The Wilmington morning star., 1947-01-20
As Pegler Sees 1t
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, BY King Features Syndicate.
Inc.O

1uC.J
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10. - Like the routine
lecheries of the Broadway and Hollywood scum.
the futile antics of the discredited left wing
of the old Roosevelt party have been cele-
brated lar beyond deserving on any rational
rule of news values. This will be another note
in a clamor about nothing much.
The left wing, gradually %disowned by Presi-
dent Truman for reasons political and olfact-
ory, held two meetings and split into two left
wings, a piece of parsing comparable, in deli
cacy and attendant noise TO the busting of the
atom. Henry Wallace leads one and the other
seems 10 be equally hard up. Its chairmen
are Wilson Wyatt, who failed in the Job Of
housing administrator, and Leon Henderson,
whose rowoy adventures in several positions OF
power under Roosevelt led him. in the end, to
a temporary job as a hired opinionarian on the
wireless. The sponsorship here was. it not
poetic, not inappropriate either. Henderson
sang for his supper for a manufa cturer OF
heels. His mandate as a political leader is as
insubstantial as Jimmy Roosevelt's. In Wash
ineton he was classified as an economist, d
title of diminishing prestige often conferred on
bookkeepers and statisticians.
Both of these left-wing groups are orphans
of the Democratic party Of Harry Truman. He
kicked several of the more conspicuous men,
bers out of the cabinet and other government
jobs. He estranged the last of them when. at
ter the last election, he laid the ghost OF Hyde
Park and became PreSlQent OIL tne United
States in his own name.
Madame Frances Perkins wrote in her
memoirs that one. reason for the coolth be-
.ween Roosevelt and Al Smith was tnat, after
Roosevelt became governor of New York.
Smith conceived himself to be an elder states
man and tried to impose his Will on the up
country squire. Taft had similarly resented
unsolicited guidance from Roosevelt l, and
Truman, in his turn. reacted likewise to the
-~oo1- T nr4 Nrio~ ho ina fhnf he Jlyn1II
consult his ouija board for counsel. This eX-
perience cost the country countless millions
Of hours wasted in the lines at meatless mar
kets and breadless bakeries. Democrats untold
millions of votes, and contributed to their loss
of Congress-.
M. Truman was reasonably up on the Cos
sip of Washington and knew a thing or two
about the practical side of the Roosevelt
He realized that he was playing the
chump, and being played for one. by a group
of political parasites. They had no following
and could offer him nothing but platitudes
noisily publieized.
1t was obvious that they we're not his peo-
pie but the last Roosevelt's, and we're in bust
ness as usual for business reasons. Mrs.
Roosevelt, for example, has received no free
So. 1000 mink coat in her old role of First Lady
this year.
Jimmy turned few dollars as a profes
lOlld CGIIDolSlICI 1Ol OfS VI lIIC L n. u :
ana Elliott struck it rich as a scandal-monger.
but these Roosevelt scions were more against
than for Truman, certainly neither was al
asset nor a comfort.
1t was time for a man to be a man. Presi
dent Humans personal declaration OF indie
pendence and of his disbelief in haunts reas
sured even such muttcring misanthropes as
Jim Farley and won him the grudging respect
of Senator Taft and a measure of Mr.. rs
apprehension, too.
OF the entire known roster of the two left
wings. only two schismatists have even been
elected to any office. OF these two, Wallace was
not selected by the convention of 1910. On the
contrary. this great body booed him and was
like to mob him. Mrs. Perkins wrote. on this
point, that she telephoned Roosevelt from Chi
cago and that he, in the manner of a man de-
Gliding between a Dreaded outlet and a lamb
chop, said, Eyes, 1 guess it's Wallace. 1 think
III stick to that"
She pacSed the word to Harry Hopkins, like
wise never elected TO- anything, he passed the
order to the convention and the beautiful
Democratic process ratified the Leaders
choice. Wallace was elected by the machine
and the Roosevelt vote. the most ignoble vic
tory in American politics and, in the light of
later knowledge and the notorious baby-talk
letters, the most dangerous prank of mischief
ever played on this Republic.
Mr.. Wyatt is said to have been mayor of
Louisville. but neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor her
son, Franklin, Chester Bowles, Henderson nor
several unidentified persons by name James
Loeb. Jr., DR.. Reinhold Niebuhr and Frank
Kingdom have ever been elected. Ha1old
Ickes, who seems to be with the Roosevelt
faction of the mutually angry left wing, has
always been a candidates towel-swinger and,
before he attached himself to Roosevelt. had
grown stoop-shouldered dragging defeated
candidates to their corners ater dramatic
knotkouts.
Such as they are then, there they are, the
leaders and the rank and file as well of the
new left wing. Their reyutations buile on pub
Lefty, effrontery and Tecentricity and most of
them intensely loysY to the profit motive in
personal matters' Tut spsringly in the broad
er 1ield OF other Peoples money.
l note with furious pleasure that the right,
OF Ilteksas and .oosevelt, wing of the new left
wing has decided not merely to repudiate. but
to exclude Communists. Ickes even repudiated
his old comrades of the various P. A. C.'s after
association last year and abused the
Wallace wing for its failure to exclude Boil
sheviki and announce that Trojan horseman
would be kicked out.
This takes me back to days when Mrs.
Roosevelt and Ickes both fraternized with the
bolos of the Newspaper Guild and the Lawyers
Guild. and Ickes berated me for advocating the
very exclusions that he now adjures. I am not
proud Of my converts, for it seems to me that
lney heGged away from the 11ght Wnen II was
a fight, and came in only when it was won.
I rote. too, but without emotion, for he seems
to follow ambition and chance, that young
Franklin has discovered serious Communist
penetration Of the American Veterans Com
mittee. l would have admired him more had
he said so when I did last winter and was
treated unkindly by the A. v. C.'s household
press and some of its officials. They said that
to admit the penetration and fight it as such
would be red-baiting and the Pegler method.
Now I find Mrs. Roosevelt, Franklin and
Ickes following Pegler. Do you reckon they are
fixing to draft me in 1913?