Monday, Nov. 17, 1941

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No one had filibustered. No Senator had deliberately delayed the debate. The talk had been good, the argument largely honest and toward the point. There had been a minimum of fustian, of rabble-rousing, only one moment of phony melodrama--when Montana's Senator Burton K. Wheeler had displayed British-made toy lead soldiers, had asked the little Redcoats directly: "What are you doing here? What are you doing here?" (The toy soldiers kept a strict military silence.)

After a slumberous afternoon in which the gallery attendants glared at dozers,* the bill came to passage. The Senate voted 50-to-37 to take the neutrality out of the Neutrality Act, to arm the U.S. merchant marine, to permit U.S. ships to enter the ports of belligerents. Another noble experiment, a six-year attempt at isolation by law was almost at an end. This week the House is to vote on accepting the Senate's addition to its bill. By week's end the President will probably have signed the repealer. Great Britain might well celebrate Thanksgiving Day this year.

*One such dozer was Vice President Henry Wallace, presiding, who nodded while orators droned on. When Wyoming's desert-dry Senator Henry H. Schwartz suddenly bellowed: "Mr. President!", Wallace came to with a start, automatically declared: "Without objection it is so ordered." The galleries roared.

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