I DARE SAY —
Parrygraphs
By Florence Fisher Parry
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On the home front –
Air cadets awaiting call receive free mail rights
Postmaster explains men who draw pay from U.S. on enlistment come under ruling
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Simms says –
U.S. reluctant to use force in Martinique
Prefers assurances that island won’t be turned over to Axis
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Burma border battle rages
Reinforced Japs attack Chinese positions
By Robert P. Martin, United Press staff writer
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Ever hear of the ‘grit girl’? She’s our wartime female!
Mary Astor says this new type has taken the place of he ‘glamor gal’
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Background of news –
Invasion of Europe
By Editorial Research Reports
Demands in England that the Allies open a land offensive somewhere in Western Europe, to relieve the strain on Russia of Germany’s spring offensive in the East, were heightened by hints given in Hitler’s address to the Reichstag of troubles on the military and home fronts and by reports of internal unrest in Italy. Hopes were raised that if the Nazis were forced to fight on a second front, victory in Europe in 1942 might be within the grasp of the United Nations.
At the same time, warnings were uttered that the Axis might be trying to tempt the Allies into premature action and leaders in the United States and Britain cautioned that an offensive must not be undertaken until sufficient force had been mobilized.
Lord Beaverbrook, ardent proponent of an early attempt at invasion of the Continent, has declared that Britain is now well equipped in weapons of war to direct an attack upon Germany. While it is agreed on all sides that the current shipping shortage is the principal restraining factor, advocates of invasion contend that that situation may be no better next year, and that it is imperative to strike now while the situation on the Russian front is still favorable.
Meanwhile, whatever the decision on a land offensive, U.S. officials have promised early American participation in the current heavy air offensive in Western Europe. “The British and presently the American bombing offensive against Germany,” Winston Churchill said Sunday, “will be one of the principal features in this year’s World War.” Mr. Churchill referred to the demands for a new front in Europe and praised the aggressive spirit demonstrated by those demands. “Naturally,” he pointed out, “I shall not disclose what our intentions are.”
Specuation as to the direction of an Allied invasion attempt has named France, Norway, and even Italy as possible points of attack. The air superiority vital to success of any such attempt could most easily be afforded on the Channel coast, within range of British-based fighter planes. On the other hand, that is believed to be the most heavily fortified coastal region, and the air, rail, and road facilities there would permit rapid concentration of defending forces. A successful invasion of Norway would have the advantage of enabling the Allies to safeguard more adequately the northern supply route to Russia and possibly to send troops overland to fight their way through Finland to join the Russians. It has been argued in behalf of a Mediterranean offensive that the war-weary Italians would offer little resistance to an invading force.
In planning for an offensive in Europe, the Allies hold the advantage of the initiative and can count on some measure of aid from the subjugated peoples whom it would be their mission to liberate. At the same time, the task of landing large armies and huge quantities of heavy equipment presents difficult problems. Japan has demonstrated in the Southwest Pacific that such operations are by no means impossible, but also that they require enormous amounts of shipping and demand maintenance of naval and air superiority.
During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, two British expeditions which sought to invade the Continent through the Low Countries met disaster. In 1808, however, when Napoleon had overcome all of Britain’s continental allies and occupied a position of dominance comparable to that of Hitler today, England took advantage of revolt in Spain to gain a foothold in the peninsula.
400,000 exist, die in Warsaw ghetto misery
Conditions under heel of Nazis almost beyond description
By David M. Nichol
WASHINGTON – Behind the 10-foot walls of Warsaw’s ghetto are 400,000 persons, living in conditions of poverty and misery that make description almost impossible.
Authentic accounts of the occurrences behind those formidable barriers, with their 10 gates that close at 9 o’clock each night, are few, but the publication, “Poland Fights,” undertakes to tell something of these facts in the basis of an account by persons who, it says, were able to visit the Ghetto several times last winter.
Sacredness of death lost
According to the account, there is the sharpest dividing line between the rich and the poor. A few still have sufficient means to buy the modest necessities, but the rest live and die in horror.
“Even the sacredness of death is lost in the ghetto,” the account says. “A funeral must be paid for, and few families possess the means. Misery overcomes piety, and the dead are simply put into the streets at night. Later Jewish police carry away the corpses to be buried free of cost by the Jewish community.”
