Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PORTLAND, Ore. – It was a cold, sharp evening in Portland, and what with the chill and the blackout threats, people were staying home almost in unanimity.
Around dinnertime I walked an abandoned block to a movie, and went up to the lonely ticket window. It was after dark, so I didn’t even have my own shadow for company. The girl looked at me and waited, I said nothing, but handed her my money. Then she said:
“How many, please?”
I turned and looked behind me, and up and down the street. Not a person was in sight. I turned back to the cage and said:
“Guess!”
And do you know what she said? She said:
“How many, please?”
You can’t win, brother, you just can’t win.
There is apparently a hidden clause in the regulations governing the management of hotels that requires every hotel in America to paint the hall on my floor the minute I move in. In my hotel career I’ve inhaled enough fresh hall paint to camouflage the British fleet.
Paint is one of the few things in the world that make me sick. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden. It creeps up so gradually that I always think, well, this time it isn’t going to bother me. So instead of moving to another floor or going out for an eight-hour walk, I just sit and try to work and am slowly immersed in a death-like sensation.
So it was here in Portland. I did give up twice during the day, and went out shopping for a while in the morning (overshoes, dictionary, and a pair of drawers) and late in the afternoon I abandoned hope again and went to a movie – “Louisiana Purchase.” But it was no use. I wound up sick, cross, and with a headache.
News of Devil’s Island fugitive
That was when I was here a week or so ago. And when I came back this time, back to the very same room, I’m not lying, they had given my hall a second coat within the hour.
So I’m sick again. I hope the Government will forbid all hotel hall paint for the duration.
Some of you may have missed the latest news about Rene Belbenoit, the Devil’s Island fugitive. You remember that last summer he once more ran out of countries that would harbor him, and in desperation swam the Rio Grande back to the U.S. But he got caught.
He was finally released Brownsville jail on bail. He went to New York, then to California. He somewhat established himself in San Diego, doing some lecturing and some writing. Then in December he took a bus back to Brownsville, to face trial.
Belbenoit was so positive of his acquittal that he didn’t even have a lawyer, intending to present his own case. But he got short shrift. The judge sentenced him to 15 months in prison for illegally entering the U.S. And he says in his latest letter:
“So after seven years of freedom, I find myself again in jail, in an American jail, and I am sad, because I love so much this country and the people of America.
“I have thousands of friends in this country, and they all like me, and this is my best reward. But I am not too much worry. Possibly I can be free on parole after a few months if I don’t get a pardon. I can take it. But it is hard.”
Poor Belbenoit. He seems doomed to an everlasting harassment. For him there has been no peace between these two great wars. And now because of the war, there probably can never be peace for him. For America, his last hope for freedom, is too busy fighting for its own liberty to bother with his.
Special plates draw attention
For almost countless years I have carried District of Columbia license plates on my car. But since my fingers are now raw and bleeding from helping support the great State of New Mexico, I decided this year to get New Mexico tags.
They came to me in Seattle a few days ago. I put them on and drove to Portland. And I’ll bet I wouldn’t have been stared at as much along the way if I’d been walking on my hands.
Do you know why? It’s because I’m a New Mexico “colonel.” And New Mexico colonels get special plates with low numbers, and alongside the number it says “Staff Officer.”
Boy, does that get attention! Some people salute, some laugh, and some just open their mouths and gawk. But everybody does something.
I’ve worked up an acute case of self-consciousness over the things. If this staring business keeps up I’ll either have to abandon them or else get out my old shotgun and start sprinkling my roadside audiences with birdshot.
So be on your guard. If you see a car coming down the road with black and white license plates which say “63–Staff Officer,” that’ll be me. And I warn you, don’t stare.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
DETROIT – Years ago in my little home town in Minnesota, John Powers, our constable, used to pick up bums who tarried to maybe crack a safe or rob a clothesline on the way to and from the wheat fields and take them before our august mayor, Mr. Sampson, who was also our judge and held court wherever he happened to be.
I have seen him hold court leaning against the front of Aug. Hay’s meat market and sitting in the shade of the WCTU’s drinking fountain which was in a little pavilion. Mr. Powers would lead his bum up to our mayor and the mayor, without any “oyez” or “court is now holden” would look at his watch and say that the next freight was due through at such and such a time.
This was common procedure in those days in those parts and was known as “hours.” A bum got so many hours to leave town and if he didn’t leave he was supposed to be charged with vagrancy and jailed up for a month. Even then it occurred to my acutely constitutional mind that this sort of doing was somehow irregular but I never thought it would happen to me and in the capital of my native land and by decree of the President of the republic, of all people, but here I am in Detroit. Maybe this isn’t far enough, maybe I better go to Canada.
