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So well advanced was this malaise by mid-week that Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson and General Marshall had to go up Capitol Hill, plead for action which most U. S. people already wanted. After three weeks in his new job, 72-year-old Mr. Stimson looked a little worn. His voice quavered, alike from weariness and irritation. But in his grave, informed statement of U. S. peril in Hitler's world, Henry Stimson pulled no punches. House committee quibblers drove him to distraction, finally drove him to his best line of the day: "All this talk of wait, wait, wait, and we're confronted with an enemy who does not wait!"
But this week, when a compromise version of the Burke-Wadsworth Bill emerged at last from the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Henry Stimson's fire and logic had yet to convert many a doubter. Biggest obstacle to conscription still was the Congressional state of mind typified by Iowa's grey GUY MARK GILLETTE. Like most of the other opposition Senators, Mr. Gillette has voted for billions in emergency Defense appropriations. Last week he announced that conscription should be delayed until there is an emergency. For good measure, Guy Gillette also devised a new definition of military training: "This idea of letting the boys sit around for a year playing stud poker and blackjack is poppycock."
*So did the late Representative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., whose son Charles this week took to the radio to advocate appeasing Adolf Hitler.