California Democrats this weekend will take the wraps off a 1962 model statewide campaign vehicle which they have been quietly assembling in a thousand district headquarters, party clubrooms and workers' backyards.

They seem darned proud of it.

And they're confident that the GOP, currently assailed by dissensions within the ranks, will be impressed by the purring power beneath the hood of this grassroots-fueled machine.

Their meeting at San Francisco is nominally scheduled as a conference of the California Democratic Council directorate.
But it will include 200-odd officeholders, organization leaders and "interested party people".

Out of this session may come: 1
-- Plans for a dramatic, broad-scale party rally in Los Angeles next December that would enlist top-drawer Democrats from all over the country.
2
-- Blueprints for doubling the CDC's present 55,000 enrollment.
3
-- Arrangements for a statewide pre-primary endorsing convention in Fresno next Jan. 26-28.
4
-- And proposals for a whole series of lesser candidate-picking conventions in the state's 38 new Congressional districts.

At the head of the CDC is an unorthodox, 39-year-old amateur politico, Thomas B. Carvey Jr., whose normal profession is helping develop Hughes Aircraft's moon missiles.
He's approached his Democratic duties in hard-nosed engineering fashion.

Viewed from afar, the CDC looks like a rather stalwart political pyramid: its elected directorate fans out into an array of district leaders and standing committees, and thence into its component clubs and affiliated groups -- 500 or so.

Much of its strength stems from the comfortable knowledge that every "volunteer" Democratic organization of any consequence belongs to the Aj.

Moreover, the entire state Democratic hierarchy, from Gov. Brown on down to the county chairmen, also participates in this huge operation.

Contrarily, Republican "volunteers" go their separate ways, and thus far have given no indication that they'd be willing to join forces under a single directorate, except in the most loose-knit fashion.

Carvey believes that reapportionment, which left many Democratic clubs split by these new district boundaries, actually will increase CDC membership.
Where only one club existed before, he says, two will flourish henceforth.

Biggest organizational problem, he adds, is setting up CDC units in rock-ribbed Democratic territory.
Paradoxically the council is weakest in areas that register 4- and 5-to-1 in the party's favor, strongest where Democrats and Republicans compete on a fairly even basis.

Like most Democratic spokesmen, Carvey predicts 1962 will be a tremendously "partisan year".
Hence the attention they're lavishing on the Aj.

In all probability, the council will screen and endorse candidates for the Assembly and for Congress, and then strive to put its full weight behind these pre-primary favorites.
This bodes heated contests in several districts where claims have already been staked out by Democratic hopefuls who don't see eye-to-eye with the Aj.

Naturally, the statewide races will provide the major test for the expanding council.

Shunted aside by the rampant organizers for John F. Kennedy last year, who relegated it to a somewhat subordinate role in the Presidential campaign, the CDC plainly intends to provide the party's campaign muscle in 1962.
There is evidence that it will be happily received by Gov. Brown and the other constitutional incumbents.

Carvey considers that former Vice President Nixon would be Brown's most formidable foe, with ex-Gov. Knight a close second.
But the rest of the GOP gubernatorial aspirants don't worry him very much.

In his CDC work, Carvey has the close-in support and advice of one of California's shrewdest political strategists: former Democratic National Committeeman Paul Ziffren, who backed him over a Northland candidate espoused by Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk.
(Significantly, bitter echoes of the 1960 power struggle that saw Mosk moving into the national committee post over Ziffren are still audible in party circles.
)

note: We've just received an announcement of the 54th Assembly district post-reapportionment organizing convention Wednesday night in South Pasadena's War Memorial Bldg., which graphically illustrates the CDC's broad appeal.
State Sen. Dick Richards will keynote;
state and county committeemen, CDC directors and representatives, members of 16 area clubs, and "all residents" have been invited.

This is going to be a language lesson, and you can master it in a few minutes.
It is a short course in Communese.

It works with English, Russian, German, Hungarian or almost any other foreign tongue.
Once you learn how to translate Communese, much of each day's deluge of news will become clearer.
At least, I have found it so.

For some compulsive reason which would have fascinated Dr. Freud, Communists of all shapes and sizes almost invariably impute to others the very motives which they harbor themselves.
They accuse their enemies of precisely the crimes of which they themselves are most guilty.

President Kennedy's latest warning to the Communist world that the United States will build up its military strength to meet any challenge in Berlin or elsewhere was, somewhat surprisingly, reported in full text or fairly accurate excerpts behind the Iron Curtain.
Then the Communese reply came back from many mouthpieces with striking consistency.

Now listen closely:

Moscow radio from the Literary Gazette in English to England:

"President Kennedy once again interpreted the Soviet proposals, to sign a peace treaty with Germany as a threat, as part of the world menace allegedly looming over the countries of capitalism.
Evidently the war drum beating and hysteria so painstakingly being stirred up in the West have been planned long in advance.
The West Berlin crisis is being played up artificially because it is needed by the United States to justify its arms drive".

The Soviet news agency TASS datelined from New York in English to Europe:

"President Kennedy's enlargement of the American military program was welcomed on Wall Street as a stimulus to the American munitions industry.
When the stock exchange opened this morning, many dealers were quick to purchase shares in Douglas, Lockheed and United Aircraft and prices rose substantially.
Over 4 million shares were sold, the highest figures since early June.
(Quotations follow".
)

TASS datelined Los Angeles, in English to Europe:

"Former Vice President Nixon came out in support of President Kennedy's program for stepping up the arms race.
He also demanded that Kennedy take additional measures to increase international tension: specifically to crush the Cuban revolution, resume nuclear testing, resist more vigorously admission of China to its lawful seat in the United Nations, and postpone non-military programs at home".

