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That summer marked a change in Senator George's quiet, dignified campaigning habits. He stumped the State with impassioned speeches. At Waycross, four days after Barnesville, he was in tears most of the time. After his peroration—"I am persuaded that this generation of white Democrats will not let Democracy down in our beloved State"—and the playing of Dixie, most of his audience, too, were in tears.
New Dealers have watched him narrowly, and at times anxiously, ever since; yet not once since then has Walter George let that attempted purge influence his views on legislation. No one has ever charged that Georgia's George has yet cast a vengeful vote. This farsighted forbearance seems more remarkable to others than it does to George; his view is that past differences must not sway honest consideration of the present.
Rapprochement. The war and the accidents of politics brought Franklin Roosevelt and Walter George together again. When Nevada's Senator Key Pittman died in November 1940, Walter George became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He worked hard for revision of the Neutrality Act and Lend-Lease.
But on questions of taxation and inflation Senator George does not see eye to eye with the Administration. He is in favor of a sales tax, which the President opposes. He favors compulsory savings, which Henry Morgenthau opposes. He opposes subsidies, and about a year ago expressed himself against price ceilings, arguing in favor of increased production of civilian goods to hold prices down through normal competition, and the normal operation of supply & demand. George had raised an alarm over Army spending. He insisted that somewhere, some place, some time, there must be a limit to war spending. He does not do this because he is a pinchfist or is reluctant to win the war, but because he is a man of solid sense, who was raised to respect plain arithmetic. He knows that a public debt of $137,000,000,000 cannot be merely whooshed away by wishful thinking; that some time someone must put cash down on the barrelhead. In brief, war or no war, he does not live in a dreamworld of frenzied finance.
What is Congress? When he and the 530 other Senators and Representatives come back to Washington, the burning questions of Congressional independence and Congressional value will be fresher than ever. In 154 years, Congress has often been the butt. Mark Twain put it savagely: "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." Artemus Ward cried: "Congress, you won't do. Go home you mizzerable devils—go home!" But Congress is used to brickbats and other forms of political rudeness native to the U.S. scene. Congress knows that it can discount a good deal of the characteristically jeering American attitude toward the elected representatives of the American people. For the U.S. Congress knows—as the American people know—that, in spite of sectional differences, in spite of politics and politicians and party lines, E Pluribus Unum is more than a coin-worn phrase.