Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. – It would be hard to visualize, to a Floridan for instance, how deep the snow is up here. It’s even hard to believe it yourself.
For when we ski out through the trees to our practice slope, the snow is hard on top and you imagine it’s just a few inches deep, since it follows the contour of the ground.
Yet this snow we daily cross is more than six feet deep. And that’s shallower than the average depth. Usually it is 10 feet or more.
You stand beside what apparently is a small bush, not as high as your waist, and actually it is a tree much higher than your head. Most of it is down under the snow.
Often the second-story windows of the Lodge are covered up. Even now, the snow has to be pushed back from the dining room windows. And a great, heavy-beamed shed forms a tunnel from the parking grounds to the Lodge’s entrance door.
They keep the Lodge well heated. In fact when you come in from an afternoon’s skiing you are already so warm that the room usually seems too hot, and you open a window for a little while.
It gets down to zero up here. But during my visit it has been only a little below freezing. The sun has been bright and the far-off mountain panorama magnificent although you wouldn’t dare mention that in print on the day it happened, because of censorship.
Beginner tries it – once
If there are a few warmish days to melt the snow, and then cold nights to refreeze it, an ice sheet forms on top, and this spoils skiing. That’s when you get your bad falls; your skis get to sliding on the ice and you just can’t stop.
It was that way when I first went out, but being a novice it was one and the same to me. I didn’t even know skiing conditions were bad; I thought it was just bad Pyle technique.
I have a green-eyed jealousy of the people who are capable of going up on the ski lift and skiing back down. That would be an accomplishment. But it’s something that will not happen to me this trip. I can’t even grapple with our little 50-foot practice slope. And it’s actually about two miles down the Magic Mile.
They tell about a novice skier who showed up last year. The first thing he did was take the lift to the top and start back down on his skis. He got about a third of the way down and then, going like lightning, whizzed over the edge of an abyss, flew through the air for about 30 feet, struck a rest-house and smashed to the ground. He lay there all day till they found him late that afternoon. He died two months later.
Instructors ski for fun
On weekends they keep a doctor up here, and the Ski Patrol is on the prowl constantly. With 2500 people skiing all over the place, a good portion of them novices, somebody is bound to get hurt. And somebody always does. The Ski Patrol brings them in on stretchers.
I hadn’t been out an hour until here came a guy dragging himself across the snow with a broken ankle.
But perhaps I’m scaring you. I would feel practically criminal if I deterred anybody from this exhilarating sport. You may rest easy. If it’s safe enough for me, it’s safe enough for Grandpa. So get him a pair of boards and send him on up.
Skiing is indeed insidious the way it gets into people’s blood. Practically everybody who works around this great Lodge either can ski or is learning. They’re not all young, either.
The hotel manager skis, the bus driver skis, the waitresses ski, the bus-boys ski, the clerks in the ski-shop ski, the Forest Rangers ski. Even Jack Farrell, who is in charge at the top of the ski-lift, skis all the way down from work every evening, instead of riding the chairs down. And the instructors actually ski for fun in their off-hours.
The Lodge ran out of guest stationery this evening, so I went around the public writing desks trying to gather up a few scraps to write on.
At one desk I found two sheets, on which some young man had been trying to start a letter home. He apparently just gave up and left his efforts there. Here is what he left:
“Dear Folks, Dear Mom, Pop… Rah! Benson! … Mt. Hood National For… Dear Folks… Drdez… Dear Popin Folks, Po… Popin… I sure am stove in, in answering you I really… Dear Folks… There’ll always be an Eng…”
Apparently he just collapsed at that point, from being so stove in. I know just how he felt. I’m stove in too, Dear Folks. Dear England. Dear Timberline. Dear Popin. Dear Me.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
DETROIT – The so-called Reuther Plan for the reorganization of the motor industry during the preparatory period of the war program was a political fake so fraudulent on its face that, in rejecting it, the managers merely shrugged it off and neglected to go into the character of its author.
The Reuther Plan would have given the United Auto Workers of the CIO authority in management equal to that of the legal owners of the property, both collaborating with a third authority, representing the Government.
There was not the remotest possibility that the Roosevelt Administration would select as the Government’s “neutral” representatives men who were not positively known to be reliable partisans of the union and enemies of private ownership and management. For this, be it remembered, is the same Government which appointed Frank Murphy Attorney General and sent him on up to the Supreme Court after he, as governor of Michigan during “the trouble,” had looked his sworn and sacred duty in the eye, wavered and dropped his gaze in an historic surrender of principle wo lawless force.
