CONGRESS: Gift Horses

No voice protested at first, when the Pittman neutrality bill proposed to shackle U. S. citizens with 3,500 words that added up to “Stay home under penalty of the law.” But loud was the squawk from the shipping tycoons when they found that the bill would straitjacket U. S. shipping into immobility. While Washington wits called Nevada’s Key Pittman a Thalassaphobe, and hinted the next step would be to make offshore swimming illegal, ship lobbyists got busy on sympathetic Senator Josiah W. Bailey of North Carolina (TIME, Oct. 23).

Last week Bailey (Commerce Committee chairman), Pittman and other Senate shipping buffs got together, unlaced the jacket. The U. S. merchant marine was to have been confined to the Western Hemisphere; under the new amendment U. S. ships may carry nonwar supplies 1) to all ports in the Western Hemisphere south of 30° north latitude; 2) to any port in the Pacific or Indian Oceans, including the China Sea, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. The President is granted discretion to declare out of bounds all North Atlantic shipping routes (including that to Canada via the Gulf of St. Lawrence) and may extend the prohibited areas wherever War II extends.

Off the Fence. This shipping compromise was Horse Trader Pittman’s second gift horse of the week. Gift Horse I was the abandonment of the 90-day credit clause for a policy of strict cash-on-the-barrelhead. Sly Mr. Pittman had timed his offerings nicely: wavering Senators popped off the fence in jigtime. Fence-perched Gillette of Iowa went over to the Administration side; so did Kentucky’s new Junior Senator Chandler and Illinois’ Lucas.

Still the Isolationists struggled on, insisting on the closest inspection of the gift horses’ teeth. For four and a half hours West Virginia’s Rush Dew Holt bellowed opposition, drawing breath only to mimic stridently Franklin Roosevelt’s Groton-Harvard accent and inflection. North Carolina’s Reynolds charged that Stalin sank the Athenia. But only the stubbornest Senate orator could ignore the fact that the galleries lay almost empty day after day. Nobody came to hear the Great Debate; though on one day hundreds flocked to see Fritz Kuhn before the Dies Committee. This week the Senate got ready to shift its burden to the House. Its own show was running out.

On the Cards. While the galleries were growing bored with the Great Debate, the public was also shifting in opinion. In its November issue FORTUNE’S Survey found: 1) that U. S. sentiment favoring equal treatment of all belligerents had increased by from 54% in September to 67% in October; 2) that approval of the President’s foreign policy had declined from 69.2 to 56.2%; 3) that belief in Germany’s chances of winning the war had increased from 8.3 to 15.3%; 4) that 84.3% of U. S. citizens want the Allies to win (83.1% in September).

The Gallup poll similarly reported: 1) sentiment that the U. S. should fight Germany, if the Allies appear to be losing, dropped from 44% in the first week in September to 29% last week; 2) 84% in the U. S. want the Allies to win; 3) 62% believe the U. S. should do everything possible to aid the Allies “short of war”; 4) 60% believe the arms embargo should be repealed.

The importance of these figures lies chiefly in what clue they offer to the House of Representatives’ action on neutrality. The House is tough to predict. Leader Rayburn of Texas and Whip Boland of Pennsylvania valiantly poll the House many times a session, usually by getting State leaders to poll their delegations. Yet they average a wrong guess of 20 votes on sharply controversial measures, thus cannot make a safe prediction when the vote is close. Last week United Press took its own poll, found a 15-20 vote margin in the House for repeal of the arms embargo. Washington dopesters agreed it would be nip-&-tuck.

And with such tight going, the Administration dared not allow the No. 1 House extrovert, toothy Sol Bloom, to drum-major the bill’s parade to the floor. By prerogative of position—Bloom is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—he must necessarily be on hand, but the Administration last week was casting vainly about for some means to shift unpopular Mr. Bloom to a tail-end spot, where he could play the steam calliope to his heart’s content, but not get in the way of the parade.