One-ton bombs hit major Jap base at Rabaul
Allies aim to prevent new offensive by enemy in Southwest Pacific
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Germans seize Allied citizens
Americans, Britons taken from France
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New China to rise, Mme. Chiang says
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Simms: Hitler’s dupes seek a sign of United Nations’ sincerity
Costly blunders seen in class appeals now beamed to Europe’s captives; Wilson’s success is cited
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
In United Nations circles here, there is a growing suspicion that we may be making some costly blunders in the propaganda we are aiming at both victims and dupes of Adolf Hitler in Europe.
Woodrow Wilson shortened World War I at least a year by winning over the populations of some of Kaiser Wilhelm’s allies. He won them, not by threatening to impose some new regime or other of our particular liking, but by promising them “self-determination.”
Leaders of foreign groups in the United States complain that some of the propaganda which we are now sending into their countries is directed at groups, rather than at populations as a whole. Some of it, they charge, is class-angled. This, they say, is extremely harmful. For while the inhabitants of Hitler’s puppet states are almost all hostile to Nazism, they are left guessing what their fate would be under the United Nations.
Take Italy. Italy is now a prisoner of Germany and knows it. In Italy in 1940, just before she took the plunge, I failed to find a single Italian who wanted to enter the war. As for entering it on the side of the Nazis, they were more than opposed.
Hate the Germans
They hated the Germans, who openly treated them as inferiors. They clearly foresaw, even then, that a German victory would leave Italy just a little fish in Hitler’s big European pond.
Today, the people of Italy have their eyes on Tunisia. Sooner or later this year, they expect invasion. At heart, well-informed Italians tell me, the vast majority of them would welcome United Nations forces – especially the Americans – if only they had some idea of what might be in store for them afterwards.
Through with fascism
Luigi Sturzo, founder of the Christian Democrat Popular Party in Italy back in 1919, author of Italy and Fascism, Church and State, and other writing on the subject, gives a pretty clear picture of the state of mind of his countrymen. He says, in the April number of Foreign Affairs:
The Italian people must feel certain that after the Allied occupation is over, they will not have to face some new variety of fascism which will continue to tyrannize then. They must be told, and believe, that in an earlier stage they will have opportunity to decide freely, as the third point of the Atlantic Charter provides, what form of government they wish to organize.
Will the future Italy, he asks, be a monarchy or a republic? What about King Victor Emmanuel? Or the Crown Prince? Or the Crown Prince’s 6-year-old son, with the Crown Princess Marie-José as Queen Regent?
None of these questions, says Mr. Sturzo, is vital at this time. Nor should the United Nations try to settle them at all. If the Allies will only live up to their pledge “to respect the rights of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live,” the Italian people can be trusted to settle these issues for themselves. One thing, however, may be taken for granted: They will not choose fascism.
The American way
This formula, leaders of foreign groups in America urge, should be adhered to in dealing with all of Hitler’s dupes. Not one of Germany’s neighbors, they say, entered the Nazi camp voluntarily – that is to say because of popular leanings – hence all of them could be won over to the Allied side if the job were gone about properly.
When I asked what they meant by going about the job “properly,” the reply invariably was reducible to: “The American way.”
Some who are working on it, it is charged, do not seem always to be thinking in terms of the Atlantic Charter, or even of democracy as the word is understood in this country. As a result, not all of Europe’s desperate peoples are persuaded that they either understand or particularly like what they hear.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
North Africa –
We finished the salvage work on the wrecked planes and cooked our supper on the ground. As we ate, the soldier-mechanics got to talking about the trip, and our presence so close to enemy territory. One of the truck drivers said:
Back in the States, the commanding officer made us a speech one day. He told us we were lucky to be driving trucks. Almost made us feel like slackers. Said we’d go through the whole war and never be within 500 miles of the enemy. I’d like to get hold of that guy now. He’s still back there.
One boy said:
And here we are within 30 miles of the Germans.
The officer said:
Thirty miles? It’s only 20 miles.
I chimed in:
I’m going to make it 10 miles in the column. We’ve got to be heroes, haven’t we?
That set the boys off. They told me how to write the story about our trip.