Patriotic reasons for plan’s defeat
His conduct then subordinated the rule of the people to the will of an organized mob and seriously impaired popular confidence in popular Government under law.
Under the Reuther Plan, with the Government on the union’s side, the owners, outnumbered 2 to 1 on issues of management and even the disposal of private property committed to their care, would have been asked to serve in a role similar to that of condemned Polish hostages compelled to dig their own graves. Aside from the fallacies of the plan, quickly apparent to the naked eye, there were strong patriotic and moral reasons for its instant rejection.
Reuther is an adventurous unioneer, politician and revolutionary field leader who, with his two brothers, Roy and Victor, acquired power through one of the most violent and brutal insurrections, short of civil war, that ever threatened constitutional government in this country. That actual civil war did not develop during the terror which his union imposed on the motor centers of Michigan is a shameless boast of Justice Murphy who so far encouraged the rioters in their outlawry that he finally had to choose between decency with bloodshed and peace by surrender.
Walter Reuther had worked briefly and in no expert or executive capacity in the auto industry and had visited Russia to study the political phenomena which include collectivism, dictatorship and the technique of mob warfare. Of plant management, he has had no experience so, for expert ability, he would have been compelled to rely on the management men. Had these men then deliberately sabotaged his plan or refused to serve under him, it would have failed, surely.
So it is not necessary to believe that Reuther, with his knowledge of recent Italian history, had any other purpose than to advertise himself and discredit ownership management in the name of patriotism. He must have realized that failure would bring chaos and Fascism and that in that event the public temper would react against the author of the disaster. The scheme was not pressed. It was merely ballyhooed.
Move disguised as workers’ protest
The Michigan insurrection by which Reuther rose to power 'was an anti-labor movement disguised as a workers’ protest. The motor companies suffered much. But the most painful brutalities and the most hurtful permanent loss were suffered by the majority of the workers, who sensed the character of the union and its leaders and struggled against odds to remain free men after Murphy had abandoned them.
The union refused to let them vote for their collective bargaining agents and dragged many of them forcibly to union offices where they were compelled to pay up and sign up or be beaten up. Hundreds of men and women were pummeled by the mobs, one man was dumped into a vat of glue, lunch boxes and clothing lockers were looted and unspeakably befouled, windshields and windows of the parked cars of non-joiners were smashed while the owners toiled for their families, tires were cut, one woman was mauled by six shrieking furies and her coat was slashed and her galoshes filled with tacks, and a brick through the window of one man’s home at night narrowly missed his sleeping baby.
Such were some of the methods by which the Reuther union obtained the bargaining rights of countless defenseless Americans in whose name Reuther now, in time of war for the confirmation of the four freedoms “everywhere in the world,” essayed to obtain total power over the motor industry or, anyway, credit for a noble effort in freedom’s name.
Clapper: Morale? Phooey!
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – How can people take civilian defense work seriously when it is being so cluttered at the top with this rhythmic-dancing stuff?
James M. Landis, executive of the Office of Civilian Defense, said the other day that many communities on the coasts are not organized to deal with bomb attacks and are unwilling to join in co-operative protective measures. The reason, he thought, was that the people have not awakened to the fact that the United States is at war.
Several factors may contribute to this dangerous complacency. For instance, favorable war news is emphasized to such an extent that many people think we are winning the war in the Pacific when the cold fact is that we are losing it fast.
Among other factors also must be the widespread disgust and even bitterness that the wife of the President of the United States should play with an official agency of the Government as she has played with OCD, allowing it to become a personal parking lot for pets and proteges.
Won’t give wages to pay fan dancers
Today’s newspapers report that the central labor union here already has raised $82,000 as a gift to local civilian defense authorities. Seven thousand members have each pledged one day’s pay, as an outright gift for civilian defense expenses, such as financing blood banks.
But after discovering that Mrs. Roosevelt’s protege was drawing $4600 a year from the Office of Civilian Defense to encourage rhythmic dancing among children, officials of the central labor union announced that they did not want any of the wages pledged by their members to be used to pay fan dancers.
How can it but be a chilling experience to any man, after pledging a day’s wages, to find that OCD is throwing away an Army major’s salary on some girl dancer that Mrs. Roosevelt happens to like?
Yes, it’s a trivial thing end the girl shouldn’t be crucified. But it is just this kind of thing that embitters men and women who are making very hard sacrifices because their Government asks them to. It is bound to embitter them to find the First Lady of the land playing so lightly with matters which members of the central labor union here are taking seriously enough to donate a day’s wages each.