TASS from Moscow in English to Europe:

"The American press clamored for many days promising President Kennedy would reply to the most vital domestic and foreign problems confronting the United States.
In fact, the world heard nothing but sabre-rattling, the same exercises which proved futile for the predecessors of the current President.
If there were no West Berlin problem, imperialist quarters would have invented an excuse for stepping up the armaments race to try to solve the internal and external problems besetting the United States and its NATO partners.
Washington apparently decided to use an old formula, by injecting large military appropriations to speed the slow revival of the U.S. economy after a prolonged slump".

And now, for Communist listeners and readers:

Moscow Radio in Russian to the USSR:

"The U.S. President has shown once again that the United States needs the fanning of the West Berlin crisis to justify the armaments race.
As was to be expected Kennedy's latest speech was greeted with enthusiasm by revenge-seeking circles in Bonn, where officials of the West German government praised it".

Moscow Novosti article in Russian, datelined London:

"U.S. pressure on Britain to foster war hysteria over the status of West Berlin has reached its apogee.
British common sense is proverbial.
The present attempts of the politicians to contaminate ordinary Britons shows that this British common sense is unwilling to pull somebody else's chestnuts out of the fire by new military adventures".

East Berlin (Communist) radio in German to Germany:

"A better position for negotiations is the real point of this speech.
Kennedy knows the West will not wage war for West Berlin, neither conventional nor nuclear, and negotiations will come as certainly as the peace treaty.
Whenever some Washington circles were really ready for talks to eliminate friction they have always succumbed to pressure from the war clique in the Pentagon and in Bonn.
In Kennedy's speech are cross currents, sensible ones and senseless ones, reflecting the great struggle of opinions between the President's advisers and the political and economic forces behind them.
Well, dear listeners, despite all the shouting, there will be no war over West Berlin".

Moscow TASS in Russian datelined Sochi:

"Chairman Khrushchev received the U.S. President's disarmament adviser, John McCloy.
Their conversation and dinner passed in a warm and friendly atmosphere".

Now, to translate from the Communese, this means:

The "West Berlin" crisis is really an East Berlin crisis.

The crisis was artificially stirred up by the Kremlin (Wall Street) and the Red Army (Pentagon) egged on by the West Germans (East Germans).

The reason was to speed up domestic production in the USSR, which Khrushchev promised upon grabbing power, and try to end the permanent recession in Russian living standards.

Chairman Khrushchev (Kennedy) rattles his rockets (sabre) in order to cure his internal ills and to strengthen his negotiating position.
His advisers in the Politburo (White House) are engaged in a great struggle of opinions, so he is not always consistent.

The Soviet Union will fight neither a conventional nor a nuclear war over Berlin, and neither will its Warsaw Pact allies.
The West has no intention of attacking Russia.

Chairman Khrushchev and John McCloy had a terrible row at Sochi.

See, Communese is easy -- once you get onto it.

Aug. 4, 1821, nearly a century after Benjamin Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Gazette -- a century during which it had undergone several changes in ownership and a few brief suspensions in publication -- this paper made its first appearance as the Saturday Evening Post.
The country was now full of Gazettes and Samuel C. Atkinson and Charles Alexander, who had just taken over Franklin's old paper, desired a more distinctive name.

When founded by Franklin the Gazette was a weekly family newspaper and under its new name its format remained that of a newspaper but its columns gradually contained more and more fiction, poetry, and literary essays.
In the middle of the century, with a circulation of 90,000, the Post was one of the most popular weeklies in the country.
But during the second half of the century its fortunes reached a low point and when in 1897 Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased it -- "paper, type, and all" -- for $1,000 it was a 16-page weekly filled with unsigned fiction and initialed miscellany, and with only some 2,000 subscribers.

Little more than a fine old name, valuable principally because of the Franklin tradition, the Saturday Evening Post was slow to revive.
But Curtis poured over $1 million into it and in time it again became one of the most popular weeklies of the country.

"Remember the French railroad baron who was going to take me floating down the Nile"?
"Remember the night Will Rogers filled a tooth for me between numbers"?
"Sure, we met a barrel of rich men but it's hard to find the real thing when you're young, beautiful and the toast of two continents" "Remember Fanny Brice promised my mother she would look after me on the road"?

All this remembering took place the other night when I had supper with the Ziegfeld Girls at the Beverly Hills Club.

A quarter of a century has gone by since this bevy of walking dreams sashayed up and down the staircases of the old New Amsterdam Theater, N.Y.
But watching Mrs. Cyril Ring, Berniece Dalton Janssen, Mrs. Robert Jarvis, Mrs. Walter Adams order low-calorie seafood, no bread, I could see the Ziegfeld Girls of 1920 were determined to be glamorous grandmothers of 1961.

I was anxious to hear about those dazzling days on the Great White Way.
All I could remember was Billie Dove pasted over the ceiling of my big brother's room.

"Billie was really beautiful"!
Exclaimed Vera Forbes Adams, batting lovely big eyes behind glitter rimmed glasses.