THE NATION: Peace

Peace was busting out all over. The sights and signs were everywhere.

The sign of the times was “52 for 40 or Fight.” (see Labor). The sight of the times was blue-coated cops standing by at picket lines. In many cities there were other lines—before unemployment-compensation offices: claims were up 20.7% over the preceding week, had reached close to the 1,500,000 mark.

Six weeks after the Japs had quit, a wartime sign reappeared: “No Gas.” (see Labor). Washington began to see a series of C.I.O. marches, demonstrations by hundreds of workers that organized labor fully intended to get what its signs proclaimed: “Full Employment—Jobs for Everybody.”

Labor talked tough to a Congress that had shown signs of getting tough toward labor. To ease the impact of peacetime conflicts, hoping to forestall a wave of labor strife, the Administration moved urgently. But the hard fact was that sudden peace had caught the Government unprepared; it was not ready for labor’s conversion from the uses of wartime regulation and arbitration to peacetime methods of bargaining.

To most U.S. citizens the important question of peace was still: “When does my G.I. come home?” But there was a more important question: what will the G.I. come home to?