Word: borah
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...Against Borah stood the Administration viewpoint: 1) This is 1939, not 1918; the U. S. embargo on arms to all belligerents gives Adolf Hitler almost the equivalent of an Atlantic fleet, because Great Britain and France can get no arms from the U. S. 2) Britain and France are fighting the fight of democracy against world revolution, are not just engaged in another imperialistic quarrel...
...arms embargo was the first fateful footstep on a one-way road to war. Their votes and influence only two months ago had balked a then-irritable and often angry Franklin Roosevelt as he sought the embargo's repeal. They had forced adjournment without new neutrality legislation. And Borah had been their spokesman, as he quietly insisted in a White House night conference that he knew there would be no war-his sources of information were "better than" Secretary Hull...
...Borah's shadow, and the threat it represented, had caused Franklin Roosevelt to change his mood and tactics. Suddenly honey-sweet to the press he had often lambasted, Franklin Roosevelt now turned his full charm on his opponents: solicitously he consulted Republican leaders about a special session; then on the dissident Democrats. Twice he called the Mississippi fox, Pat Harrison, by long-distance telephone. He condoled Georgia's Walter George on an eye-operation (13 months ago he strove to end George's career). He appointed James Elliott Heath (a close crony of Virginia's Carter...
...Issue. Other Senators believe Jimmy Byrnes could charm snakes without a flute and with his eyes closed. That talent he needed now. For no man on the other side can orate with the power and clarity and command of Borah; no one on the other side is as agile and knowing a parliamentarian as Bennett Clark...
While a half-dozen Senators can prolong debate, in practice a real filibuster needs 15 men.*Last week Washington observers gave the Borah anti-repeal forces a minimum of 25 men, a maximum of 40. Therefore Jimmy Byrnes knew he had the most important thing-the votes-in the bag. But well he knew that only such a magnificent optimist as Franklin Roosevelt could seriously believe that 435 brass-tongued, leather-lunged Congressmen would meekly report to Washington, legislate one bill, then go quietly home in a time of crisis. Byrnes said nothing, silently agreed with Bennett Clark that...