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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Jan. 10. 1963
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Rules Head Dethroned
The House of Representatives yesterday handed President John F. Kennedy a big victory when it voted 235-196 to enlarge the membership of the rules committee from 12 to 15.
Rep. Howard W. (Judge) Smith, D-Va., the 80-year-old rules committee chairman, is mad as a hornet. He feels that the Kennedy administration has done him dirty by "packing" his little empire which controls the working of the House.
In terming the House decision "packing," Smith obviously is trying vaguely to establish some parallel between the House decision and President Franklin Roosevelt's attempts to enlarge the Supreme Court in 1937.
Judge Smith was just that powerful. Before his committee was "packed" for the first time two years ago, the Judge was a legendary figure on Capitol Hill.
THE REAL REASON the old Southern gentleman is angry is because he has lost, apparently for good, his position as the most powerful man in the House.
In order for legislation to reach the House floor, it had to pass through Rep. Smith's committee to be assigned a date of appearance and a debate time limit. If the committee failed to assign any date or debate time, the bill simply never reached the House floor—it died in the committee.
This is how Judge Smith has managed to defeat much liberal legislation over the years一
simply by refusing to let his Committee consider particular bills.
Rep. Smith had another trick. When it appeared that rulings on particular bills might be contrary to his political feelings, the Judge either left town or simply disappeared for a time. Many times, he would announce later that he had gone to his Virginia estate where one of his barns had "caught fire and burned down."
The Judge's travels not only blocked the House from considering bills to which he objected; they also completely stopped the legislative process, as no bills could be sent to the House floor.
THE INCREASED MEMBERSHIP and new makeup of the rules committee makes it impossible for Judge Smith to keep the committee from meeting simply by leaving town. The addition of two liberal Democrats to the committee also means that liberal bills will have a better chance before the committee.
The House decision, however, is much more than a defeat for Rep. Smith and a victory for President Kennedy. It is almost a guarantee that elected representatives will be able to vote on legislation.
Douglas County residents now may be assured that their representative, Robert Ellsworth, will be able to vote on legislation rather than having a Virginian decide its fate.
—Scott Payne
Acheson Faced Red Storm
(Editor's note): This is the first half of an article on Dean Acheson.)
By Richard Bonett
The kinder critics of Dean Gooderham Acheson used to say of the patrician-looking, impeccably dressed former U.S. Secretary of State;
"He looks and acts too much like a diplomat to be real."
There was at least some foundation for that charge, though the judgment was superficial. Historians of the future will be compelled to consider also the side of the man who told a flattering admirer, "Sir, all that I know I learned at my mother's knee, and other low joints."
IT TAKES some brushing away of the cobwebs which impede memory to recall that a little more than a decade ago Dean Acheson was at the center of a titanic — and in retrospect, somewhat insane — political struggle.
There were many elements in the strident politics which swirled about the U.S. State Department in the early 1950s. One of the chief of these was what the late Elmer Davis, author and news analyst, called "the civil cold war."
In Davis's estimation, the war would test a basic concept in American democracy: whether in the free market place of ideas, honest men could differ honestly on public issues, leaving to a majority of the people the job of deciding truth from error.
THE ALTERNATIVE of this proposition was coming to be practiced more and more in 1950 by a group of otherwise unmeritorious congressmen who found it politically more profitable to tag as a Communist or a pervert anyone who opposed their views.
Acheson took charge of the State Department on Jan. 21, 1949. Less than a year later, Sen. Joe McCarthy had tagged him "the Red Dean of Washington," and Sen. William Jenner accused Acheson of a pro-Communist betrayal of the American people.
The Communists had just kicked Gen. Chiang Kai-shek out of China, a possibility the American people had hardly been prepared for. The American public needed an answer to the "why" of it all.
A SMALL GROUP of Republican senators and representatives provided an easy answer: The U.S. State Department had been taken over by a subversive clique of pro-
Communists and Dean Acheson was one of them.
This became the constant theme of the Republican party in the off-year elections of 1950. Having denounced Acheson loudly for months, it was determined at Republican party caucuses of both houses that Truman's secretary of state must go "because he had lost the confidence of the country."