Likens President to town mayor
I didn’t even know the President had any idea that I was in Washington until all of a sudden he remarked to his press conference that all parasites ought to leave town and that those who didn’t leave voluntarily could be made so uncomfortable that they would break up camp and go under indirect compulsion. He was in his own office when he said this but, in effect, he was leaning against Aug. Hay’s market because he really has no right to do this. Even now I keep saying to myself, “Why he can’t do this to you; he can’t give you hours to get out of Washington,” but then I say, “the hell he can’t brother; you are in Detroit, aren’t you?”
Imagine!
But he must have meant some others because he used the plural form and yet I seem to be the only one who took his remark personally. Down at the station TI looked around thinking I might see Mrs. Roosevelt’s protege, Mr. Joe Lash, that veteran and inveterate professional youth of 32 who is always in and out of the White House, but if he was on the lam I didn’t see him. Probably he isn’t because Mr. Lash, though not quite the type for a commission in the naval intelligence, is nevertheless something in something called Youth Advisory Council of Civilian Defense which may be something whipped up special to employ his peculiar talents, whatever they may be. He was down there the other day because I saw him in Mrs. Roosevelt’s column.
I looked also for some of those milky old presidents emeritus of stylish girls’ colleges who are always getting up youth conferences but all I could be positive about were some soldiers, who certainly weren’t parasites, some rather obvious Detroit manufacturers, and a young FBI fellow who undoubtedly was going along to see that I didn’t double back from Baltimore.
Thought he’d see price experts
I thought surely I would see quite a passel of parasites from Paul McNutt’s department or some business experts from price control who got their training as dirty-book novelists in Paris and Union Square or at least one anti-capitalist poet from the Office of Facts and Figures. You would have thought they would sacrifice at least one Communist press agent, just as a token, even if they let him come back next week but no, I tell you, I was the only one in town who caught the freight.
And I wasn’t living on Government money. I was on expense account from my cherished employer and although I did have a pretty nice room to myself, with two beds, one, of course, unused, I wasn’t making any inroads on the food supply because I eat practically nothing on the road.
I was sorry about that unused bed but a man does have to be careful, and I am not being suggestive either. Any man who has traveled with a ball club knows that in a blind draw you might get a roommate like the late Wild Bill Phelon who kept lizards and used to sit by the window with a bag of mothballs shooting people with a slingshot or one who eats apples out loud in bed or one of those presidents emeritus or even Lash.
All right, I heard the president and I went, but what about old Charlie Michelson? Is he essential to the war effort?
Clapper: Plant conversion
By Raymond Clapper
DETROIT – A visit to Detroit is good for the spirit. You see the tanks coming off the line. You see the airplane engines. You see the anti-aircraft guns, and fire a test round in one of them.
What you see, big as it is, is only a start. The giant tank arsenal now fully in production, 800,000 square feet, is small compared with other plants being built. During my visit here one auto company has received an order which need a building four times as large as the tank arsenal, which itself is about to be enlarged.
But even that is not the most inspiring thing.
Here at Detroit you see in its most highly developed state the thing that makes America tick – men who understand the magic of the machine and who can make it goosestep as nobody else can. They are a special tribe who have gathered here and flowered to the point of genius, like the violin-makers of old Cremona. In other things, they are ordinary people like the rest of us. But if something is to be made by machines, then they are off in a world of their own where their imaginations soar – but always hitched to the know-how.
Auto plants speed gun production
The Army asked one auto company to make a certain gun. The production executives were advised to study the methods in a Government arsenal. At the arsenal, the Army officer in charge explained that gunmaking was a special art. He proudly told the auto makers that it required 400 man-hours to put one of those guns together. Each piece had to be fitted and fitted by hand. Ten men working a 40-hour week were necessary to assemble the gun.
The auto executives said if they couldn’t beat that the war would pe lost. They applied machine-precision methods SO that the parts of the gun would need no filing to fit. Parts were interchangeable – you could bring the parts up in bins and put the guns together without any last-minute filing down. This company is assembling guns in 15 minutes instead of in 400 man-hours. That’s what I mean by making the machine goosestep.
Now all of this know-how is at war work. The auto industry has been scrapped. Literally it does not exist. Most of the assembly lines already have been torn down. Within two weeks there will not be left in Detroit the assembly lines with which to make a single auto.
Incidentally there is some question whether the Government should not retain a standby plant. But that is the Government’s problem.
The auto men do not consider themselves in the motor-car business now. They used to be, but there isn’t any such thing now – not even the factories are left. Where autos last week were coming off a line at the rate of one every minute, new machines are going into place. Old ones are being changed around so that you couldn’t make a car there if you wanted to. An industry 35 years in building has literally been scrapped overnight. Special machines are being greased and stored out in the weather in some cases, perhaps never to be used again.
Entire industry enters war work
Whatever later complications are to come out of that, the main fact now is that all of the executive skill, the technical skill, the labor, most of the floor space and a considerable number of the machines are going into war work.
