President Roosevelt had put in place many reforms to stem the tide of the partisan system, including the subsumption of postmaster positions under Civil Service, even if thereby establishing a virtual life tenure for the position while removing it from the sway of political vagaries. The Republicans had resisted this legislation on the ground that it came when only Democrats were postmasters.

For all the idealistic reforms, however, FDR had never gotten at that which the editorial views as the root of the spoils system, awarding to the party committee chair, in either Republican or Democratic administrations, the post of Postmaster General.

The piece likes the idea and expresses the hope that Herr Leike might make a speech within the ruins of the Sportspalast.

The piece adds that in the contentious atmosphere regarding admission of Argentina to the conference, Commissar Molotov had sought a mere four days to think through the question, but was denied it by Secretary Stettinius who pushed the matter to an immediate vote.

Should the Russians do what the Americans had done after Versailles and refuse to ratify the treaty, it portended the groundwork not for peace, but rather for world war three.

By the 1960's, we had a different suggestion for being Nixoned and for what the Nixonite could do with their Nixonification.

Blame Harry.

But we digress.

The piece points out that the President had his first veto preserved recently, that of a bill which had sought to perpetuate the draft deferment of farm laborers, even garnering apology from Republicans voting for override, in the House achieving only a simple majority of 185 to 177, 154 of the majority votes having been Republican. But the Republicans who voted for override explained that they did so on substance, not for partisan motives.

So, concludes the piece, the honeymoon, characterized by at least a semblance of unity, continued.

If left to the Russians, he would likely be hanged as a criminal. The editorial voices support for the view. It refused to accept his plaint that low Nazi kultur had swept Germany and its armies.

"And so long as we're going to destroy the guilty, let us begin with von Rundstedt, Prussian, Nazi, murderer."

Indeed, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal recommended that von Rundstedt, along with Generals Brauchitsch, Manstein, and Strauss, be tried for war crimes, among the charges being that von Rundstedt ordered that Allied paratroopers caught outside battle zones were to be given to the Gestapo who then executed them, as well that he had been complicit in the taking of hostages, excessive reprisals, and exterminations in the prisoner-of-war camps and slave labor camps.

But, in deference to von Rundstedt's age, in his early seventies, and failing health, plus the view that the imposition of death sentences, having already been imposed on eleven German generals by 1948, none of whom had been executed, would serve no purpose, von Rundstedt and the other three generals were released in 1948. Von Rundstedt died five years later in West Germany.

Representative John Rankin of Mississippi asked whether Mr. Voorhis intended to provide some of the oranges to the press gallery, to which Mr. Voorhis responded that he would try.

This speech, we find, probably was the seminal cause for much of the ensuing 30 years of American political life, and possibly longer than that. For, as everyone knows, the successful Republican opponent of Mr. Voorhis in 1946 grew up on the poorest lemon ranch in the State of California, and also had befall him the unfortunate fate of being partner in a frozen orange juice company, Citra-Frost, which, when transporting the orange juice, forgot first to concentrate it before freezing, such that all of the orange juice spoiled, leaving Whittier investors on the hook for $10,000 borrowed by the would-be frozen orange juice dealer—$10,000 being at the time, circa 1938, the salary of a member of Congress.

Whereas Mr. Truman had, within fifteen years or so, repaid his debts owing from his failed haberdashery in 1922, Mr. Nixon unfortunately left his investors out on the limb.

At Versailles, President Wilson had lost on numerous points, having to compromise on Yugoslavia, Italy, several boundary issues, winding up forced finally to form alliances with France and Britain to obtain their assent to formation of the League of Nations. The American public perceived President Wilson as having conceded too much ground to the Allies. The feeling afoot was that America had been the sine qua non for winning the war, a war which dragged on for nearly three years prior to America's entry for 19 months until the Armistice, actual mobilization spanning a much shorter period. The Midwest especially, in consequence of Versailles, adopted an isolationist stance toward Europe. And that view carried the day in the ultimate Senate rejection of the treaty and membership in the League.

At San Francisco, by contrast, the Soviet Union occupied much the same position as had the United States at the conclusion of World War I. The Soviets had the greatest resources in the world and were more self-sufficient than any other nation. They perceived that Russia had borne the brunt of the fighting, not without cause in fact, even if some of the Allies disagreed. Many of Russia's leaders, especially the generals, already had an isolationist-nationalist point of view. And, to top off the comparison, V. M. Molotov had been opposed and turned down on many of the points sought by the Russians at the San Francisco Conference. Thus, the effect on Russian isolationists was likely to be the same or similar to that on the Midwesterners of 1919-20. Mr. Pearson suggests that the rebuff to the Russians on admission to the conference of Argentina may have been the straw which broke the camel's back. President Roosevelt and Cordell Hull likely would have joined Molotov in the rejection of Argentina.

The column next tells of the especially stringent conditions imposed by President Sergio Osmena of the Philippines on former collaborators with the Japanese occupation government of the previous three years. President Osmena—who had met with President Roosevelt at Warm Springs in his last week alive—had jailed even two of his own sons for collaboration, based on guerilla reports on Luzon. The two were scheduled for trial along with other collaborationists.

Two other sons of the President, however, had distinguished themselves on behalf of the guerillas, both killed by the Japanese for either refusing to provide information or aiding guerilla activity.

