On Bataan front –
MacArthur’s gallant fight nearing end
20,000 men to evacuate to Corregidor soon for long siege
By Everett R. Holles, United Press staff writer
Washington, Feb. 11 –
The men of General Douglas MacArthur, battered and weary but covered with glory, today neared the end of a valiant, 65-day struggle in defense of the Philippine island of Luzon.
In the “foxholes” of Bataan Peninsula, they fought with their backs to the wall against Jap divisions overwhelmingly superior in numbers.
Today is Japan’s national holiday, called Foundation Day, and it was believed that the Jap forces might go all-out against General MacArthur in hopes of obtaining a “victory gift” for their emperor.
Japs double size of forces
…
Admiral Hart quits in Indies
Ill health blamed; Dutch officer takes over
Washington, Feb. 11 (UP) –
The Navy announced today that U.S. Admiral Thomas C. Hart has been relieved at his request from command of the combined naval forces of the United Nations in the Far East. Vice Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich of the Royal Netherlands Navy has been named acting commander.
The Navy’s announcement of the change in command follows:
In view of Admiral Hart’s request to be relieved because of ill health, Vice Admiral Helfrich, Royal Netherlands Navy, has been designated as acting commander of combined naval forces, ABDA [American-British-Dutch-Australian] area.
But Hart won’t retire
It was explained that this did not mean that Admiral Hart, who is 64, is retiring from the naval service.
The senior American Admiral now in the Far East is Vice Admiral William A. Glassford Jr., commander of the U.S. Naval Forces, Southwest Pacific. These forces formerly constituted the U.S. Asiatic Fleet and were under Admiral Hart’s command until he became the supreme commander of all the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific.
Admiral Glassford will operate under Vice Admiral Helfrich. Admiral Helfrich is also the supreme commander of the Netherlands Indies Navy.
Only on last Saturday, the Navy formally announced that Admiral Hart had been named commander of the combined naval forces in the ABDA area.
Helfrich born in Java
Actually he had been exercising this command for some weeks – ever since President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill set up the supreme command in the Southwest Pacific area with British General Sir Archibald P. Wavell at the top and Admiral Hart the combined naval commander under General Wavell.
Little is known here about Vice…
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. – There is one trouble with learning to ski, as far as writing about it is concerned. That’s the fact that your mood changes so often.
When I came up here I thought I’d just clown through the whole thing, make only a halfhearted attempt at skiing, and try to be funny about it in the column.
But gee, when you get out there and are face to face with it, grappling for your balance, it isn’t funny at all. You get very serious about it, and all of a sudden.
After that you go through a whole cycle of determination, elation and disgust. After you’ve been doing fairly well for a couple of days, the beginner usually has a bad relapse. Everything goes wrong. You’re worse than the first day. Also, you hurt all over.
Right there’s the critical time. A great gloomy disinterest in skiing comes over you. You get cynical. Most people of my character quit right there.
That’s where I was this morning. It was my last day here. When I awakened I was in pain from head to foot. The bruised end of my spine had kept me awake half the night. I couldn’t get my shoes on for about five minutes. And it was storming outside.
“I’ve had enough,” I said. “I can’t learn to ski anyway, so why torture myself this last day? I’ll just lounge around.”
Olaf says it’s O.K.
And so I didn’t even put on my ski clothes. When my friends arrived from Portland at noon, they found me sitting before the fireplace. Sitting on one side too, I might add.
“How do you like skiing?” they shouted.
“I think it is asinine,” I said. “You go ahead and ski, and I’ll be packed and ready when you come in.”
“Oh no,” they said, “you’re going up the ski lift with us and ski down the Magic Mile.”
“Me ski down the Magic Mile?” I said. “Don’t be insane. It would be suicide. I couldn’t ski down the Magic Mile if I practiced for two years.”
But they went out and asked Olaf, and he said it would be all right. Then they had me. I couldn’t refuse without being a plain coward.
