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To see the showdown, spectators filled the galleries, and some 100 senatorial aides lined the walls of the chamber. Mike Mansfield, his soft voice now rough with anger, set forth a final plea that was made more compelling by the fact that Morse & Co. were holding up the satellite bill even while two Russian cosmonauts were swirling about in space. "Will the Senate continue to dawdle?" asked Mansfield. "To decide for cloture is to decide honorably and reasonably to settle this issue one way or another and get on with the business of the Senate. The Senate owes the country a decision." The cloture motion won by 63 to 27—just three votes more than the required two-thirds of those voting. But silence, even when ordered by a lopsided majority of his peers, did not come easily to Wayne Morse, who promptly arose to cry: "A few minutes ago the Senate cast an historic vote. It will rise to plague the Senate for decades." Victory for None. In that judgment at least, Morse was probably right. For in long-term Senate patterns, last week's cloture vote was a victory for no one; Southern Democrats probably lost the least, Morse's liberals the most. The principle of unlimited debate, so dear to the South, had been dented (but the Southerners were still so delighted at knocking over the Morse group that Alabama's John Sparkman, who voted against cloture, posed grinningly for victory pictures with pro-cloture leaders). Republicans laid themselves open to the charge that they will support cloture on an issue involving business, but not on one involving civil rights. The Morse liberals suffered more complicated effects. In their unceasing efforts to achieve civil rights legislation, some have made it a cardinal point to ease the cloture rule. They have insisted that the rule, by its requirements, amounts to a prohibition against cloture. Last week they were proved wrong, and the significance was happily explained by Virginia's Harry Byrd. Said he: "We can point to this vote as proof that no rule change is needed—that the Senate can invoke cloture under the present rule any time it really is of a mind to." As for the satellite bill itself, it was approved by the Senate at week's end by a walloping vote of 66 to n.