I have never felt that much of the criticism of Mrs. Roosevelt’s varied activities was justified. She does a great deal of good. When she goes around the country, helping the under-privileged, bringing their wrongs to public attention, it is a real public service.
But it is something else to tamper with a most serious public agency to feather a nest for friends. Nothing can be more fatal to national morale than this sort of thing. Because it comes from a high quarter is not a reason for ignoring it. On the contrary, the fact that it comes from a high quarter only magnifies the deplorable effects on public morale.
Confidence in OCD directors vital
We hear frequent reports that in New York, and perhaps other places, Communists and Fascists are battling to infiltrate and control air-raid-warden services, which would make excellent transmission belts. The highest morale and interest on the part of citizens will be necessary to prevent some such perversion of these services. Treat them lightly at the top and we surely will encourage misuse of them at the bottom.
In England, civilian defense is under the direction of a cabinet minister, Herbert Morrison, the minister of home security. Here it is nominally in charge of James M. Landis, the executive of OCD. But he has only vague and uncertain authority, with Mayor LaGuardia and Mrs. Roosevelt, the one a superior and the other a subordinate, both popping in and out with part-time bossing that no responsible administrator should have to contend with. If they gave Landis a chance to run his show, he ought to do a creditable job.
But at best the civilian-protection task is difficult. It requires much technical work and guidance of local communities, and very little rhythmic dancing by the children. Local groups must have complete confidence in the direction at the top. How can there be any in face of the public spectacle at headquarters here?
It is a rule in any organization that morale at the bottom reflects the morale at the top. Here at the top it stinks.
Maj. Williams: The solution
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
The pressing demand of America at this hour is, “No more Pearl Harbors.”
The outstanding explanation for the facility with which the Japs raided Hawaii, causing widespread damage to our key naval position in the Pacific, is the failure of the Army and the Navy to co-ordinate the material and personnel at their disposal. This much-talked-of, but seldom achieved, co-ordination between the Army and Navy has been much of a myth, is still a myth and very possibly always will be a myth unless something is done to take this responsibility for co-ordination out of the hands of officers of each service and place it in the hands of a unified supreme command.
No matter what one may think of the Roberts report, which accomplished nothing, it brought forth evidence which cannot be challenged that co-ordination between the Army and the Navy was not achieved. With this conclusion squarely in mind, the average American can readily recognize how, when the two parent services, do not co-ordinate their efforts, the air forces of those organizations are left drifting in a vacuum.
Japs attack by air
The Jap attack was launched by air and submarine forces, and there is no evidence of any damage by torpedoes fired by the submarines. The report flatly states, “The major part of the damage to ships in Pearl Harbor resulted from torpedoes launched from planes.” That means that what damage wasn’t done by aerial torpedoes was done by aerial tombs. The entire damage done at Pearl Harbor was done by airpower.
Here we find again the inevitable recurrence, so customary in this war, of airpower constituting the striking power against surface and land forces commanded by non-fliers.
Adm. Kimmel was not an aviator; neither was Gen. Short. What they knew and thought of airpower was based upon hearsay and was influenced by the prejudices and jealousies found in both their parent organizations for anything with wings on it.
Need one command
The U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy have never co-operated effectively, either in peacetime or in wartime to date, and they won’t co-operate until the job of co-ordination is taken out of their hands, until we have a Supreme Command, in which command will be represented the third and most potent arm of modern warfare – airpower.
It’s the system which is beating us in this war. We’ve got to have a unified high command, and we’ve got to have our three national weapons – army, navy and air – under the jurisdiction and at the orders of that command, set up in such fashion that they can be wielded by this supreme command to the best interests and to the safety of the nation.
‘We can lose this war’
Too much attention being paid to ‘minor air engagement,’ WPB official says
NEW YORK (UP) – William L. Batt, director of materials for the War Production Board, deplored last night the “smugness and satisfaction” in the United States over progress of the war, and warned that it easily can be lost.
“Not since the days of the Revolution have we had much of a chance to lose a war. We have a chance to lose this one,” he said at the annual Advertising Awards dinner.
He said some of the facilities of the auto industry, “the symbol of our mechanical genius,” will not produce a weapon for six months, nine months, or a year, and “weapons produced a year from now will not help us hold the outposts under siege; only weapons produced tomorrow can help us.”
Meanwhile, he said, too much attention was being paid to “minor air engagements in which American fliers shoot down two Japanese planes and lose one, and not enough attention to… the enemy’s steady progress toward our vital outposts.”
