New York –
Col. Elmer G. Lindroth, senior aide-de-camp of Lt. Gen. Hugh A. Drum, died Wednesday night at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, after a long illness. The funeral and burial will be at Rockford, Illinois, Saturday.
Los Angeles, California –
Presence of an “unidentified target,” later identified as friendly, caused a 62-minute radio silence in the Los Angeles-San Diego area today.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 11, 1942)
By Ernie Pyle
LONDON – This is to be a column about eggs. Or rather, a column about no eggs.
In Britain, the egg has become a symbol of the rainbow’s end. You see eggs only in your mind’s eye, through a lovely dream into the Utopian future. Blessed be the egg, for it existeth not.
The Ministry of Food warns of new shortages, saying that in the months to come eggs will be even scarcer. That has puzzled me a great deal, for how can you go below zero on scarcity? When there already ain’t nothin’ of something, how can there be less of it in the future?
One night I sat in on a little program where American soldiers were recording messages home to their families, to be broadcast later in America from discs.
They came to an air mechanic named Russ Redavice, from Chicago. Russ is quite a wit.
“Fried chicken?” asked the announcer.
“Sure!” said Russ. “Only they call it fish and chips over here. I’ve eaten so much fish I’m starting to grow gills.”
“What do you have for breakfast?” the announcer asked.
Russ rubbed his hands. “Bacon and eggs, every morning!” Russ said.
“Eggs?” the announcer asked, astounded.
“Sure!” said Russ. “I get ‘em by mental telepathy.”
There is a certain high Army officer over here who is head of the Army’s procurement division. It is his job to buy Army supplies in astronomical figures. Before the war, he had been head purchasing agent for the A. & P. stores for 15 years.
Egg-buyer asks just one to eat
In his time, he has spent millions of dollars on food. He has probably bought a hundred million eggs in his day. But the other morning, a friend of mine ran across him in the lobby of a hotel, looking glum and dark.
“What’s the matter?” asked my friend. “You look down in the mouth this morning.”
“Aw, it’s these damn breakfasts,” the officer said. “I’d give my right arm for an egg, but I don’t know how to get one.”
My friend was touched. He himself is a man of considerable reconnoitering ability. I don’t know how he did it, and wouldn’t dare ask. But he went on a scouting expedition and next morning the man who had bought eggs by the trainload, but couldn’t get one for himself, had eggs for breakfast.
One American government employee arrived here recently under peculiar circumstances. He had an extremely convalescent stomach and was on an uncompromising diet of milk and eggs. Nothing else at all – just milk and eggs.
Immediately upon arrival, he went to his hotel manager, explained his peculiar state of health produced hospital certificates to prove it, and sat down to await his eggs.
What’re the hens doing, anyway?
Three days later, the hotel manager came to him, rubbing his hands and beaming. It was all arranged. The Ministry of Food had been appraised of the dilemma, had thoroughly investigated, and had issued papers entitling our ailing hero to an almost limitless amount of eggs.
The hotel manager was beside himself at the enormity of his accomplishment. But, as he was bowing himself out, he finally remembered the little anti-climax which no doubt he had been concealing even from himself all this time. He had no eggs!
He had the government’s permission, but he had no eggs. He had none now, hadn’t had any for some time, had no expectations of getting any!
I haven’t inquired lately into the health of our frail friend, but I presume he is dead by now, so we will just let it go.
There must be eggs somewhere in Britain, for there are still millions of hens left in the country. It is all a great mystery to me. Possibly the hens are laying golden eggs and hiding them under haystacks.
Your ration card entitles you to one egg a week. But that is pure hypothesis, flying in the face of cold hard fact. Hotels have been taking up my egg coupons now for weeks, but I have yet to see an egg.
I hope you folks at home will begin appreciating the egg while there is yet time. The egg is a magnificent institution. I love the egg. Personally, if I ever see another fried egg, I’m going to kiss it instead of eat it.
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – It would be good for our nerves to face the fact that whenever our country gets into some terribly dangerous jam the National Government grabs more power than the Constitution really allows and that the people instinctively permit this to be done for their own safety.
It would be silly to maintain that we are living under our Constitution today, or that the American form of government is still operating, and we would be in an awful fix if such were the case, because it would be impossible to fix prices or wages or censor military information out of the papers. If we were to hold out for the strict letter of every one of our rights, we would be pretty sure to lose all to Adolf Hitler and the Japs by losing
We suspended some of our rights in the first German World War and got them back soon afterward. In 1933, whether or not with sufficient reason, we got afraid of ourselves, afraid we were on the point of going nuts and demolishing our own house, and were willing to place in the hands of a new and plausible, but untried, set of national leaders, who were comparative strangers to us, powers of government which normally were reserved to the states and other subdivisions and the people.
