Editorial: What is the administration going to do about taxes?
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$30 million ad plan will get test in Senate
Bankhead ready with bill to advertise bonds in newspapers
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Button Up Your Lip to be shown in U.S.
Film is a graphic presentation of damage resulting from gossip
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
The French Foreign Legion has changed greatly from the dregs-of-humanity catchall that it once was. But it is still wholly a fighting outfit, and anything that exists solely to fight is bound to be tough. As a result, the Legionnaire lives in a mental environment that is deadly. There is little reason or inclination for high thinking.
Legionnaires are lonely. There is little outside their military life for them. They can sit in the cafés and drink, and that’s about all. Many of them carry on regular correspondence with women all over the world whom they’ve never seen, even with Americans. They say it isn’t unusual to see among the want ads in the Paris papers a plea from a Foreign Legionnaire for a pen-pal.
The loneliness and longing for other days is proved, it seems to me, by one little vital statistic. Every year around Christmas, five or six Legionnaires commit suicide.
Russian gets drunk on payday
The Legion is full of “characters.” There is one Russian, a carpenter, who has been indulging in a peculiar routine as long as Legionnaires can remember.
On every payday, which is twice a month, he buys himself a large bucket of wine. He puts it on the floor beside his cot, gets plenty of cigarettes, then lies down and starts drinking and smoking. He’ll drink himself into a stupor, sleep a few hours, then wake up and start drinking again. He never gets out of bed, makes any noise, or causes any trouble. His jag lasts two days. It’s been going on so long that the officers just accept it.
But just let a Legionnaire get out of control on the street or on duty, and the penalties are severe. For extreme drunkenness, a Legionnaire can get nine months in the Disciplinary Regiment – which means nine months far away on the desert, working from dawn till dusk, with poor food, no cigarettes, no wine, no mail.
Penalties are severe
Even for slight infractions he gets eight days in jail, with his head shaved. They say any man who goes through a five-year enlistment without getting his head shaved is either an angel or extremely lucky.
At the end of a five-year enlistment the Legion gives a “Good Conduct Certificate.” The Legionnaires are so tough that only half of them get the certificate. Those who don’t get it have only two choices: re-enlistment for another five years or lifetime expulsion from the entire French Empire (so the bad ones sign up again).
The Legion does do many things for its men. Here at Sidi Bel Abbès, the Legion has built a huge modern theater, where movies are shown and band concerts given. The men even put on their own theatricals, and the Legion has a 350-piece band.
Nearby is a new concrete swimming pool, the largest in North Africa. I’ve never seen anything in Hollywood to beat it. It is surrounded by tiled terraces, with tables and chairs and cabanas, and with green trees and a riot of flowers.
Sergeant paid only $10 monthly
Officers and noncoms are provided with houses, and may have their families with them. A sergeant gets only $10 a month, but this is increased if he has a family. A sergeant in the Legion rates salutes the same as a commissioned officer.
The Legion had shops where its men could study trades during spare hours after supper. After the Americans arrived they put in a voluntary English course.
The Legionnaires here at home base sleep in concrete-floored barracks much like our own. They have iron cots and their stuff is packed to move at a moment’s notice.
Every barracks and recreation hall has cartoons drawn all over the walls – well-done cartoons making jokes about Legion life. This is another Legion tradition. Whenever a new company moves in, it has the right to erase all cartoons and draw its own.
Tradition is admirable, but–
It has been a marvelous experience to visit, after all these years and in this remote part of the world, the men about whom Beau Geste was written. You can’t help admiring the Legion’s pride in itself, its fastidious discipline, its cleanliness, its whole tradition.
But beyond that, life in the Foreign Legion seems to be horrible. Living to fight merely for the fight’s sake is something I cannot understand.
Bombing Tokyo is task for the future
By A. T. Steele
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Arch Steele, of the Chicago Daily News foreign staff, took a trip into Japan and dug up startling facts about Tokyo’s plans against the United States. Then, to avoid censorship, he slipped back into China, and filed his now-famous series on “Japan Takes Aim.”
Since then, Mr. Steele’s accurate and uninterrupted war coverage has carried him into many battle zones – including Russia’s. And now – back in the United States for the first time in four years – he has written a fact-filled series on the task that faces us before we can come to final grips with Japan. The following is the third article in the series.
In the bombardment of questions which assails anyone who has just returned to the United States from China, there is one query, which recurs with monotonous regularity:
Why aren’t we bombing Japan?
Looking at a map, where Japan and China seem almost to touch, it does appear that hitting at Japanese cities from our bases in China should offer no insuperable difficulties. But to the men on the spot, where the distances are measured in hundreds of miles instead of inches, where supply problems are agonizing and where big airdromes are few and vulnerable, the task of striking deep into Japan’s vitals looms up for what it is – a job of truly formidable dimensions.
There is, however, a silver lining to this dilemma. Preparations for heavier and more frequent bombing of important Japanese bases are going forward. During the coming months, our Air Force will range farther and plunge deeper into the core of Japanese military and naval power than ever before. The promise has been made to China, and it will be kept, despite impressive obstacles.
