The Wilmington morning star., 1945-01-09
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright. 1885, by King Features Syndicate. J

NEW YORK.-1f Henry Wallace were not
well up in his fifties, you could suspect that
Mr.. Byrnes, the War Mobilization director
was sighting down the barrel at him with
his wise-cracks about able-boded athletes who
are neither fighting nor performing essential
work. M. Wallace is Individually an athlete
being not only tennis man but one Of our
foremost Indian w~estlers if not the heavy
weight champion of the world at this eccen-
tricity and he is due to be fired from his
present job on Jan. 20, when his contract
expires.
Indian wrestling is the sort of sport that
one would expect the sort of person that Mr.
Wallace is to take up in studious and tedious
tway. 1t is of the same school of athletics as
hitch-hicking, facetag, heel-and-toe walking
the push-up and the taffy pull. The confess
tants, two in number, stand face to face
their feet wide apart, and clasp their right
hands and each then tries to pull twist the
other off balance. When a wrestler is COM
PEELED to lift either foot from the floor he is
deemed to have lost fall which is tech
nical term not necessarily indicating that the
unfortunate player has actually fallen down,
although some of them do take some nasty
"spills, assure you. "spilI is slangy
expression meaning about the same as 'fall'
in the literal sense. After one of the Wresters
has lost two falls they generally go to the
kitchen and eat ginger snaps or other goodies
and drink a glass of milk to show that the
contest has been Waged in spirit of sports
manship and fun and that there are hard
feelings"
Either the winner or the loser of the con-
test match may supply these refresh
rnents depending whose house it is and
that is then said to ''stand treat which
seems to be slang term from the frontier
saloons of the old wild and wooly'' west.
Thus is our interesting language enriched with
ri5i,, hn oh
scure or totally lost to and not entirely
dignified either.
The circumstances in which Mr. Wallace lost
his job as vice-president of the United States
were exciting and, to Others amusing. During
the Democratic convention in Chicago last
summer he felt distinct twinge or prickle
between his shoulder blades. At first he
thought nothing about it but that evening as
he was walking through the lobby of the hotel
where all good New Dealers were supposed
to check in with Sidney Hllman, he met his
friend and rival, Mr.. Byrnes and their mutual
friend, Senator Dear Alben Barley, of Ken
lucky. All of them were aspirants for The
nomination for the vice presidency and each
thought he had valid assurances from Mr..
Roosevelt that, confidentially, he was the real
choice.
Meeting Mr. Byrnes and Senator Barley,
Mr.. Wallace gggled, as is his wont, then
simpered and then did a split.
DO you boys know he said, coming out
of his salutation. Il have got the funniest
sensation between my shoulder blades"
well, SO have l." Mr.. Byrnes exclaimed
and Senator Barley said, That is funny
because it is the same here
So they examined each other and found that
each one had great big pig-sticker pro-
truding from his back, all bearing the initials
''FDR.'' The next day, Senator Harry Trl-
|
Wallace was looking for new job The others,
though not actually unemployed were pretty
sore but they could like it or lump it.
| Since then. however, there has been a great
propaganda out of Washington which fatty
assumes that the people of the United States,
having kept Mr.. Wallace on the payroll for
eleven years at good pay as Secretary Of
Agriculture and vice president, now have a
duty to find him another job to take the place
of the one from which his friend, FDR, cam
ned him.
The wallace propaganda is peculiar in that
! it never does cite anything that he ever did
| to earn the right to luxurious perpetual social
security at the peoples expense. 1t just says
he is ''diffident'' and shy all of which is
true and revealed by his giggling and SIM
pering. This propaganda intimates that he is
great man, even suggesting that he might
be an immortal savior, although his speeches
have revealed no evidence of any of this.
What his speeches have revealed is an impa
I thence with the American Bill of Rights, a
leaning toward the Soviet system whose mas
sacres, however, he has totally ignored and
a generous detestation of American men of
business as "Fascsts'' who, obviously, under
Soviet rules, would be subject to deportation
to some arctic or desert bad land if not to
slaughter
The late Ray Clapper was the real dis
coverer of Mr.. Wallaces generally obscure
beauties of soul, purpose and character and
used to yell and stomp and carry on because
editors didn't perceive the same qualities that
were apparent to his sight But IN this writing
business everybody has favorite fighter or
politician who is actually awful turkey and
Henry was just Rays blind spot, although
Campers halleujahs for this drooling Iowa
Holy Joe have been taken up by number
of other rollers in Washington.
The simplest way to solve the Henry Wal
lace re-employment, relocation and rehabilita-
ton problem would be to find him an au-
thentic regular working-job in a factory and
let him learn for once what work is. There
is nothing in his record a bureaucrat to
suggest that the American people owe him
ANYTHING or that he has anything to otter
that they wouldn't be much better off without.
The same was true of Frank Murphy and
hundred others who we're heartily repudlated
by the people but never could be driven away
from that trough.
-V-