Another account in the same publication says that 7,000 Jews died in Warsaw last September compared with 306 for the same month in 1938. Most, it indicated, were victims of the dreaded typhus. Among the Polish population there were 2,160 deaths last September compared with about 800 three years earlier.
Water among luxuries
One luxury commodity of the ghetto, the publication says, is drinking water, sold by the glass by vendors, who carry it in buckets through the streets. Congestion is so bad even those with resources now buy a floor or a portion of a building instead of a home.
There are only 25 street cars left in the area, none marked with other than the David star and all of them drawn by horses, the account says.
Nazi claims that the ghetto is ruled by its own administration are a mockery, the publication declares. The groups’ only function, it insists, is buying food for the ghetto from the Germans and taking what blame there is when it cannot be provided.
U.S. subs blast Jap lifelines
65 ships sunk, damaged since war began
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We, the Women
By Ruth Millett
She wouldn’t want her name used and, if it were, it would only be a name. You wouldn’t know her. For she is just Mrs. Somebody who lives in one of the thousands of American small towns built around a square, and the democratic, small-town way of life.
In one of her lace-curtained front room windows is a service flag – for she has one son already in the service. Another son will be in soon.
Bill, the boy who’s in, is the older child and therefore has a special place in his mother’s heart (if the use of a hackneyed phrase will be forgiven).
His mother cried when he left home, as mothers have always cried when their sons went off to war – and always will. But in a few minutes she started thinking of his Dad, instead of Bill or of herself, and she wiped away the tears and made up her mind there would be no more of them.
Her home had always been happy – and it was going to be happy still. Seeing to that was her job.
So nothing much is changed around Bill’s home. Bill’s family members still have their fun, their family jokes, their amusements. They talk about Bill a lot – but it is proud talk. He’s doing fine in the army and that’s something to make a family proud of a boy.
He is proving that he can get along in a man’s world, can carry his load in a hard, dangerous, undertaking, can subordinate his private plans, his private ambitions, to his country’s need.
His mother is glad for that – glad that the little boy she scrubbed and spanked and later sacrificed for to educate, is a man of whom she can be proud.
Until he comes home there will be fear and loneliness for her – but both will be well hidden – even from her family.
That’s part of the job of being a mother in wartime and she, like thousands of other mothers, will do it well.
She’s the one you think of on Mother’s Day – the one whose home you hope will always be protected.
First AEF officer marries Irish girl
BELFAST (UP) – The first wedding between an officer of the American Expeditionary Force in Northern Ireland and an Irish girl was performed at St. Peter’s Procathedral yesterday when Lt. J. W. Haywood-Harman, 27, of the U.S. Medical Corps, married Dr. Attracta McHale, 27, pretty brunet of Monkstown, County Dublin.
Lt. Haywood-Harman of Newport, R.I., met Miss McHale nine years ago when both were studying at University College, Dublin. They had seen each other at intervals since that time and decided on marriage when Lt. Haywood-Harman arrived with the AEF.
Miss McHale wanted to be married in her Dublin home but Army regulations, which prohibit U.S. soldiers from visiting Eire made this impossible.
AT&T earnings decline to $43,525,412 in March
WASHINGTON (UP) – The American Telephone & Telegraph Co. had a net income in March of $43,525,412, against $45,200,889 in the same month last year, a report to the Federal Communications Commission disclosed today.
First quarter net income amounted to $46,983,321, against $47,470,877 in the initial three months last year.
They plot in ‘paradise’ –
Enemy diplomats live in real luxury in world’s swankiest internment camp
But they fight among selves as Nazis hate Italians and Japanese
By David Charnay and William Wallace (as told to Warren Hall)
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U.S. War Department (May 13, 1942)
General MacArthur’s Headquarters No. 26
Northeast sector.
Weather conditions limited air activity throughout the area.
There was only routine activity in other areas.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 13, 1942)
Bodies of 56 recovered in mine tragedy
70 others escape blast near Morgantown at change of shifts
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Setting a bad example –
Congressmen hop on bandwagon for unlimited gasoline
220 scramble for ‘X’ cards for office and pleasure driving – also take 3-gallon limit for little woman’s car – all but 80 change ratings later
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
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