That crisis may have been exaggerated but, anyway, it worked and we got into an easy habit of expecting Washington to mow the lawn, wind the clock ad change the baby. The states became parasites on the National Government and masters of the mendicant art of moocher and even fell to preying on one another through a tangle of Balkan taxes on interstate commerce.
War provides new fright
We were still in that weak frame of mind when this new fright, the war, blew up and it was easy to go the rest of the way, giving the executive branch of the National Government powers over us equal to its tremendous responsibility to us.
If this National Government should lose this war for us, we would be pretty sore at all concerned, from President Roosevelt on down, but we are sensible enough to understand that in order to run the fight with the least possible interference, the government must be able to give orders in matters in which normally it would be presumptuous of the government even to make requests.
You find this acquiescence even in men who are red-hot anti-New Dealers. I have in mind the remarks of one of those on the subject of the price and wage controls. He realized that this would blast the Constitution to confetti, but he said inflation would be worse and he was willing to go along, trusting to the people to reassert themselves after the victory.
What right has the National Government to step into a sovereign state of the union and tell a man who has built a dwelling house for a rental income property that he must not charge more than so much rent? Why pick on him? Why not tell a newspaper publisher how much he may charge for advertising space or single copies sold on the streets?
It isn’t right, but what else?
The answer is that it isn’t right to regulate any such prices, but that, nevertheless, the people are willing to stand for it wherever the government, charged with the duty of winning the war, decides that regulation is necessary in the interest of all.
Then, having exercised this power in some fields, the government finds that some wages are ‘way out of line and that inequalities of wages are drawing workers out of certain vital industries into others.
So now, whether by act of Congress or by a scheme, the details of which the President has not revealed, to be given the force of compulsion by executive order, wages will be controlled, too. In normal times, we would all yell slavery and Hitlerism and we would be dead right, but there you are again with your popular instinct to put the Constitution in mothballs for the duration and a bit.
Paul McNutt has frozen some mine and smelter men and some lumbermen to their jobs in the West and Southwest and, if this works, as it most probably will, he may be expected to do the same wherever it is necessary to keep the works going. That, too, is slavery and Hitlerism, but, up to now, I haven’t read a peep out of any union boss or anyone else.
I doubt that anyone likes this sort of doing, except our bolos and pinkos and those Administrationists who always did think the people needed managing, but I suppose you have noticed that those anti-Administration papers which were yelling for controls and a firm labor policy have had no criticism to offer on constitutional grounds of the ideas which the President has set forth in his two orations on Labor Day.
You can’t have controls and a decentralized, strictly constitutional government, too, but if you don’t have controls. Hitler stands a better chance to lick us and, licked or not, we surely would have inflation.
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – For a brutally frank, hard-hitting report, the job just turned out by the Baruch rubber committee will stand as a model for a long time. There doesn’t seem to be a punch-pulling line in it.
In view of what the Baruch committee reports, it is inconceivable that there can be any longer objection to nationwide gasoline rationing.
Action should have been taken long ago. Now the Baruch committee finds the existing situation so dangerous that unless corrective measures are taken immediately, this country will face both a military and civilian collapse. That should end the argument, and particularly should end the pressure against rationing which came from a group of senators and representatives.
To support its recommendation for nationwide gasoline rationing as a rubber saving measure, the Baruch committee reveals this critical information:
Stockpile of crude on hand July 1 – 578,000 tons.
Estimated imports to end of next year – 53,000 tons.
Total crude rubber supply to end of next year – 631,000 tons.
Estimated military and other essential demands for same period – 842,000 tons.
Deficit that must be met by synthetic production by end of next year – 211,000 tons.
Facts are better raw
There you are. Unless new supplies of natural or artificial rubber can be obtained in time, total military
That’s almost all word-for-word out of the Baruch report. It’s word-for-word because there’s no point in trying to throw in purple adjectives. The facts are better raw. As the Baruch committee says, it is either discomfort or defeat. There is no middle course.
This report also is a severe indictment of Washington bureaucracy. It is important as a case study in bureaucratic fumbling.
