Pension repeal bill signed by Roosevelt
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Dizzy
If the reader is not already dizzy over the censoring of the censor who censored that uncensored London Daily Mail story about giant American convoys in the Southwest Pacific, and “naval and air battles on a scale unparalleled in history [that] are developing,” this record may compound his confusion.
On Thursday, Secretary of War Stimson said material reinforcements had been sent to the Java Sea in the last week.
Saturday morning, the London Daily Mail carried the dispatch about convoys and unparalleled battles, from its correspondent, Walter Farr, datelined “At Sea Aboard an American Warship.” The Farr story was cabled from London to Melbourne by American press services and printed by American newspapers.
Then the explosions. Irate readers deluged editors with protests against revealing military secrets. Irate editors criticized the Navy Department for allowing a British correspondent to file material banned to American correspondents.
Secretary of the Navy Knox, after a White House war council, denied the dispatch was filed from a warship. He added that he was taking up the matter with the British government “with a great deal of vigor.” Another officials explained that Mr. Farr had sent his story from Australia to escape American censorship.
Sunday was enlivened by “a final Navy Department report on the Farr incident,” which started in part:
Late information reaching Washington now locates Farr’s filing point at Honolulu… Further analysis of the story, in the light of now known circumstances, suggests that it contains no factual information about movements to Australia which has not been published by the American press prior to the London Daily Mail publication.
While we do not agree here with the judgment of the naval officer at Honolulu who reviewed and released the story, we can understand why he might not have regarded the story as being news.
The reader cannot be blamed for being somewhat confused by such “now you see it, now you don’t” games. But of one thing the reader can be sure when he sees such a story – it has passed plenty of censors before he gets it in his newspaper.
First it passed the naval censor at the source. Then it passed the London censors and Melbourne censors, ingoing and outgoing. Then it passed incoming American censors. Then, when some editors consulted a Washington censor for advice, it was passed again.
As for the official confusion, that is typical. While Secretary Knox was dismissing the Los Angeles “enemy raid” as a “false alarm,” Army authorities were suggesting that Jap agents had rented 15 commercial planes for the purpose.
Secretary of War Stimson withheld the route of the new Alaskan highway as a secret, which the Ottawa government promptly divulged. American censors refused reference to a new U.S. naval base in Eritrea, but the British government announced it and British censors cleared the story – to which President Roosevelt objected.
So, dear reader, while feeling pity for yourself, please save a little for the helpless editor and for the poor censor. Sometimes the red tape and brass hats and gold braids make them dizzy, too.
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Good article, those further down the trough can become scapegoats for another’s screw ups.
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Dutch in Java stronghold ask armistice but other battles rage
Troops break under strain of air attack, Indies’ officers say in Australia
By Brydon Taves, United Press staff writer
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Luzon awaits Nazi-style attack; Japs shell port
By Edward R. Holles, United Press staff writer
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Burma defense plans surprise
British forces move northwest for next stand
By Darrell Berrigan, United Press staff writer
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Reds get first call on Lend-Lease aid
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer
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Japs kill bound prisoners with bayonets in Hong Kong
Confirmed atrocities include murder of women, internment of captives in lightless huts, Eden says
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Japanese ‘soften up’ Port Moresby again
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Vichy holds ‘aces’ in colonies
The map shows the strategic prizes the Axis would gain by complete surrender of Vichy France’s colonies. Possession of the colonies would put Axis bases astride Allied aid routes. Britain has accused France of promising the use of Madagascar, off Southeast Africa, to the Japs “if necessary.”
French North Africa shipments ended
Washington, March 10 (UP) –
Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles said today that American shipments to French North Africa had been suspended and would not be resumed until a satisfactory arrangement is made with the Vichy government.
Mr. Welles said he has no official information regarding reports from abroad that about 40 French warships, being built at the time of the fall of France in June 1940, had been turned over to Germany.
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
HOLLYWOOD – There is only one actor in all Hollywood whom I can call by his first name (or last name either, for that matter), and I’ve never seen him on the screen.