They joke, in all seriousness
They said:
Write about digging the ditch. Tell them how we dug our heads off and got finished just as a German plane came over. You don’t have to say it was 30,000 feet high and couldn’t have seen us with bifocals.
That’s the way they joke about it, but they’re only half-joking all the time. The boys were really afraid of strafing. They held a consultation about going home. One soldier and myself wanted to spend the night there, and then make the long journey home next day. But the mechanics and truck drivers didn’t relish driving in daytime so near the enemy lines. They voted to leave that night. And leave we did. We finished our supper, gave what rations were left to the French, rounded up our Arab guide, and pulled out just at dusk.
We drove all night, without lights. It was easy to follow the tracks. Yet we had to cross rocky river beds with steep banks, and dodge countless holes, and thread our way over drifted sand dunes, and pick the right trail where tracks branched out in all directions.
It was a touchingly beautiful night. The sky was cloudless and the moon so bright that it dimmed out all but a few of the most lustrous stars. And it was warm when we started. We all felt relieved, somehow, and in high spirits. But we had forgotten the chill that comes with night on the desert. By 8 o’clock, we were getting cold. By 9, we were scrunched on the floor and wrapped in blankets. From 10 on, we were in an agony of cold. Nothing could keep it out. Finally, it became an intense pain, and we suffered a sleepy horror from it all night.
Arab grapevine is uncanny
The slow dusty miles dribbled away behind us in the moonlight. Far off, little red fires dotted the desert where the shepherds camped. Dark forms of grazing camels passed in the weird light. Once we stopped and turned off the motors, and could hear a German plane very high in the night sky. And once our Arab friend “Wah,” apparently unaccustomed to motoring, got carsick and we had to stop and let him out for a while.
We went through little towns, and awakened the dogs. At 2 a.m., we came back past our first French garrison, where guards stood watch on the high walls, day and night. Their grapevine signal system is uncanny. For, when we pulled up, the commandant was out of bed, with an overcoat over his pajamas, waiting for us.
I’ve heard tales of the Arab grapevine. They tell of one case where it carried the news of a crashed German plane 150 miles, and faster than the French Army’s wireless system.
We said goodbye to “Wah” and shook hands with the commandant and barged on into the night. The miles and hours grew longer as we neared home. The last 20 miles seemed to take weeks. Once the driver stopped for our routine stretch, and the rigidly cold soldiers growled at him to keep going.
Something to tell grandchildren
Finally, we came home, an hour before daylight, and just as the moon played out on us. We hadn’t seen any war, but we had seen the Sahara by day and by night. One of the soldiers said:
I’ll be telling my grandchildren someday about the time I crossed the Sahara Desert.
Another one said:
You didn’t cross it.
Oh, well, what the hell, I crossed part of it. Let’s get to bed and stay there all day.
And that’s what we did.
3 anonymous Pyle fans chip in to buy him gift
Admirers of Ernie’s column collect $52 and urge paper to ship him ‘box of something’
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Travel rights given to circus and carnivals
ODT, however, warns that shows face transportation delays
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High school girl become professional lumberjack
Fresno, California –
One more profession to fell to the axe of the invading women equal-righters when Marie Kauffung, 17-year-old high school senior, swung her axe and brought down a huge sycamore and became a professional lumberjack.
She first took up the trade through necessary when it became impossible to find men to top and trim the acacia trees at her own home.
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Oh hoh hoh… you have no idea
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U.S. Navy Department (March 27, 1943)
Communiqué No. 325
North Pacific.
On March 25:
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Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) and Mitchell (North American B‑25) bombers, escorted by Lightning fighters (Lockheed P‑38), carried out three attacks against Japanese positions at Kiska. Bombs were dropped on the runway, hangar and camp area. Low flying fighters strafed Japanese personnel.
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A U.S. search plane bombed Abraham Harbor on the southwest coast of Attu Island.
South Pacific.
On March 26: During the morning Liberator bombers attacked Japanese installations on Nauru Island. Hits were scored on the wharf, runway, officers’ quarters and barracks area. Four fires were started and several Japanese planes were damaged.