THE CONGRESS: The Folks at Home

Congress came back to Washington last week. House members had been home for a month; most Senators for at least a fortnight. Scores of reporters were assigned to talk to returning Congressmen, to report what they had found among the folks back home.

With only a few exceptions, the Congressmen had been shocked by the state of opinion in their districts. Interventionist districts were now red-hot; Middle-Road districts were now Interventionist; Isolationist districts were now at least Middle-of-the-Road. One Congressman after another said the same thing: “They’re way ahead of me back home.” Southern members who had voted for extension of the draft found themselves local heroes; Congressmen who had voted for draft extension with their fingers crossed found they had done the right thing after all.

A month ago Speaker Sam Rayburn’s aides had fought and shoved and sweated blood to squeak through draft extension by one vote—203-to-202. Now they told the Speaker that the President probably could get repeal of the Neutrality Act through the House. In August there existed grave doubts that a second Lend-Lease appropriation could be passed; now it was expected to be practically a formality.

Fortnight ago canny Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, Midwest weathervane, announced he had decided that in time of the plain duty of all Americans is the President.

To the vast discomfort of the Chicago Tribune, which had often hailed him as a hero, Representative Everett McKinley Dirksen a Republican from Pekin, Ill., longtime, profound Roosevelt-hating Isolationist, solemnly proclaimed on the floor the House his future support of the President’s policy. He added, amid silence and Republican consternation: “To disavow or oppose that policy now could only weaken the President’s position, impair prestige and imperil the nation.”

From an influential Old Guard Republican— a man who had hitherto denounced and opposed every major Roosevelt move in World War II — these were sensational words.