Word: congressmen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...would require a little time for some Congressmen to realize that it was not Britain's "fat" but the security of the U.S. which was at stake...
...Congressmen had left the White House elaborately sworn to secrecy. But the next day's morning newspapers carried a hint of the news. Evening papers carried a little more: a ''leak" from London. The Foreign Office had informed Washington that Great Britain, her economy nearly wrecked, could no longer maintain the security of Greece. That had been the subject of the White House conference. The story unfolded with no warning thunderclap, but in an atmosphere of such calm that the nation scarcely realized that a crisis had been reached...
Marshall had told the Congressmen that the U.S. would have to step in immediately with a loan of $250 million for the rehabilitation of Greece's ports, railways, bridges, for the purchase of industrial and raw materials to bolster Greece's economy, and for the support of a British garrison already there. The U.S. would not send soldiers. But the U.S., besides financial aid, must supply economic and military advice and full moral support. The Congressmen knew the alternative: expanding Russia would take over...
...Congressmen listened gravely. They asked few questions. "Nobody knows where this will lead us," Harry Truman said thoughtfully as the conference broke...
...climax occurred. The great Railway Labor Act, hailed as the model machinery for peaceful settlements, broke down. An anguished and embarrassed Harry Truman demanded, among other things, the authority to draft the striking engineers and trainmen into the U.S. Army. And in the hysteria of the moment, 306 Congressmen agreed to that authoritarian expedient. The Senate, led by Taft, gutted the President's bill and it died. The whole affair ended in a kind of shocked and shamefaced silence...