When I saw there was no way out, I hunted up my novice skiing companion, Maureen Jackman, and asked her to go along. I needed company in my misery. She was a little startled too, but said if I was going to be a fool she guessed she would too.
The four of us rode the lift to the top. It was storming again. We clop-clopped up the little slope back of the shelter house, and stood for a minute before starting the awful descent. The wind blew and the hard snow bit into our faces.
One of our friends took off. Then the other. Then my new girl friend. That left me all alone. Again came that terrible panicky feeling. But I gave a shove. My last bridge was burned.
I guess that first straight run must have been 50 yards, and at the bottom you either had to turn or smack into a hillside. So do you know what I did? I turned! And me a guy who can’t make turns.
I found my friends waiting for me over the brow of the next slope. I skied down to them. “You look fine,” they said. “You’re doing dandy.” I began to feel a sort of pride.
We worked down the mountain slowly. A racing skier can make the Magic Mile in a minute and a half. But we took an hour, and probably covered three miles.
Finally hits his stride
We stopped frequently, for our legs got tired holding on the brakes. Then our two more experienced friends would show us what they knew about certain turns, and we’d practice a little on some gentle slope. The afternoon fled by, and living became fun again.
The snow was so thick we could see only a hundred feet ahead. We were covered with snow, The day was miserable, but we were not cold, rather we were warm and elated. Even my muscles forgot to hurt.
Suddenly we looked at our watches, and saw it was almost time to leave for Portland. The veteran of our party said it was still half a mile to the bottom.
“Let’s be off,” he said.
And with that he dug in his ski-poles, gave himself a push, and shot straight down the mountain. We had to follow to keep him in sight.
It was that last half mile which finally made a rabid, raving ski enthusiast cut of me. For I personally skied that last half mile without stopping and without falling down; skied all the turns, and made them with passable grace; hurdled small ice ridges without losing my balance; finally felt the magnificent rush and rhythm of the thing.
When we wound up with a snow-swirling flourish at the bottom, I felt an elation I hadn’t known in years. I had done something that was impossible for me to do, and done it fairly well.
The wind and the speed and the rhythm of the skis had finally got into my blood. For the first time in years I loved being out in the snow. I wanted to ski forever.
We dashed up to your rooms to change clothes. My friends finished dressing and waited for me in the lounge. I didn’t appear and finally they came to my room.
They found me on the floor, fainted dead away. In my hand was clutched a folder which I’d picked up while dressing. It described the various ski runs at Timberline. And under the heading “Magic Mile” was the following message:
“A 20 per cent grade. For intermediate and expert skiers only!”
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
CHICAGO – For all the gentle sweetness of my nature and my prose, I have been accused of rudeness to Mrs. Roosevelt when I only said she was impudent, presumptuous and conspiratorial, and that her withdrawal from public life at this time would be a fine public service.
That is just an opinion, and there may be other opinions on the subject, but I maintain that it is expressed in chaste and gentlemanly language and with no more vigor than most of us are used to in our discussion of controversial subjects.
This lady is a meddler in many matters which are very improper business for the wife of the President of the United States – a status which is constantly invoked for her lest her activities be objectively discussed as those of an ordinary citizen.
Reds wanted to use her position
Long ago, Mrs. Roosevelt meddled in the Newspaper Guild, which was a Communist organization. Absolutely eligible even on the pretext of her public diary, which is not her principal occupation, Mrs. Roosevelt nevertheless accepted membership to which she was not entitled and immediately became the political foe of all those American newspapermen and women who knew the character of the Guild, detested and resisted the dirty work of tireless Muscovites and bravely suffered its heartless persecutions.
She was granted membership because she was the President’s wife and for no other reason, which meant that the Communists wanted to make use of her position. Thus the victims of the plot could not but feel the highest office in their own country, the Presidency, was permitted to be used against them in the interests of men and women whose mission was not to improve the lot of reporters but to establish the Soviet system of government here, and they were absolutely night.
