The Master's Voice

For 2 1/2 months, almost singlehanded, Georgia's hot-eyed Gene Cox had done his best to keep the U.S. from sending grain to famine-threatened India. The President had asked for it, the Senate had passed the bill, but "Goober" Cox had tied things in committee, where he thrashed around with the bill like a mongoose fighting a cobra. Last week, when the bill finally reached the House floor, Goober rose for a last convulsive spring. His intent: to keep it from even being debated.

A vote for the bill, he cried, was a vote for Dean Acheson. India was trying to blackmail the U.S. If it got the loan, it might share it with Russia. If the U.S. fed the Indians, it would soon have to feed "a train of other countries . . What a snare and a delusion . . ." he bawled, "the height of insanity. And it might be well to remember that India has 180 million sacred cows, and God in heaven alone knows how many sacred monkeys . . . All of these will have first claim on ... food ... we send India."

It was wasted effort. Before a vote was taken, Speaker Sam Rayburn, Texas' bald epicenter of respectability, stepped gravely down from his rostrum for one of his rare appeals to the House. Rayburn said nothing flashy, but his prestige wrapped dignity around his homilies. He reminded his colleagues that they lived in dangerous times, recalled the effectiveness of the Marshall Plan and warned them that the hungry fall easy prey to Communism. "We need friends in this world today as we never needed them before," he said. "I am for ... this bill because I think it will help us from a selfish standpoint; if for no other reason, I would be ... for passage."

Rayburn spoke only four minutes. His voice was pitched at an almost conversational tone. But his little talk brought an overwhelming 211-to-13 vote for debate. Next day, Cox made a desperate effort to emasculate the bill with amendments, was beaten only 135 to 103. Not all the debate was pitched to Rayburn's appeal to selfishness; Republican Congressman Walter Judd, onetime medical missionary in China, said: "This is a case where what our hearts prompt us to do coincides with what is in the interest of our country, world order and peace, to do." The vote for final passage: 293 to 94.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.