The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-02-24

 gress, which on even the dullest of days will spout for the official Record 10000 words, and think nothing of it. In the full flood of oratory, this count will be tripled or quadupled to equal in verbiage. if not in gripping content a good healthy unexpurgated Gone With the Wind" Gone with the wind is right.
 Anyway, all these words con- stitute so many germs which. waited on the breeze even when malady and madness all over the district, afflicting all the official populace so that they talk too, like congressman.
 AND so, FAR
 INTO THE NIGHT
 The disease is limited to the official government populace. The native Washingtonians = the mer- chants and the people who own the real estate, the people who are go- ing to make the money out of the coming wartime Washington boom are largely immune to this talking typhoid, probably because of long contact with the gov'ment people and inbreeding which develops a native resistance to the talk germ. These people, not on the U. s. pay roll, but who get it in the end, are known as "cliff-dwellers" to the government sets. They stick pretty much to their own society, and must be hunted down like the wield ber- ianibex to be studied closely. oGc- ernment amateur anthropoiogiSts who have isolated specimens of this homo cliff dweller Washing tonia give assurance that they talk almost entirely of their children and divorces and golf games and movies, and liquor and automo- piles, just like the people of the United States.
 But not the gov'ment people. While the people in the rest of the country may do things, ill Washington they just talk about them. There is no manufacturing or industry in Washington, just talk. s"e
 To an outsider it's quite confus- ing, at least at first. Back where people vote, conversation on re- forestation, the shortage of alu- minum, what to do about Guam, the lease lend bill or even the $65 billion debt limit is taken and left. But not in Washington. Here the subject is taken, the teeth are sunk into it, and it is shaken as ter rier shakes rat. Then they chew over the bones.
 All this talk isn't confined to office hours, either. You must have lunch with somebody differ ent, every day, to hash things over Cocktail parties are every where, conducted with all the fervor of literray teas. Then these dinners, with talk afterward on into the night, in which the cur- rent problems fthe Office of Pro- duction Management in naming an executive secretary are dis cussed with all the relish of the ladise' aid society getting up to date on the goings on between the minister's wife and the superin- tendent of the Sunday school.
 YOU MUST HAVE
 YOUR CONVICTIONS
 The fervor of all this talk gets you, and it isn't just the New Deal theorists who talk this way. Now and hten you'll meet 1882 New Dealer who will mournfully declare there aren't any New Dealers left in Washington. What has succeeded them is not speci- fled but anyway, rank reaction aries discuss issues with just as much rapid rapture as rosy radi- calls and if you come to Waning ton without expresSable convic- tions on the value of mosquito boats, whether the army should buy three or pound chickens and the Department of Agricul- lures latest experiments on the love life of the boil weevil, you will be put down as a social dud and romantic flop. Within the general vocabulary of this Washington language there are of course numerous dialects and patois, understandable only within the social fabric, of the va- rious departments. The army and navy set keeps to itself, naturally, but the first families of the De- partment of Commerce and the first families of the Department of Justice look down their beaks at each other and have their own ideas as to whose blood is bluest.
 When groups from two differ ent strata are thrown together by some designing hostess, one fac- ton will outtalk the other or they'll have to get on some sub- ject they both pick at. Congress and the Supreme Court are fair game for parlor pastimes of this sort, and when some intense blond gazes soulfully up at you with an "Oh, you do think the Supreme Court should have upheld Thur man Arnold, don's you?" all you can do is swoon gracefully into your highball and dissolve.
 Another indoor sport is to name the three most influential people in Washington todya. The answer to this one is William Knudsen, Jesse Jones and Felix Frankfurter, but | it takes an hour of free.fOr-all