This specific actor is Tim McCoy, and if you also have never seen him, it’s because you go to the wrong kind of movies. You should go to a few rootin’-tootin’, old-fashioned Westerns. You’d see him then.
I happen to know Tim because he’s a good old boy from Wyoming. We met last summer at the rodeo in Cheyenne, we had a good time together, he gave me his private Hollywood number, and he said, “Next time you’re out that way, call me up.” The old stuff, you know.
Except I did call him up, which was heresy in the first place. And Tim was glad to hear from me, which was untraditional in the second place. Hollywood is indeed a strange land.
It wound up that I went out to Tim’s apartment for dinner, and I must be degenerating into a very poor reporter. For, instead of pumping Tim all about the movies and himself, we spent the evening talking about the international situation. I already know all there is to know about the international situation, so I might as well have stayed home.
Tim came to Hollywood 20 years ago to herd a bunch of Wyoming Indians in a picture. The Hollywood big shots liked him so well they kept him. They even sent him and his Indians to England and France for a year.
Tim is an odd sort of fellow in that Hollywood has never got in his blood. His roots are in Wyoming. He has a ranch there. He goes back there between pictures.
He has never felt that he really was settled in Hollywood. The only property he owns in the world is in Wyoming. He has always just lived in an apartment out here – 16 years in the same one, in fact – yet he could pack up and clear out in one day.
Cavalryman in last war
Not that Tim is either a backwoodser or a Hollywood-hater. He likes being in the movies, it makes him an excellent living, and he moves with a gang of old-time movie people – such as Richard Barthelmess, Lewis Stone, Irvin S. Cobb, Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Colman.
In fact, he doesn’t even look like a cowboy off the screen. He doesn’t affect Wild West get-up, and he could pass for a lawyer or an aircraft executive. He doesn’t talk cowboy talk or use movie slang. He’s always discussing the international situation, damn him, and he knows practically as much about as I do.
Tim’s apartment is a sort of old-fashioned one of two rooms, plastered with pictures of his movie and Wyoming friends. He has a Chinese cook named Frank. We had fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner. Before he leaves, Frank pushes aside the dining-room table, pulls something down out of the wall, and there’s Tim’s bed.
Like all movie people, you couldn’t get Tim on the phone directly even if you knew his number. You have to leave your name, and then if it’s o.k. he’ll call you back. He always saves his apartment the back way, and scales a concrete wall where his car is parked.
Tim is what you might call middle-aged, but he’s ruddy and enthusiastic and as straight as a rod. His soldiering probably accounts for that. He spent many years in the cavalry, before and during the last war.
He has been a rancher, a soldier, an actor and a circus owner. If he doesn’t stop thinking about the international situation, he may wind up to be a statesman.
Tim is among the last of the old Tom Mix and Buck Jones generation of Western stars. He can’t croon. He makes eight pictures a year. I’ll have to go see one of them some time.
‘Judge Hardy’ commands state guard
After dinner, we got in Tim’s car and went over to see Lewis Stone, the “Judge Hardy” of the movies, you know. Stone is just as nice as I always thought he would be, although I didn’t talk to him long, for he’s head over heels in defense work.
He is in command of a regiment of the State Guard (corresponding to the Home Guard in England), and it keeps him busier than a bird-dog. His title is lieutenant colonel. They were having their weekly drill-meeting in the old Warner Brothers studio when I saw him.
The regiment is an evacuation outfit. Everybody in it, enlisted men and officers both, furnish his own station wagon and carries two stretchers. They’ll be the ones to evacuate old and crippled people and children from bombed areas, if and when bombing comes.
It isn’t a movie regiment at all, although there are about a dozen movie people in it. Cesar Romero and Robert Young are both lieutenants in the outfit.
They were there and I saw them, but didn’t touch them. If you’re disappointed, I’ll go back and touch them for you. To tell the truth, they looked like practically anybody else in their uniforms. Thus end my Hollywood experiences.
Old watch has time for its fourth war
Marysville, Ohio –
Ralph Lingrel, U.S. Army selectee, will carry into service with him a watch that has been through three wars and the present one will make its fourth.