Task is tough
Unless carriers are used – and we have few to risk for such a purpose – the bombing of Japanese bases is, first of all, a problem of supply. For long-range bombing of this kind, you must have heavy bombers, or medium bombers especially equipped for long-distance flying. These bombers, when they can be spared from other more urgent fronts, have to be flown 15,000 miles before they even reach their base of operation.
All gasoline, all personnel and all maintenance equipment required to keep these huge craft frying have to be flown into China from India, which is the nearest point that can be reached by ship and train. Most bombs also have to be carried by air into China, often for distances as great as 1,000 or 1,500 miles, to reach only the points from which the bombing missions can begin. Chinese arsenals produce limited quantities of light and medium bombs, but cannot begin to supply the needs of any large-scale bombing offensive.
In the second place, bombing Japanese bases is a problem of distance. There are Chinese troops within 900 miles of Tokyo, but that doesn’t mean that there are suitable airdromes that close to the enemy capital. Any attempt to construct such facilities in guerrilla areas behind the Japanese lines would inevitably provoke attack from Japanese ground forces which could reach and wipe out such installations with ease. The most advanced Chinese airfields capable of accommodating heavy bombers are still well over 1,000 miles from Tokyo.
Air Forces small
There are, of course, many Japanese bases closer at hand with can be bombed with ease and with damaging effect if we can get the planes to China in sufficient quantities to do the job. Our present Air Force in China is much smaller than most Americans suppose. Because of this and because of supply difficulties, it has had to limit its operations to nearby objectives. The effective attacks on Hong Kong, Canton and Haiphong and the damaging raids on Japanese shipping are only a sample of what American pilots will be doing in China when they get the tools to work with.
The longest American raid out of China, so far, was the attack on the Kailan coal mines, in extreme northern China. It failed of its purpose – the destruction of the powerhouse controlling the mines – but as a morale booster, its effect on the Chinese in occupied regions was electric.
Many fine targets lie within less than 1,000 miles from Chinese bases. Japanese bases on the island of Formosa and Japanese installations in Nanking, Shanghai, Tientsin and Peking are within easy flight. Manchuria, the great continental base of the Japanese Army, is also within practical range. The day will certainly come when U.S. bombers will be striking regularly at such major bases at Dairen and Mukden.
In Manchuria and North China are situated some of Japan’s biggest mines and largest industries. That area is Japan’s major source of iron. The biggest coal mine in the Japanese Empire is only a few miles from Mukden. Near Mukden, too, are arsenals and aircraft factories. In western Japan, inside the practical radius of flight for heavy bombers, are such centers of industry and shipping as Nagasaki and Shimonoseki.
Expensive raid
The Doolittle raid on Tokyo, though highly successful, was expensive and demonstrated what a tough job of planning and execution such a project involves. But it has been done once and can be done again. I wonder if it generally realized what a terrible vengeance was exacted by the Japanese Army for that American raid on the Japanese capital. The vengeance was wreaked not on the Americans but on the Chinese.
It was as a direct result of the Tokyo raid that the Japs launched their offensive last summer in Chekiang Province, eastern China, which must rank as one of the bloodiest and most barbaric chapters of the whole China War. Their object was to capture and destroy Chinese airdromes which they believe the American pilots had tried to reach and from which future raids on Tokyo might have been possible.
The Japs pillaged and burned neatly every town and village in their path. They raped indiscriminately. They turned their horses to graze on the peasants’ crops and ruined what was left. They carried off or destroyed stores of food and grain. They made bonfires of farming implements. They killed recklessly.
In the course of their advance, they subjected undefended cities to incessant and murderous bombardment, for no other purpose, apparently, than to show their spite against the men who had dared to fly over the palace of the Emperor. The city of Lishui, site of one of the airports from which Tokyo could have been raided, was bombed for 21 consecutive days, until more than 60% of its buildings have been laid flat. Once they had captured their airdromes, the Japs cut them to pieces with long deep parallel trenches, for which, of course, they used press gangs of Chinese peasants and villagers. Then they withdrew. Not for many months will East China recover from that orgy of vengeful destruction.
Numerical weakness
Obviously, one of the Japanese aims was so to terrorize the Chinese population that they would resist any effort to reestablish bomber bases in their territory. Similar tactics have been employed in Southeast China, where there has been much indiscriminate Japanese bombing, accompanied by leaflet raids in which the people were warned, in effect, that:
This is what happens to Chinese who give help to American pilots.
But the Chinese are not easily intimidated.
Free China has numerous airdromes, scattered over her whole area, but very few of these are large enough or sufficiently well equipped to serve as bases for heavy bombing operations. That’s another reason why the bombing offensive against Japan has been slow in starting.
Moreover, unless sufficient fighter planes are made available to protect these fields, they are vulnerable. The more bases there are, the better will be the opportunity of playing hide-and-seek with the numerically superior enemy. Because of our numerical weakness in the China skies, our Air Force there has had no other choice but to adapt hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
When Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Force, went to Chungking to report to Gen. Chiang Kai-shek on Casablanca, he was able to study American air problems there at first hand. Gen. Arnold promised China that the volume of airdrome supplies would be stepped up, that more airplanes would be sent and that bombing operations would be intensified. These promises are on the way to fulfillment, though world strategy, with its emphasis on Europe, puts limitations on the amount of help that can be assigned to China at this stage of the war.