Acheson did not go. He stayed until Jan. 20, 1953, when he handed over the reins of office to John Foster Dulles and retired to a somewhat equivocal career as a Democratic Party elder statesman and prominent Washington corporation attorney.
THROUGHOUT his somewhat stormy 4-year career as secretary of state, Acheson remained calm, correct, coolly-efficient, and sued Groton Academy and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1915.
Whatever may have been lacking in Acheson, at least one essential element was present for effective foreign policy: Acheson and Trueman worked smoothly together. The opposite could easily have come out of the natural background of the two men.
premely self-confident. All of this tended to further infuriate his opponents.
Acheson's life history is as imposing as his name. Born in Middleton, Conn., the son of a well-to-do Episcopal bishop, he attend-
HE SPENT a year in the navy and returned to earn his LLB. from Harvard, where one of his most admired and admiring teachers was young Prof. Felix Frank-furter. Acheson then spent two years as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, and in 1921 entered a Washington law firm, in which he is now the senior partner.
Dean Acheson
A philosophic liberal, Acheson joined the first New Deal administration as undersecretary of the Treasury. He broke with the administration within a year over differences on monetary policies but continued to support Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940. He first joined the State Department in 1941 as an assistant secretary under Cordell Hull.
During four and one-half years in that office, Acheson's duties consisted largely of liaison with Congress, a job he performed remarkably well. To the surprise of many, Acheson got along famously with a host of congressmen and senators, even after he became secretary of state.
HE DEALT chiefly with economic affairs as an assistant secretary and had little to do with foreign political affairs until 1945, when he was promoted to undersecretary. He remained undersecretary until 1947, often running the department as acting secretary while the chiefs—first James Byrnes and later George C. Marshall—were absent at conferences.
State Department policies are generally the product of many minds, and with any particular policy it is hard to tell who should get the credit or where to assess the blame. But even before he was called back to succeed the sailing Marshall as secretary, Acheson has been credited by President Truman with playing a healthy role in the Greek and Turkish aid policy and the Truman Doctrine.
Acheson was also valuable for his efforts in helping put into effect the Marshall Plan, which became American's most successful oostwar achievement in foreign policy. Later, as secretary, Acheson carried on where Marshall had left off with the North Atlantic Treaty. In some respects, Acheson had the toughest job: that of persuading the Senate to approve the treaty.
(The second half of this article will appear tomorrow.)
"SAY, ED YA BETTER CHECK THAT EXPERIMENT THOSE BOYS ARE WORKING ON BACK AT THE END TABLE."
SEVENTEEN, by Booth Tarkington (Harper Classics, $1.40); THE TURMOIL, by Booth Tarkington (Harper Classics, $1.40).
One of these books (the volumes are in Harper's handsome hardback series) actually has achieved some status as an American classic. But that book, "Seventeen," is a book for the very young, though even they might be puzzled by the antics of a Willie Baxter, who scarcely resembles the high school students one runs into these days.
As for Lola Pratt, the vamp of so many years ago who so enthalls Willie, she no longer rings true. "Seventeen," in short, is a period piece. We can only hope that it did have relevance at the time Tarkington wrote it.
With "The Turmeil," Tarkington almost succeeds in what made Sinclair Lewis' reputation a decade later. Put this alongside "The Magnificent Ambersons," in fact, and a case can be made for Tarkington as a pioneering writer of the small town and the impact of 20th century industrialism.
His hero is a likable boob named Bibbs Sheridan, who dreams and writes poetry while his father and brothers help make a smoky Midwestern town even smokier. One cheers as Bibbs beats the system, then is let down as he sees him make a Marquandian concession and give in to father and the business.-CMP
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TELEPATH, by Arthur Sellings (Ballantine, 50 cents)—a science fiction original paperback, in which the author enters the minds of two total telepaths.
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SIDEWINDER, by Edwin Booth (Ballantine original, 35 cents)—a western tale in the town of Paradise, whose residents would just as soon Don Harding left town.
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THE YOUNG TEXANS, by Claud Garner (Signet, 75 cents) big oil, big men, big women and all that. It's all about a woman who has oil on her land, loses it to a crook, and then fights him in good Texas fashion.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
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