President Truman and the Democrats would likely pay a sizeable political price for having acquiesced to the demands of Mr. Lewis, with the perception being that the President did so to regain his political capital with labor. Yet, the general resentment among labor to Mr. Lewis's tactics would likely neutralize any political return to the President.

Moreover, other unions might now desire welfare funds of the type negotiated by Mr. Lewis, creating a further wave of strikes in the fall when other one-year contracts would expire.

The Republicans were making the most of the issue by seeking to inject amendments to the President's emergency labor bill in the Senate.

The likely result ultimately would be legislation to limit labor and thus all labor would probably suffer from the success of the miners in this strike.

"And we shall not always be burdened with a weak President and a Congress dominated by penny-ante politicians who cannot see beyond the next election."

Meanwhile, Mr. Byrnes had made equally clear the intent of the United States to oppose the creation of such a sphere. The conflict appeared to undermine any hope for a new era of peaceful cooperation, disarmament, and world progress without war.

But the hope might still persist to avoid war, even if two spheres were to coexist.

"Perhaps the only possible basis for building an enduring peace is to recognize the conflict between the Soviet and Western World and attempt, over the years, to reduce it."

It offers that expectations after the war may have been exaggerated but that presently realizing the conflict between East and West, and facing it, might at least have prevented a fatal error.

At the University, 1,157 students had cast their ballots in a straw poll for Harold Stassen to be the next President.

In Asheville, the "G.I." ticket had made headway in breaking the grip of a local political ring.

North Carolina would remain, it predicts, Democratic and a one-party state, but the rumblings suggested that there would be a coming sea change in Congress in 1946, which might extend into 1948.

The present draft act was inadequate, having extended the draft only 45 days as a stopgap measure, with the stated exemptions—the original one-third pregnant version out of the House having extended the draft for nine months but barred inductions for the first six of those months. It finds the action incompatible with the hastily passed House labor bill of the previous Saturday, which included the draft provision.

There appears to have been considerable confusion on the part of the newspapers as to what was being proposed, a military draft or a labor draft. It was being reported both ways. Strictly speaking, it was to be a labor draft via the military. The draft into the military was to provide a color of legitimacy to the action, within the powers of Congress to raise and support armies. Once drafted, the "soldiers" would then be ordered to report to work in the striking industry. But, as suggested Wednesday, could the Congress do indirectly what it could not do directly, that is draft labor? And what was to become of any drafted labor once the strike would end? Would they be discharged from the military? If not, assuming induction of the bulk of the work force in a given industry, who would supply the work for that industry?

To figure out this conundrum, may have been another reason why President Truman was about to appoint Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, also one of his chief labor advisers in the latter stages of the recent strikes, to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

He next discusses again the absence of teamwork prevailing at the start of the negotiations to end the rail strike, without the able men of the War Labor Board available to the Administration, John W. Snyder having advised the President the previous summer to abolish the Board, including firing of its members, Frank Porter Graham, Lloyd Garrison, and George W. Taylor, all knowledgeable of the labor situation. Only when Fred Vinson and James Byrnes had entered the rail negotiations had the impasse been broken. The inept team from Missouri had gotten nowhere.

Mr. Vinson and Mr. Byrnes had found the President angry at the rail leaders, A.F. Whitney and Alvanley Johnston, railing at them in unprintable language.

Two months earlier, according to Mr. Whitney, the President had told him that the Trainmen's support of him in his tough re-election bid for the Senate in 1940 had ultimately been responsible for him becoming President. But now the President was telling Mr. Whitney, in no uncertain terms, that the latter was going to do what the President wanted.

Mr. Whitney further informed that the President had not seemed familiar with all the facts, had spent but 18 minutes with the union leaders, whereas President Roosevelt had spent eight hours with them during the rail crisis of Christmas, 1943.

He notes that, upon the return of Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan from the four-power foreign ministers conference in Paris, he had met with Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut, a student of foreign affairs.

The tough road for the Democrats in the fall was indicated by the Democratic primary in North Carolina in which able Congressman John Folger was facing a stern test for the nomination from Thurmond Chatham, blanket king. Though within the same party, the race bespoke the notion that purge was in the air.

Mr. Folger would ultimately prevail.

Mr. Ickes suggests that the transgression derived from Mr. Hannegan's experience in local St. Louis politics as a dispenser of patronage, causing him to view all posts in that light.

He notes that Mr. Hannegan neither smoked nor drank, and so the announcement could not be attributed to an artificially induced loose tongue. Moreover, he deliberately disclosed the matter to an open-eared columnist so that it would be printed in the press.

Mr. Ickes notes that Mr. Hannegan had recently had several teeth removed, but that his real problem with his mouth came from his feet.

The Russians were demanding that all treaty matters be resolved before the convening of a 21-nation conference, while Secretary of State Byrnes was demanding that the matters be left to the nations to resolve at that conference.

Thus, though Senator Vandenberg, contrary to his previous statements, would likely follow his colleagues' advice and return to Paris, it would be with little hope of bridging the ever widening gulf between the West and the Soviet Union.