Advise and Consent Read Online Free PDF

will presently repair along with the rest, and it will make of the matter something much more serious than a thirteen-year grudge. It is ground which is already concerning not only the capital of the United States and its Senate but London, Paris, Moscow, and the whole wide world, which is now beginning to get the news. The fight to confirm Bob Leffingwell is not going to be a simple thing, as Jim La Rue, with customary prescience, foresees.
    For seven Senators this fact is brought home with an extra impact, for they are dealing, or have just dealt, with areas where the Leffingwell nomination will create the most lively interest.
    High above the Atlantic in a plane bringing home the American delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Stockholm, the news coming smoothly over the radio brings much the same dismay to John DeWilton of Vermont as it has to Bob Munson and Royce Blair. Turning slowly about in the stately way which is his custom—“Johnny DeWilton,” as Stanley Danta once put it, “doesn’t bend, he sways”—the silver-topped human edifice which is the senior Senator from the Green Mountain State clears its throat and demands sharply of Alec Chabot, “Now, why in the hell do you suppose—”
    The junior Senator from Louisiana shrugs and looks down at his impeccably kept hands and expensive suit, then darts a quick sidelong glance at Leo P. Richardson of Florida.
    “Leo probably knows,” he says, a trifle spitefully. “Leo knows everything about this Administration.”
    At this jibe Leo’s round and earnest face squinches up in its usual preoccupied expression of intent concentration and he blurts out a short Anglo-Saxon word he does not customarily use. This indication of feeling is not lost on his seatmate, Marshall Seymour, the acerbic old hell raiser from Nebraska, who gives his dry chuckle and asks of nobody in particular, “Did somebody say there’s going to be a hell of a fight? Because if nobody did, I will.”
    The junior Senator from Missouri, Henry H. Lytle, leans forward from the seat in back with the dutifully worried expression he always wears when he is considering matters affecting the fate of mankind and with one of his usual complete non sequiturs blurts out, “But what will the Israelis do?”
    “Who gives a good God damn about the Israelis?” Johnny DeWilton snorts brusquely. “What will I do is what I’m worrying about.”
    In somewhat the same fashion, in the suite they are sharing at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, the two Senate members of the American delegation to the United Nations, Harold Fry of West Virginia and Clarence Wannamaker of Montana, are also getting the news. They are being apprised of it by the wife of the British Ambassador, who is in the hotel on a brief shopping visit to the city with the wife of the French Ambassador. Kitty Maudulayne and Celestine Barre, up bright and early to ready themselves for a descent on Fifth Avenue, have received the news on a daybreak telecast and Kitty has wasted no time in calling Senator Fry.
    “Hal,” she says excitedly as the sleepy Senator takes up the phone, “do you know what the President has done? He’s appointed Bob Leffingwell Secretary of State! Aren’t you excited?”
    Hal Fry gives the slow and delightful grin that splits his fascinatingly ugly face, and chuckles into the receiver.
    “Kitty dear,” he says kindly, “I’m not excited, but just listen to Clarence.”
    He reaches out a foot to the other bed and kicks Senator Wannamaker, who rolls over and grunts.
    “It’s Kitty Maudulayne,” Hal Fry says, “and she says the Old Man has appointed Bob Leffingwell Secretary of State.”
    There is a moment of silence, violently broken.
    “ What? ” roars Clarence Wannamaker. “What the hell did you say?”
    “Did you hear that, Kitty?” Hal Fry asks happily. “I told you he’d be excited.”
    “I do think it’s thrilling,” Lady Maudulayne says.
    “What does Celestine think?”