The Baruch committee finds us in our present jam with regard to rubber largely because of errors, procrastinations, indecisions, conflicts of authority, clashes of personalities, lack of understanding, early non-use of known alcohol processes, and failure to stockpile crude rubber when the chances were known to be good that Japan would make a drive to cut off our sources in the Far East. Those also are words mostly taken out of the Baruch report.
Real challenge to Washington
The Baruch committee finds it impossible to understand why our government did not request help from Russia in setting up a synthetic system. No satisfactory explanation could be found. Russia has been making synthetic for 10 years, and is the first or second largest producer in the world. Last February, Russia offered to exchange information with us. If we had acted then, plants for producing rubber by the Russian process might be well on the way to completion.
The Rubber Reserve Corp., one of the Jesse Jones subsidiaries, show up badly in the Baruch report. Only in July did the Rubber Reserve Corp. get an agreement with the four large rubber companies to give out their technical information. Then it took six weeks for the WPB rubber branch to get that information out of the Rubber Reserve Corp. so that it could pass it around for the information of the synthetic industry.
Furthermore, the bureaucracy has permitted essential materials to be used for non-essential purposes. There has been a lack of vigorous inventory and priorities control. Too much complacency was encountered. There has been some disposition to bow to the so-called impossible, instead of trying to overcome it.
That’s the record in this arsenal of bureaucracy as the Baruch committee finds it. Public sacrifices must be made now because of those mistakes. Can we expect something better from here on out? Something better in using Kaiser’s ability? Something better in using our limited manpower wisely?
That’s the real challenge the Baruch report puts up to Washington.
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
“About 80 degrees of temperature was the key to the still unexplained rapidity with which Tobruk was captured.”
Well, I’d better tell you the story the way it was told to me and permit you to draw your own deductions.
You all know that the Libyan desert is hot and sandy. Hot in Libya means hot, with the daytime temperature ranging up from 120 degrees.
Now just imagine yourself driving an ordinary luxurious American motor car across the desert – with all the windows closed tight. Just imagine yourself encased in the heavy plate steel which forms the bullet proof walls of an army tank. Ventilation is limited. The steel walls and roof become so hot you cannot hold your hand against them.
I know of nothing hotter than a metal airplane fuselage that’s been standing in the red-hot American summer sun for a few hours. But the airplane fuselage is made of aluminum, while the tank is made of steel.
Operations limited
The inside of the ordinary war tank in the Libyan desert was too much for humans and operations were of necessity limited to periods when Old King Sol was not getting in his hottest licks. All kinds of tricks were tried to shield the tanks during the hottest periods of the day so they would be liveable when the time came for operations. The best of these schemes brought little relief.
Then the Heinies got busy over drafting boards and in their laboratories. The result was fluid-driven tanks – air conditioned. It was done by using the heat from the engine exhaust. And as I was told – while the temperature within the ordinary tank sometimes ran up to about 180 degrees, this air conditioning kicked off about 80 degrees and made it possible to operate at any time of the day. Whether this story is true or not, the chap who told it to me was hot as hell because he tried to sell this idea to the Allies, but without result.
The greater part of the energy contained in a gallon of petroleum fuel is dumped overboard through the exhaust pipes. Just dumped overboard. And the function of dumping it overboard is a costly operation, costly in weighty equipment. When I first witnessed a demonstration of a refrigerator activated by a kerosene burner, my mind flew back to the aircraft engine, where one of our greatest problems was getting rid of the exhaust heat. The kerosene ice box is an insulated box equipped with a simple, lightweight mechanism and a fire burning in its bottom to make ice!
Costly process
To get rid of the heat in an aircraft engine, we religiously calculated each ounce of material through which the heat is to be dissipated. The job of getting rid of the heat hits us two ways: it’s costly in fuel wasted and in weighty materials carried to dissipate the heat.
Someday some ingenious human will utilize this exhaust heat and so regulate it as to control the temperature of an internal combustion engine from the instrument board of a plane or the dashboard of an auto by turning a dial as you tune a radio receiver. And someday we’ll have aircraft engines of such shape and form that they will need no overcoats (cowling). We put an overcoat around our aircraft engines so they will offer less resistance to the air. But the engine is hotter than it would be if it were exposed. So we worry our brains trying to devise cooling systems to make it cool.
Ways homeowner can save fuel and money this winter
By Dr. Morton Mott-Smith, Science Service staff writer
Fuel that heats your home could drive machinery of war. An overheated house this winter may result in one less gun or tank for our fighting men.
