in the world, as many Americans were behaving and arguing as if they had suffered a defeat rather than victory.

The War Department eschewed the responsibility for continued production of the bomb. The destruction of Japan's cyclotrons by U.S. Army occupation personnel, stated later to have been through miscommunicated orders, was a case in point, showing this reluctance of the War Department to accept responsibility. The cyclotrons could have been used by the U.S. for its own research, being expensive to construct.

General Leslie Groves, Army head of the Manhattan Project, had advised Secretary of War Robert Patterson to order the destruction of the cyclotrons. He had told the Senate that the country should continue to produce bombs, sounding as if it would hearken an arms race. He had predicted, based on an admitted guess, that it would take ten years for other countries to catch up with the position already occupied by the United States in nuclear technology.

Mr. Childs asserts that the word of the atomic scientists should be regarded as posessing more authority than that of General Groves—their collective advice being generally to turn the bomb over to an international organization. Some interim form of control, he posits, should be adopted to alleviate the responsibility of the War Department.

The ongoing foreign ministers conference in Moscow, sure to involve discussion of the nuclear question with the Russians, therefore held great importance to the future of the world.

The part which she found objectionable—somewhat similar, though not at all identical, in nature to the part of the Obama Administration's health care program which was so controversial and has, in June, 2012, been upheld by the Supreme Court as Constitutional—was the proposed compulsory Federal insurance program paid through a tax of 4% on income up to $3,600. She believed it would lead to overpayment for inferior services and that the poor would pay for medical care of the wealthy. Only the bureaucrats, she asserts, would profit from the program, with two assigned to every physician.

She states that the program was of German origin under Bismarck, to prevent rebellion by tying the welfare of the people to the state. She believes that the people would be able to obtain better services on their own than through the Government.

She found the fact of the tax's regressive nature, that is no tax being assessed over $3,600 of income, being especially onerous. Moreover, the top tax, $144 on $3,600 of income, meant expensive services far beyond general need. Current cooperative health care plans in private industry covered only $60 per year up to $150.

In all, she finds the plan worthy of P.T. Barnum's well-known phrase about the rapid birth of suckers.

Of course, someone needs finally to say that, in the strictest sense, unless an infant is seriously deprived of its instincts, all of us are, quite naturally, suckers at birth.

That aside, we should stress that in 1945, medical care costs were miniscule compared to those of the present and those of the past three decades or so.

Thus, her reasoning can be fairly tossed out the window, regarding a plan ultimately quite different from the Obama plan, with which the country will shortly begin to test.