Legally, Mrs. Roosevelt, even as the wife of the President, has no more authority than any other citizen of the republic. She is on a common footing with Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mrs. George Spelvin, but we always treat our Madame President with a special respect because the office of her husband, which she partakes of, is the highest temporal authority in our country.
But when our First Lady commercializes that respect for profit and in competition with the rest of the people – by her association with persons who associate with enemies of the American system – antagonizes the people, it is she, not her critics, who fails in respect for the office.
Mrs. Roosevelt’s quiet salting around of her personal friends in the Government employ is no new thing. The Dies Committee has known of this for a long time and has muttered about it, but the Dies Committee lives under a political sword and has had to speak softly lest Mrs. Roosevelt exert her influence to starve it of money with which to continue its work. Mrs. Roosevelt has openly used her office against this committee of the U.S. Congress.
Guilty of imposition and effrontery
Mrs. Roosevelt has absolutely no right to appoint anyone to any public position but now it comes out that she has named one actor, one eurythmicist, or dancer, and one secretary from her private payroll to paid jobs in the Office of Civilian Defense, and one professional youth-mugg to an unpaid position in the same important department.
The youth, incidentally, formerly was a fair-haired boy of the Communist front, married a young campus cutie who had been infected with the Moscow principles and celebrated her marriage with a piece in a Muscovite paper entitled “My Father Was a Liar,” was divorced, and now, at the age of 32, is held up to the American people, by Mrs. Roosevelt, as a person fit for leadership of American youth. He, also, is on Mrs. Roosevelt’s private payroll, the money for which is derived from the commercialization of the presidential office.
One day in London, during the last war, one of the tabloids came out with a shocking scandal exposing the fact that “petticoat government” had been established in Whitehall and specifically in the war office, whereby certain favorites of an influential lady were planted in safe and cushy jobs in blighty. Winston Churchill would remember it well for the lady was a relative of his. The British reacted calmly, the lady’s ears were slapped down and Britain got into the war.
Still scrupulously avoiding impoliteness, I insist that Mrs. Roosevelt’s activities have been not helpful but, on the whole, very harmful, that she has been guilty of imposition and effrontery that, for all her pleadings against discrimination for creed and color, has herself actively encouraged cruel discrimination against Americans refusing to join unions, wherefore she should retire.
Clapper: A turning point
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – This is one of those moments of awful disaster that make your stomach sink. But it is a moment, also, when a nation must think hard, and make new determinations.
Singapore is going. It may be gone by the time this dispatch is in print. Defenders of Singapore have now put their fate in the hands of God.
Now Japan is entrenching in this vital spot, 2900 miles from Yokohama. From that advance base, she can follow up her new conquest over the whole Southwest Asiatic area. It is as if we had taken England and from there were ready to swallow up the continent of Europe. Japan’s long dream of empire is on the way to coming true, now. It will, if she is allowed to hold.
The position of the United Nations in the Pacific is desperate. They are all but driven back now to Hawaii. And they will be if Japan is able to follow up Singapore and take Australia and the Dutch East Indies, which already are beginning to feel the concussions. India is in danger. China is close to being bottled up. If Japan should succeed in finishing up what she has begun with such rushing success, the whole nature of the world is bound to be changed.
U.S. would have to be armed camp
The United States and Great Britain between them have maintained a world-wide system through control of a globe-circling belt of strategic points. Panama, Gibraltar, Suez and Singapore are the gates through which commerce passes from one ocean into the next ocean. Whoever controls them dominates the world-wide flow of human activity. We haven’t been very conscious of that because our side always has controlled them.
Now the gate between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean is being taken over by Japan. Gibraltar and Suez are reported from London to be next on the Nazi list. Panama alone is still unmenaced. President Roosevelt says we are the targets of a world encirclement. If it should succeed, if the other side should break through, and hold, we could then live in that world only by always remaining an armed camp, on the alert – as we were not in Hawaii – for the dawn attack that might come any time at any point on the Western. Hemisphere.
America will never accept such a fate.
