Washington –
Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) today resigned from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs:
…in order to devote my entire time in the new Congress, as a member of the Committee on Rules, to the restoration of representative and Congressional government in the United States.
He had been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee 22 years and was its ranking Republican.
Miners and operators still dispute terms of 6-day week
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Threat against Australia called main enemy battlefront
By A. T. Steele
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Allied air forces carry brunt of fighting
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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Chungking, China –
Two hundred Japanese troops were killed and hundreds of others were wounded when U.S. bombers attacked enemy barracks at Yochow, in North Hunan Province, Nov. 25, the Chinese Central News Agency reported today.
By Editorial Research Reports
Indications are that the 77th Congress will adjourn sine die (literally, “without a day” – that is, with no day fixed for reassembling) on Wednesday.
If the second session of the 77th Congress ends Wednesday, it will have sat 347 days, longer than any single session prior to that of 1917-18, and the fourth longest on record. The record, and one which may be equaled, but will never be surpassed, was made by the third session of the 76th Congress. This convened on January 3, 1940, a leap year, and continued until January 3, 1941, a span of 366 days. The first session of the present Congress sat from January 3, 1941, until January 2, 1942, for a span of 365 days. The wartime second session of the 65th Congress, from December 5, 1917, to November 21, 1918, sat for 354 days.
The entire 77th Congress will have sat for 710 days if it adjourns on December 16. This will make a record. The nearest approach to this record was made by the three sessions of the 40th Congress, 1867-1868. That Congress had a standing feud with President Johnson, and went into a series of recesses instead of adjourning sine die, in order to prevent the President from making interim appointments.
At present the quorum in the House already has dissipated, and that in the Senate is on the point of dissipating for the Christmas holidays. Both bodies can transact business without a quorum, but only by unanimous consent, for any member can always make the point of no quorum. Under these circumstances, no legislation even slightly controversial can be adopted.
Sen. Clark, D-Missouri, by threatening to filibuster, was able to put back into the conference report on the pending agreement with Panama an amendment added by the Senate, but rejected by the conferees. Rep. Marcantonio, the American Labor member from New York, by refusing unanimous consent was able to block the pending and long-standing bill for a merger of the wire services.
The Constitution forbids either house of Congress, during a session of both houses, to adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other.
Only one-third, or thereabouts, of the Senate comes up for re-election every two years, so that in theory the Senate, unlike the House, is a continuing body. Nevertheless, all business before both houses, except treaties, automatically loses its status at the end of a Congress, and must start from scratch in the new Congress. The rules of the Senate allow pending treaties to retain their status from one Congress to another; pending appointments, on the other hand, must be resubmitted to the Senate for confirmation. But pending business retains its status from one session to another session of the same Congress.
When the second session of the 77th Congress convened on January 5, 1942, the legislative groundwork had been pretty well laid for the prosecution of war, and practically all of the legislation adopted in 1942, with the possible exception of the price-control and anti-inflation laws, really was an extension of previous legislation.
By Ernie Pyle
WITH U.S. FORCES IN ALGERIA (by wireless) – When Ralph Gower was a little fellow in Arkansas, a deaf man lived across the street.
The man could read lips, and Ralph learned the trick from him. He did it mainly to show off before the other kids.
A quarter of a century has passed, and today Sgt. Ralph Gower sits on the edge of a folding cot in a tent way out in the field in Africa.
It is a hospital tent, and wounded soldiers in red bathrobes loll around in it. Ralph Gower can talk to them, and he can understand what they say, solely because he learned lip-reading as a prank when he was a child. For he is newly deaf, from the explosion of an enemy shell.
When I went to see him, he had been deaf only a few days, but lip-reading was already perfect. It had all come back to him across those 25 years. We talked for half an hour and he never made a single mistake.
Sgt. Gower escaped without serious wounds other than the loss of his hearing. They say there is a 50-50 chance of recovering, but even if he doesn’t, he’s got two strikes on deafness to begin with.
Into hell and back out again
Ralph Gower is 37. He was born in Truman, Arkansas, but his home address is now Route 3, Box 832, Sacramento, California. He used to be a draftsman and a machine-screw operator. He served a hitch in the Army in his early 20s, and joined up again as soon as England and Germany started fighting. He is a machine-gun sergeant.
Gower came to Africa aboard one of a group of combat boats that got into trouble trying to take an Algerian harbor. Those who lived to tell the tale were miraculously lucky.
“Do you want to hear what it felt like?” Ralph asked.
I sat down on the edge of the next cot. “Sure, I do. What did it feel like?”
“It felt just like going into hell and back out again,” he said.
The boys around the tent all laughed loudly. That startled me, for I couldn’t see anything to laugh at. But gradually I caught it.
It seems that Sgt. Gower’s deadpan Arkansas wit keeps the whole tentful howling day and night. He never says anything obviously clever. He just says things with an odd twist. He never cracks a smile. His expression never changes.
Six dozen wounded boys gathered on nearby cots to listen as Ralph told me the whole story.
He said:
We were all down in one of the compartments of the boat. That French ship came right up against us, and one of their shells came through the side. The thing exploded right in my face.
Some of the wounded soldiers in the tent had been through the same lethal nightmare he was describing, but they laughed at that crack just as though Bob Hope had said it.
Ralph went on:
I never heard a sound. It just went “shisht-ppfftt.” That’s all I ever heard. Then I passed out.
When I came to everything was quiet. I thought the battle was over. The ship was full of ammonia and smoke. You couldn’t hardly breathe. I liked to choked to death. My heart was shooting pains out in all directions. [laughter] I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs. I couldn’t even get enough smoke, for that was all I was getting anyhow. [more laughter]
They can still laugh
I finally started climbing a ladder. When I stuck my head out on deck, I couldn’t hear anything, but the air was full of tracer bullets. Then I realized there were dead men lying on the deck. I passed out. That fresh air was too much for me. [laughter]
Thus, the story went. Censorship doesn’t permit repeating the full details. It was getting late, and we shook hands.
“Are you married?” I asked.
“Am I married?” he said. “No, I’m single. I mean to say I’m sensible.”
The wounded boys all roared.
Sometimes you leave a battle hospital feeling horrible inside, but I stepped out of that tent, under millions of African stars, feeling good about Americans who can go “into hell and back out again” and still laugh about it.
