WASHINGTON—Recent reports that Democratic candidates, one and all, are not giving way to the usual optimistic predictions that this is a Democratic year pleases me.

For although the Democrats have won a few more people to their side, there are still many more to be won, and in some cases it will take a long time to win them.

I will be happy that if the report that candidates are really working for their election proves to be true. I don't think Democrats will win in November unless they really do work hard.

On the subject of politics, I was amused to read that Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who has just been renominated in New York's Harlem, has demanded that the Democratic organization now replace its leaders in his district with men of his choice.

I have never felt that Carmine De Sapio, head of Tammany Hall, had such good leadership in Harlem, so this demand should not make a great deal of difference to the organization. But that Powell should be able to force organization leaders to do this, as a price for his support of Governor Averell Harriman and others on the state ticket, is most obnoxious.

The Democratic leadership of the city declared some time ago that it wanted to rid the party of Powell. But just because he went into the primary and won, they say they will have to close ranks and support him in the election campaign.

I wish I could believe that delivering the vote to Powell would mean a Democratic vote for the entire state ticket in Harlem. Actually, his own election will not be accomplished along party lines. He will have the support of Negroes, be they Republicans or Democrats, but I doubt if even his eloquence can swing Republicans votes to the Democrats.

One could not help but be interested in the President's statement before the United Nations Assembly last week that we are nearer than ever to a solution to the problem of making salt water fit for human consumption.

Experts still say this will take a long time and that we cannot hope to harness waters of the sea for use in the Middle East, but it may well be that new processes will be developed through atomic energy, and we are quick at finding new machinery when we need it.

So I cannot help but hope that the cost of conversion can be brought down to a point where salt water can be of real use in the arid areas of the world.

My husband was always fascinated by this possibility, and to me any advances that promise more food to the peoples of the world is one more step toward peace.