Millett: War wife should continue sharing her man’s hobby
All-feminine association and interests can make life too dull and uninteresting
By Ruth Millett
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The Pittsburgh Press (April 7, 1943)
NEW ROMMEL LINE BROKEN
Yanks attack to join 8th Army
Afrika Korps retreats to north; Allied planes blast supply ships
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Asiatic rule of Japs urged after victory
Pacific conference also favors stripping foe of all possessions
By John A. Reichmann, United Press staff writer
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‘A great salesman!’
Roosevelt elated over his success in persuading staff to buy first of $13-billion war issue
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I DARE SAY —
Hist’ry and g’ography
By Florence Fisher Parry
Look at the map showing the Russian gains in a winter of war, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions wounded. It is NOT a big area. Its widest point is only from Stalingrad to Rostov. Then look at the WHOLE area of Germany’s conquests.
Maps are good reminders. Let us devote more time to them.
Just how ignorant we are of the basic “subjects” that are supposed to comprise education, has recently been exposed by the survey of 7,000 students in 36 U.S. colleges and universities. The poll discloses alarming ignorance of U.S. history; and if history, certainly its allied subject geography! The two are one.
The SYSTEM employed in our schools has consistently ignored the importance of history and geography as a BASIC foundation of all education. And I would unhesitatingly attach serious blame to this omission for our present plight in this war.
For never mind what effort has been made, what measures employed, in our public schools and colleges, the dismal fact remains that these two subjects, history and geography, are the least popular, and rated the least important by the students themselves. Show me a boy or girl in the grade schools (the only place these subjects are conspicuously taught) who declares history or geography to be his favorite study and I will show you the exception to the rule.
They are not required subjects in 82% of our colleges. Presumably, the college freshman has had all the history (and geography) he “needs,” dished out to him in spinach doses in the lower grades.
Hoe often has your young boy or girl said, in speaking of some mark on his report card, “Oh, that’s just geography,” or “That’s just history.” It doesn’t count, to him.
What improvement?
I know that the very manner in which we were taught geography in my generation provided a perfect conditioning for our isolation complex later. We started with Punxsutawney, then Jefferson County, then Pennsylvania, then the United States, then North America, etc., etc.
From the start, we grew to believe that WE were the center of the universe. The rest of the world was the mere fringe of our existence.
And so, it was with our study of history. We began with the discovery of America and ended with the last President in the White House. After we had been given this same rehash year after year (until it became such an old chestnut we never wanted to hear U.S. history mentioned again!), we began on ancient history, which took us just as far away from the present as possible.
Since then, the teaching of history and geography has been vastly improved; but to this day they have been kept minor studies, comparatively unimportant.
Our abysmal ignorance and indifference to the existence of other worlds than our own, of other peoples and other ways of life, are now imposing a cataclysmic penalty.
Bred-in-the-bone isolationists – that’s what we were made by our early conditioning in our own public schools.
Oh, now our own sons are being given marvelous lessons in history and geography, in the South Seas, in North Africa, in the Aleutians, and over the unhappy map of Europe! It is a costly lesson; over a million of them will lose their lives learning it, before this war is over.
They know now how wide is the Pacific, how high the Himalayas, how hot the jungle, how dry the desert.
And what geographies they will demand for their children, once they come home to refashion the world! And the new history books they will place – by concerted demand – in the hands of their youngsters!
Out the window the flat maps, and 1066 and all that!
Spelling bees
And another thing they’ll see to. Along with the new, live, human history books, along with the new beautiful three-dimensional WORLD globes from which geography will be taught – there will be a revival of two long-lost studies: WRITING AND SPELLING. These new rulers of the world, the returned soldiers, will have discovered that one of the most important things in the world is – A LETTER, A LETTER, legibly written, spelled correctly, and full of news! And they’ll know that the only way to insure that added measure of human happiness found only in a letter is to LEARN HOW TO WRITE IT, early and often!
The good old fundamentals will return to the blackboard: SPELLING; WRITING; HISTORY; GEOGRAPHY.
Let the educators find a way to squeeze in the other subject for study; but these four will have – I opine – a rebirth in popularity!
New York Assembly authorizes ‘bingo’
Albany, New York – (RNS)
The Wilson bill to authorize bingo games conducted by religious and other groups was passed without debate by the New York State Assembly.
Under the bill, local governing bodies may approve the operation of bingo games by specified groups upon written petition of 5% of the voters before Sept. 1. Permits will hold for one year and will become indefinite if local authorities decide to renew them.
The bill provides that no salaries may be paid for services in connection with bingo games organized by religious, charitable, or other groups and that only qualified members of the sponsoring organizations may take part.
Fake steel probe to lead to foolproof inspections
Fairless, Weir, Girdler lead institute group to devise system for industry
By Dale McFeatters, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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