The watch was given Mr. Lingrel by Eugene Drumm as a good luck charm, although it still keeps good time. Mr. Drumm carried the watch in the last war.
The watch became Mr. Drumm’s possession as a gift from Dr. F. W. Weller of Delaware, who carried it in the Spanish-American War. Dr. Weller’s father carried it with the Union Army in the Civil War.
CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
18-year-old bride has her ‘say’
By Maxine Garrison
At the time of 18-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt’s marriage to 32-year-old Pat DiCicco, she was asked by reported if she was excited.
The blushing bride said:
A first marriage is always exciting.
Really, now, isn’t that a bit thick?
Quaintly old-fashioned and set in my ways as I am, I nevertheless realize that the world does move. That manners change. That the younger generation invariably pulls a few new tricks to shock its elders. That the attitude toward marriage and divorce has radically altered. That sophistication comes young these days.
Still and all, isn’t it a trifle mad-hatterish, even today, for an 18-year-old bride to remark that a first marriage is always exciting?
Put that way, it strongly implies not only that second, third and later marriages will not be so exciting, but also that the first marriage is not likely to be the last.
Admitted hazard
It has always been an admitted hazard of easy divorce that any couple about to be married can say:
Well, if it doesn’t work out, we can always get a divorce.
Such an attitude is likely to keep them from working hard enough at the job of getting along with each other.
Before divorce became a commonplace, a bickering husband and wife did their best to keep peace in the family, to allow room for each other’s faults. They had to stay together, so they either made allowances or consigned themselves to utter misery.
Today’s husbands and wives aren’t a whit more faulty than their predecessors. But now they take their troubles to the divorce court, thinking to end them with finality, rather than learn the invaluable lesson of compromise.
The results of the new policy in such matters have been less happy than its perpetrators expected. They have found no perfect mates, yet still refuse to admit the need for compromise, still expect the next one to be perfect, and seem perfectly willing if need be to keep right on getting married until doomsday.
No illusions about it
Now we’ve reached the point of sophistication at which our sweet little teenage brides say coyly that a first marriage is always exciting.
Not for a minute do they have any illusions about marriage being important and lasting. They want a chic first marriage while they make plans for later ones, it seems. They’ve watched mama and papa go through a succession of marriages, so that it all probably seems quite natural. It isn’t very flattering to the first husband, of course, but then he’s probably not bowled over with the importance of marriage either.
There were many regrettable traits and woeful gaps in the training of girls 100 or even 50 years ago. But sometimes the thought of their genuine youngness, their faith and their dewy-eyed attitude toward life is mighty refreshing.
Backstabbers ignore Axis, put Allied unity in peril
Irresponsible criticism in Britain and America calculated to destroy national cohesion – Britons resent dead cats hurled by U.S., dominions
By William H. Stoneman
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Fifth columnists among Burmese natives help Japanese in conquest of Rangoon
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
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U.S. War Department (March 11, 1942)
Army Communiqué No. 142
Philippine theater.
The situation in Bataan remains unchanged.
There was no air or ground activity during the past 24 hours. The positions occupied by both sides have apparently become temporarily stabilized.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 11, 1942)
Pocket knives stab sharks –
Navy fliers drift 34 days on life raft, eat raw fish
Three are burned almost black by Pacific sun by time they reach tiny atoll, stagger ashore not knowing if Japs hold island
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Declaration likely –
Brazil nears state of war
Ships ordered to port; Vargas empowered to act
By David J. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Bowler works for nothing –
Boondoggling controversy keeps Washington on edge
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
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Offshore blasts shake Jersey town
Mantoloking, NJ, March 11 (UP) –
Five heavy explosions from off the sea shook buildings and rattled windows throughout Mantoloking today.
The explosions, following in rapid succession, occurred about 10 a.m. Officer Weldon Polhemus of the Mantoloking police said the explosions “were heard as plain as day.”
He added:
They came from off the seas, but we don’t know what caused them.