Lincoln had to make his decision. It was that just one thing counted. The Union must be preserved. His country was beset by confusing considerations. Some wanted peace at any price. Some wanted to let the South go and set up its own nation. Some on the Pacific Coast wanted a western nation of their own. There was the agony of war between brother and brother. Lincoln knew that all questions were minor beside the one question of whether America should remain a nation, free to work out its destiny. Never once did he waver, not even in the most bitter hours of defeat before the turn at Gettysburg. He was beset by appeasers, compromisers and designing politicians within his own circle. He was gnawed by the suffering of his people. Still the Union must be saved. There was Lincoln’s greatness. That conviction was his gift to this nation.
United Nations need each other now
Tomorrow, when the loss of Singapore hits home, we shall be beset with similar confusions. We shall be told that lend-lease was a mistake, that none of this would have happened if we had followed some other policy. We shall be told that we have wasted our materials on other nations instead of hoarding them here. We shall be told that Russia is only waiting to run out on us, and that the British are not trying very hard to win the war. We shall be fed with many other brands of poisonous propaganda, sometimes by people who don’t know it is poison and sometimes by people who know all too well that it is poison.
We are already hearing the “I told you so” line from the cunning Wheeler. But what he was telling us, if I remember correctly, was that it was silly to think anybody was going to attack us and that Roosevelt was just trying to scare up a war.
The United Nations all need each other desperately now, for better or for worse. We must depend upon others to get time for us. If they can get us the time, we shall build the strength to achieve the victory that must come before we can rest. America can accept no other outcome.
Maj. Williams: Destiny beckons
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
The reluctance of people to accept aviation at anything like its face value, even after it has upset this entire war, is easily understood when one realizes that for thousands of years only the most gifted imaginations of the ancients were able to draw dream pictures of human travel above the horizons. Only the most gifted and talented minds of the past were capable of this extension of fantasy into poems, romances, operas and mythology, while all the others crystallized all their incredibility into slogans such as, “Why he can’t do this or that any more than he can fly”!
The Wright brothers flew the first plane 38 years ago. Therefore, the past 38 years has been the demonstration period of aviation – 38 years against thousands of years of fact, instinct and tradition, proving conclusively that man had not risen above the water or the land on anything approaching the design of a bird’s wings.
There were only 12 apostles to spread Christianity in a world of limited population, and there have only been a few thousand true apostles for the air age ahead in a present-day world population of billions of humans.
Acceptance is slow
The acceptance of aviation has been painfully slow. It is a wonder of wonders that any kind of aviation – military or commercial – could progress as far as it has in a world of billions of people whose leaders, political, military, naval, financial and commercial, were all destined to lose wealth, prestige – military, naval, and political – if their non-flying world’s routine was upset and shaken to its very foundations. Such is the basic reason why those men charged with the preservation of the British Empire, the world position and safety of the United States, and the winning of this war, couldn’t cut loose from the old system upon which they achieved their positions of power, couldn’t see the airpower war, and still seem to be hoping that airpower is still only a bad dream.
Some day school children will be reading the history of the age in which we are now living. They will be examined and questioned as to the dates and the facts of Pearl Harbor and of this war – which we read as current events in our newspapers.
Viewed in its historical aspects our entire age, from the flight of the Wright brothers past this war and for many years ahead, looks like a faint, white line marking the beginning of the Human Air Age.
Leaders without vision!
It was no great task of mind or vision to estimate that airplanes could veritably destroy cities, armies and sink warships of any size. Such potentialities were clearly demonstrated over 20 years ago. All we have in this war today are more of the same basic type bombers, fighters and flying boats. Present-day planes are indeed possessed of superior performances and flight ranges, neither of which was unforeseen. Bombs sunk warships 20 years ago. Warships are built to withstand the bombs that sank those old warships and modern bombers merely hoisted bigger bombers under their wings and did the same job over again. But we failed to produce the leaders, the men who had the power – financial and otherwise – to see this picture and understand that such things were going to happen.
Victory in this war will belong to the strongest, the swiftest, and mostly wings. Destiny has beckoned and is now about to call for a showdown of card.