By patriotism or government order, every citizen will have to conserve all the fuel possible. Warnings re-echo back and forth across the nation clear from the eastern Atlantic states to the Pacific Northwest – shortages may develop, whether it be from war needs or lack of transportation.
Here are tips on how the home owner can put steam behind the victory drive by making more fuel available for war production.
Most houses are proverbially too hot and too dry in winter, except in the Southwest where the winters are wet. Less heat and more moisture would indeed be more healthy and it should not be difficult for us to economize fuel and accustom ourselves to a more healthful temperature.
The most modern heating apparatus does make provision for moistening the air. Where this is not supplied, shallow pans of water may be placed on stoves or radiators. This will help some but a boiling kettle is much better. Humid air at 65 degrees is more comfortable than dry air at 70.
In European countries, 60 degrees Fahrenheit is regarded as a comfortable winter temperature, as compared to the 68-72 degrees demanded here. This is partly due to the more humid climate abroad; but it is mostly due to the fact that Europeans have merely accustomed themselves to lower temperatures. Poorer classes get along with still less heat, or even with totally unheated rooms while the temperature may be freezing outside.
Lower temperature
Government officials say that we must accustom ourselves to a maximum of 65 degrees by day and 55 degrees by night. How can we do it? Let’s take a few tips from the Europeans.
There is a tradition in southern Europe that if the feet can be kept warm, the whole body will me warm. In railway carriages, often the only heat provided is by a long flattened metal cylinder filled with hot water and laid on the floor for your feet. You’d be surprised at the comfort it provides.
In a completely unheated room in Southern Europe, you come upon the lady of the house seated with a charcoal brazier under her feet and holding another, made of earthenware and shaped like a basket, in her lap to keep her hands warm – and looking quite contented. Of course she will have a shawl about her shoulders, and be wearing much warmer indoor clothing than has been the custom here.
Keep feet warm
This principle of keeping the feet warm is at last becoming recognized in the United States. Some builders recently have embedded steam pipes or electric cables in the floors.
A warm cellar will also keep the floor above warm. Many heating engineers regard any heat dissipated in the cellar as wasted and, by heavily insulating the furnace and all hot pipes, seek to prevent it. But this heat is not wasted if it doesn’t escape to the outside or become excessive.
Heat source near floor
Since hot air rises, all radiators, registers and auxiliary heaters should be kept as near the floor as possible. In addition it is helpful to provide baffles or deflectors above the registers or radiators to reflect the hot air or radiation downward. If a steam-heat radiator is against a wall, a sheet of metal between it and the wall will throw back the heat into the room.
The sheet may be backed by insulating material, for it is of no value to heat the wall, especially if it is an outer wall. The sheet should curve over the top of the radiator and slightly downward on the inside to direct the rising warm air downward.
Because of cheap and abundant fuel, our heating arrangements usually have not been named as efficient as they could be. Many homes are heat sieves especially wooden frame houses. It is as difficult to heat a porous house as to fill a sieve with water.
Less breeze
We like plenty of fresh air. We want open windows, especially at night. But the European home is tightly closed. Great felt blankets even stretch across windows that are never opened. How can people live, how can they sleep, in such stuffy rooms? They do – and thrive.
Although the sweeping gusts of wind from upflung windows may be desirable, physiologists tells us that much less ventilation is adequate as far as the life-giving oxygen supply is concerned.
Let’s forego the luxury of unlimited fresh air. Windows open only a crack at night, and closed most of the rest of the time! If the house must be aired, do it between two and four in the afternoon when the day is warmest.
Obviously, all leaks should be stopped as far as possible. This means weather stripping on all doors and windows, perhaps double windows, and pads on double-hung windows over the crack between the two sashes.
Heat escaping to the attic is the most important leak. The attic should be sealed airtight. A layer of heat insulating material spread over the ceiling on the top floor is also advisable, especially if there is no attic floor. You can buy the insulation in bags and spread it yourself.
Heat escapes
Insulation between the outside walls is helpful but not as necessary. Only 2 to 3 per cent of the heat escapes through plaster and wooden walls. Brick and stone houses are already well insulated.
Windows are the chief avenues of escape. Even closed, sealed windows lose much heat. Glass is a poor conductor of heat, but there is only ⅛ inch or less of it between the inside and the outside temperatures, as against 6 inches or more of walls.
Double windows and storm doors are thus worth several times their weight in fuel. But doubling the thickness of the glass has little effect. It is the layer of air between double windows that provides the insulation. For windows that will be seldom opened, the storm window may be a single sash fastened to the outside window frame, so it can be taken down in summer. Some persons use an inexpensive double window of cellophane to hold an insulating cushion of air.