Chrysler is under orders to produce tanks at 10 times the rate originally ordered. In dollar volume Chrysler will, at its peak, be turning out twice as much as it ever did in its best auto year. General Motors is under about the same load. Ford will be making a bomber an hour, in time. Ford’s war work will require 200,000 men instead of 100,000 as at the peak of its auto business. An industry far bigger than America has ever seen is being built on the ruins of the auto industry.
Competition between the big companies has been suspended. It is no longer a question of going after business. Each has more than it may be able to produce. Competitors are now pooling ideas of production short-cuts in a giant war production cartel, with orders, priorities and raw materials controlled by the Government.
There may be some guilty consciences because this was not begun sooner. If so, that will only spur the determination now to do this job in time to win the war. As one executive said, “This is the test of free enterprise, whether we do the job that has been put up to us.” They know they can’t afford to fail.
Maj. Williams: Caught short!
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
With aircraft production our worst and most vital pressing need, a check over the personnel assigned to the War Production Board, headed by Donald Nelson, discloses not one name of the many experienced and competent aircraft production experts available for such critical duty.
Everybody to date has fumbled and fiddled with this aircraft production business. Why not, therefore, try a man like Rube Fleet, the aircraft production genius who organized and built the great Consolidated Aircraft Corporation? Fleet is the smartest, most alert, and most competent aircraft production executive in this country. His long, previous experience as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps about 10 years ago fits him on all counts for the job.
When the list of names for the War Production Board was published, the omission of an aircraft production expert’s designation was called to White House Secretary Early’s attention. The answer was that such an expert would probably be appointed as one of the “umpires” (whatever they are).
The significant angle in this entire instance is that the powers that be never seem to originate any thinking on their own part as to the extreme necessity for providing aircraft, air forces and airpower – first, last, and all the time. Until this happens we’ll get it as we have gotten it in the past – as an auxiliary consideration and subordinate to the older arms, such as infantry and warships, which can’t win this war against the Japs.
Leaders caught short
The British Empire is bigger (territorially) than it was before this war began. It is the greatest empire in this world. The United States of America is the greatest, most enterprising, and wealthiest nation on earth. The greatness, the wealth and world-embracing powers of these two nations and congregation of nations, didn’t just happen. It’s true that neither the British Empire nor the United States gained all this wealth, greatness, and power during the past 10 years (and we might as well include the French Empire). But surely there must be men in all these nations who are realists, men with vision and great brains. How it is possible that they were caught short on this airpower business?
These brains and nations scoffed at the idea of airpower bossing this or any other war – before it started—even though they knew the Axis gang, a broke outfit, had cast almost all its blue chips on this strange and almost romantic weapon that roams the skies and strikes from the “vertical flank.” But let that all go. It’s water over the dam. It makes no difference what the Allied staffs thought – no matter what the brains of these great allied nations ranged against the Axis gang thought – before the war began and for shortly after it had begun. That’s water over the dam, too.
The records stand
The historical record of what airpower has done in this war – the record of its having smashed every army. every sea fleet and every fortification – are factual. The air invasion of Norway, the capture of Crete from land forces in the teeth of the British fleet, the air attack on Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, the Japanese dominance of the air over the Philippine combat zone, the air sinking of the “Prince of Wales” and the “Repulse,” the air attack crippling the “Bismarck,” the air dominance of the Japs in Malaya and the Far East – giving the Japs an ever-increasing edge in that zone of combat, the air attacks against England which crippled the production facilities of that Island so badly that the Lend-Lease had to be provided, and the British naval bases rendered useless by air bombardment. All these are in the historical record of this war.
Forts, armies, warships – all the old-style war machinery – have been overcome by airpower and none has been successfully defended to complete preservation or full efficiency. This all water over the dam, too, and only valuable as it reveals today’s capacity of airpower.
Yet there are still little firmly-entrenched bands of men who grew to greatness of reputation on the old machinery of war – such as armies and warship fleets – who adamantly refuse to evaluate these blinding historical records and who likewise refuse to make any organizational changes to meet the daily growing threats and fierce potentialities of airpower.
Axis aliens warned of severe penalties
WASHINGTON (UP) – Attorney General Francis Biddle last night warned Japanese, German and Italian aliens this government will be firm in its insistence that they comply with war regulations and that severe penalties will be meted out to violators.
Mr. Biddle, in a nationwide broadcast, explained the re-registration program which begins today for the purpose of identifying all enemy aliens over 14 years of age now living in this country.
Emphasizing that the identification program was for the protection of the enemy alien as well as the national security, Mr. Biddle said, “that same government which has seen to it that he (the alien) is not persecuted in this country will be just as firm in its insistence upon strict compliance on his part. Alien enemies who fail to apply for their identification certificates face severe penalties. One penalty will be internment for the duration of the war.”