The Wilmington morning star., 1943-11-22
Third Term
PITTSBURGH PRESS
power.

The talk you hear frequently nowadays is
about possible fourth term. But how about
the third term?
For almost 2 full years we have been full
fedged participant in the war. We face a
long, difficult, costly struggle before it ends.
We must marshal all our strength, all our
resources, all our concentrations on winning
We dare not lose
And what do we have to contend with,
meanwhile?
For another, we nave a Secretary of Labor
who, % months after Pearl Harbor, cooks up
revenue bill frankly framed on a political,
not fiscal bsss-whose principal contribu-
tons to the war effort have been confusion,
delay and obstruction
For another, we nave Secretary of Labor
who, % months after Pearl Harbor, functions
chiefly as a statistical clerk, issuing occa-
sional data on the rise in the cost of living
and employment, while administration of mat
tiers concerning labor are carried on by the
War Labor Board, the National Labor Rela-
tons Board, the War Manpower Commission
and Selective Service-everyWhe1e but in the
Department of Labor.
For another, we have a Secretary Of the
Interior who, % months after Pearl Harbor,
is conspicuous a writer Of books and mag
azine articles, a petroleum administrator, a
coal-mine operator, a fisheries administrator,
and a confessed curmudgeon--a prolific and
ubiquitous parsonage skilled in the arts of
invecIive and persiflage. But seldom Sec
rotary of the Interior.
We have a palace major-domo in the per-
son Of Harry Hopkins, whose real function
nobody knows but Harry Hopkins and his
boss; an economic warfare administrator
who is not in the Cabinet; Vice President
whose only administrative function was
stripped from him after he got into an alley
scrap with the Reconstruction Finance Cor
poraton chief (who doubles as Secretary
of Cornmerce), and who devotes his time
away from the Senate to will-o' the-wisp
speech making; good administrator who is
not connected with the Department of Agri-
culture; a price and wage administrator
who for weeks held only a title and an actual
administrator who functioked without the
| title-neither one of then in the Cabinet; a
war production administrator also outside
the Cabinet; an information office without
Cabinet status but with definite and far
reaching influence in foreign affairs.
We have system of ironing cut difficulties
in one Federal agency by creating three new
and SuperSpecial ones to take its place, en-
powered to coordinate and mediate and is
sue directives; we have no War Cabinet;
we have an abundance of politically slanted
double talk that involves even the admins
tration of the Army and global strategy in
| Ai'AANN>ANNo'
| have self-perpetuating and multiplying bu-
reaucracy in astronomic proportions; we
have policy makers who talk out OF turn
so vigorously and frequently that the White
House chastises the newspapers for report
ing the confusion.
We have a foreign policy that often is
obtuse and fails to take the public into its
confidence; no domestic policy other than that
dictated by the fluctuating tides OF political
hocus-pocus and economic change.
We have a 10-year-old official family noml-
nally serving as Cabinet but which has
relatively little to do with the sole major
concern of the Nation-winnins the war. We
have an assorted flock of war administrators
without Cabinet rank, with overlapping au-
thorities and no central control. We have
coordinators by the score but no coordlna-
ton. We have a mounting debt SO Tar in
the stratosphere that paying ever the interest
! is maj Or concern. We have an official dis
affinity for economy that is virtually trade
mark of the administration.
| We have mistrust of free speech and Tree
press, and a petulant, off-with-his head reac
ton to any and all critics
We have a subtly schemed bat full-blowr
fourth-term campaign.
And that's what we have in third term.
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