Vestibule advisable
The storm door will be more effective if there is a little vestibule so that the outer door may be opened and closed before the inner door is opened. The vestibule can be made of wood and fastened to the house. In summer it is removed.
Such devices are standard equipment in the colder parts of the country. Their use could well be extended.
After the house has been made as nearly heat-tight as possible, let’s use the most economical and efficient methods of heat production.
Stoves, grates, burners, pipes and chimneys should be cleaned. Adjust oil burners carefully. A badly adjusted burner can waste much fuel oil or gas. Soot and ash on pipes reduces heat conduction. Worn-out and inefficient heaters should be replaced by new ones, if possible, or at least be repaired.
Unused rooms should be shut off, and the other rooms heated only while in use. As far as possible the family should live in one room.
Thermostatic control is recommended. If that is not installed, a few inexpensive thermometers may be scattered about – then watched. When the temperature is higher than necessary, turn off the heat.
Low night fires
At night, fires should be banked or burners turned down as low as possible. To bank a fire, it should first have been burning brightly for some time with drafts open until all the coals are glowing. Push the live coals to one side of the furnace. Then place the fresh coal in the depression on the opposite side. Drafts and damper are closed until there is only just enough air to keep the fire going.
In the morning, the drafts and dampers are opened wide and the house is soon heated. Two feedings per day should sate the appetite of a good coal furnace. If all the family go away for the day, the fire may again be banked. Putting on ashes to bank the fire is not recommended since this is likely to generate harmful gas. Regulation should be entirely by drafts and damper.
For the cold nights, put an extra blanket on the bed. If that isn’t enough, pile on blankets, coats or whatever else may be available. Socks and flannel pajamas may not be fashionable night attire but they’re surely warm.
Increased warmth may often be obtained by putting heavy paper or other insulation beneath the bed mattress rather than war-scarce wool blankets on top. Don’t think that living in a cold house will cause you to feel the cold less outdoors. Just the opposite. If you are already chilly when you start out, you will be really cold just that much sooner. So before going out, warm yourself well by getting close to the source of heat. It is also a good idea to warm your overcoat on the inside by hanging it in front of the fire.
Electric stoves as auxiliary heaters are an expensive way of producing heat, but the fact that they can deliver a small amount just where needed often makes it possible to dispense with a much larger amount from the main source. An electric stove under the feet will work wonders. But electricity is also one of the driving forces of the war industries and must be used sparingly.
Where wood is cheap and plentiful, the open fireplace is a useful auxiliary that saves other fuel and adds cheerfulness to the home. And, speaking of psychological effects, not how warm colors, bright yellows, oranges and red, add to the cheerfulness of drab winter days and give a feeling of warmth.
With spirits high and fuel saved, we’re helping to lick both old man winter and the Japs.
‘Four-day’ maneuvers take 29 hours with only 8 breakdowns
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Wickard says farmers are winning production battle over Axis
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Solomon Islands – (Aug. 8, delayed)
The five-man crew of a Japanese torpedo plane shot down today in a big air attack on U.S. warships in the Guadalcanal Channel preferred death to rescue by an American destroyer.
As the destroyer approached the crew, clinging to their plane in the water, one Jap brandished a pistol and fired several shots at the ship. Then he shot his four comrades and himself.
Völkischer Beobachter (September 12, 1942)
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The Pittsburgh Press (September 12, 1942)
Specific regulations will be sought on wages, farm products
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Dispatches from enemy countries are based on broadcasts from controlled radio stations and often contain false information broadcast for propaganda purposes. Bear this in mind in reading the following dispatch.
Berlin, Germany – (German broadcast recorded at New York)
The German radio today said that Japanese submarines “in the Tasman Sea” have sunk two American transports which were said to be carrying 4,000 troops. The Tasman Sea is between Australia and New Zealand.
The German broadcast asserted that an American battleship of the Tennessee class and a heavy cruiser were damaged by Jap dive bombers.
The broadcast did not specify where this action was supposed to have occurred.
The report said large fires and explosions were observed on the warships and that Jap reconnaissance planes saw the battleship listing heavily and proceeding at a greatly reduced speed.
There were two battleships in the California class, the Tennessee and the California. They have a displacement of 82,300 and 82,600 tons, respectively. Completed in 1919, they mount 12 14-inch guns and carry a normal complement of 1,480 officers and men.