Mr. Pearson then discusses a development at the conference which threatened as much dissension as that over admission of Poland and Argentina, that being cotton shipments to France. The French had refused to use U.S. shipments of raw cotton made under Lend-Lease to produce duck for tents and other military uses, a required stipulation for the shipments. Textile plants in the U.S. were seeking to devote more machines to the manufacture of dresses, diapers, and children's clothes and so wanted the French textile mills to help supply the troops.

The French response had been that they had five years of civilian manufacture to make up and wanted to turn out clothing for the domestic market, that they devoted a sufficient amount of other cotton to military uses.

The British had reported a like attitude by the French for supply of the British Army during the period before the Fall in spring, 1940.

Meanwhile, the French mill owners were pressing the British for an explanation as to why a large British-owned mill in Cologne had been found virtually undamaged at the point of occupation, the implication being that the RAF had deliberately spared it.

Despite the attitude, the U.S. favored not cutting off the cotton shipments to France to avoid the necessity that manufactured cloth, requisite for civilian use at home, would then need be sent.

President Roosevelt had represented to the West the great dams of Bonneville, Shasta, and Grand Coulee. (He does not mention Boulder Dam, reverting in 1947 to its original name, given at the project's inception in 1931 while President Hoover was still President, Hoover Dam—probably perceived at the time as being more fitting to most had an "n" attached, with a period and question mark inserted at particular locations.)

The President had toured areas of the West never before seen by a sitting President and his revitalization of interest in preservation of national forests, transportation facilities to Alaska, and irrigation of wasteland areas had endeared the late President to the Western constituents. He could readily relate to the land, having been a Christmas tree forester, himself.

His daring and frontier spirit, never fearing to venture new schemes, had also appealed to the Westerners.

Many Western Senators were exponents of the Roosevelt philosophy.

Mr. Childs asks, therefore, what would become of the West's solid Democratic loyalty with Roosevelt gone. His simple answer was that much depended on Harry Truman, with an Administration at present top-heavy with Easterners, appointed by FDR. Among the Cabinet members, only Postmaster General Frank Walker was from the West, Butte; on the Supreme Court, only Justice William O. Douglas from the West, Washington, and Wiley Rutledge from the Midwest—Mr. Childs apparently considering it to be a fair compromise between his birthplace in Kentucky and his subsequent life in Colorado, Washington, and finally, Iowa.

But the fact that President Truman came from Missouri would likely help his cause. He could attract support from Representative Mike Mansfield of Montana, who had recently been sent on a mission by President Roosevelt to China.

The West, he points out, had their own coterie of outstanding persons, Herbert Hoover, originally from Iowa, Eric Johnston of Spokane, the president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, a new Republican liberal on the rise, eventually to become a Democrat.

Mr. Childs suggests that the first test for the new President's political pull in the West would be in Montana where, in June, there would be a special election to the seat of deceased Congressman Jim O'Connor, a Democrat in a district which was divided more or less evenly between the two parties.

Mr. Grafton views the latter fact as sui generis to the Nazi State across the entire history of the world in the wake of a fallen dictatorial regime. No great mutiny had occurred among the soldiers, just scattered desertions. Western reporters had observed within the German cities a "certain groveling German smile", sickening in its implications, not a smile of friendship but a nervous smirk of resigned subservience.

In replacement of Hitler had come Admiral Doenitz, another military man, not an academic or trade union leader. The realization thus came that the real victory of Hitler had been his total capture of the German mind in a nation now disintegrated.

Even Italy, with its several political parties, appeared vital politically compared to Germany.

The society was sick and, more problematic, had shown no determination to recuperate. The advocates of a soft peace had failed to understand the point, that being kind to the Germans would not stimulate them to positive action in formulating a new democratic republic.

It would, he predicts, take time to accomplish, and the best prescription was to put Germans to work rebuilding that which they had destroyed.

He then explains the abrasion felt by a boy eight or nine years old when told, after showing up at the Health Department with a spotted rash, that he had German measles. He had replied abruptly, "There's nothing German about me."

Mr. Young then proceeds to tell of the Fire Department getting a rathskeller in their basement.

Once, during our period of extended training, following a meal at the Rathskeller on Pulpit Hill, a dark, greasy establishment, no longer extant, in a basement below Kite-Key Avenue, down a narrow alley, but quite popular in its day among those in their extended training, those, that is, with stomachs of sufficient iron to endure in the face of the grease, we left behind a Washington and Jefferson, believing it a quite eleemosynary gratuity to complement the $2.50 meal. As we were standing in the queue, awaiting our turn to remit remuneration to complete our end of the implied contractual agreement thus made by custom, the waiter, appearing quite nonplussed, brusque, and surly, approached and stated, "If that is all you are going to leave, then, here," whereupon he briskly thrust into our hand, before we realized the object of his intent, the return of the Washington and Jefferson—which, to our rather amazed vision in the better light, actually, instead, turned out to be a Jefferson and Lincoln.

The smart-aleck waiter might have, instead, however inadvertent the ostensible slight had been, taken the probably subconscious hint and exercised the better portion of valor with a smile, tucked the quite adequate gratuity into his shirt pocket, and walked away the richer for the Experience. We certainly did.

And a woman, Minnie Tickle, assistant in the bureau of vital statistics, reported that so much discussion had been ongoing around her area of work, regarding the Health Department's program to rid the city of rats, that it should come as no shock should one of the babies' birth certificates show up with the name "Rat Eradication".