Editorial: He’d be wise to draft Ruml
…
Ferguson: WAACs overdefended
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Unfortunately, those who have risen to defend the honor of our women in the Armed Forces have also talked too much. The best answer to scurrilous attack is dignified silence. Blasts of denial by Mrs. Roosevelt, Congresswomen Rogers and Norton, Secretary Stimson and others against the hints of immorality among WAACs and WAVES, only fanned a weak gust into a tornado of public comment.
And perhaps we give too much importance to the charges when we call them Nazi propaganda. Plain gossip is a better term, and gossip will go on so long as human nature does business at the same old stand.
Our women in uniform represent the best element of American womanhood – and that’s no oratory, but plain English. Their service is a voluntary one. The dragnet of the draft, used on men, brings in the bad with the good. But our girls entered the service of their own free will. They accepted a new order of life because it was their wish to do so.
It would be exaggeration to say all went in for purely altruistic reasons. Women, too, are moved by a desire for adventure, change, travel, better opportunities.
But because these women are volunteers, they are prepared to meet new challenges. These must include the inevitable criticism which has always attended feminine progress. Like all women who defied convention in the past, they will get ridicule as well as praise. The way they take it will mark their status as soldiers.
Moreover, being smart, they realize a uniform does not bestow virtue on a woman any more than it ennobles a man, if the stuff of nobility is not in him.
From all reports they’re doing a swell job and their home folks are proud of them. We expect them to come back to us better soldiers and finer women – but we’re not looking for goddesses. In fact, we don’t want any around.
Editorial: The heresy of racism
By the Religious News Service
Church groups in this country have been perennially concerned over the issue of racism. They look upon it, today, not only as particularly dangerous to a nation at war, but as a serious threat to the establishment of a lasting peace in the world. They insist that whatever attempts may have been made in the past to justify or rationalize racial prejudices and discriminations, it is imperative now to face the issue in a realistic and honest fashion.
That there is a basic heresy in racism should be made clear to everyone. It is a heresy to claim that God did not create all men equal, that the Negro is inherently inferior to the white man, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and hence must be relegated to a lower plane of social existence. Nazism is an expression of this heresy. So, too, we must admit, are the lynchings, the Jim Crow laws, the forced segregations and the countless discriminations that the Negro has experienced in America.
We are counting upon churches and schools to take a leading part in opposing this heresy by clarifying and reiterating truths implicit both in our Christian faith and in our democratic concepts. Unless racism is overcome, it will seriously impair, if not completely destroy, the post-war order we are planning. Merely to enunciate Christian principles or to stress democratic ideals will not, however, suffice to destroy this inner enemy. What is needed most of all is the translation of precept into action; and this must be done in families and communities until the whole nation has been aroused.
Passive acceptance of racial evils has encouraged the growth of injustice in the past; it can lead to immeasurably more disastrous results in the future. It is opportune, therefore, to urge that all Americans, whatever their race or creed, accept a personal responsibility in this matter. There are many spiritual signposts to point the way to a happier and more contented America. One of these points towards interracial justice.
Jinx ‘yoo-hoos’ at general (the lucky guy!)
Sarge says ‘Nix, gal, he’s the old man!’
By Erskine Johnson
…
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in North Africa – (by wireless)
There wasn’t any real reason for me to go to the Belgian Congo, since we have only a handful of troops in that area now, but when I got to a spot only 1,500 miles away, I said to myself:
Gee, I hate to be this close and not see the Congo.
So, I just got in a plane and flew an extra 3,000 miles and saw the Congo. Just as I had expected, the Congo looks like a river, that being what it is. It is wide and pretty muddy. It looks a good bit like the Mississippi, only it’s darker. It didn’t look either very dangerous or very romantic where I saw fit.
I stayed down there for a week. We planned to take a launch and go upriver about a hundred miles to see some flora and fauna, but at the last minute the launch broke down and we didn’t get to go. But I did ride across the Congo twice in the motorboat, and I saw the mast out of Stanley’s ship which they have planted on the shore at Leopoldville. We spent 10 minutes walking around and around the mast, looking at it from a sense of dirty, but it was just another mast to me.
Leo is genuine surprise
Leopoldville was a big surprise. I expected to find just a large village with a few tin-roofed trading posts, such as you see in tropical movies. But actually “Leo” is a beautiful city of 50,000. It has shipyards, big river docks, and a modern textile factory with 4,000 workers. It has 3,000 white inhabitants and scores of homes as beautiful as you would find in Pasadena. Its streets are of macadam. It has fine big stores in buildings of brick and stone and concrete. Huge trees like maples line the streets. There are many parks, and lovely statues.
There are movies and a zoo and a big tropical museum. Bougainvilleas and other flowers of all kinds splash the city with color. People sit and drink in sidewalk cafés. Autos dash along the streets at astonishing speed. You are suddenly amazed to see so many white women again.
A big ell-shaped hotel sits in the center of town, with its lovely garden right on the river bank. You could sit in your room at the hotel and throw an inkbottle out of the window and it would go kerplunk right into the Congo.
Not as hot as Washington
The city is always referred to by the shortened term “Leo,” just as Elizabethville is almost always called “Eville.”
The very words Belgian Congo have always suggested the most insufferable kind of tropics, where white people sit and rot with the heat. Yet when I was there it was not as hot as Washington in summertime, and during half of my week it was almost chilly, with frequent cloud-bursting rains.
If you are careful, it need not be an especially unhealthy place, although the climate is energy-sapping and people work with probably half of their normal efficiency.
The war seems pretty far away at Leo. The Belgian Congo did send an army up to help the British retake Ethiopia, and Congo troops were with Gen. Jacques Leclerc’s army when it marched up from Lake Chad, and the Congo is producing to the limit of its natural resources – tin, rubber, cotton and other goods – for the war effort. But still the war seems pretty far away.
No rationing to worry about
They don’t ration gasoline or tires in Leo. I saw some new-looking autos there. There is plenty to eat. There is liquor to drink. The stores have nearly everything you want. And all the physical labor is still done by natives.
The Belgian people have been grand to our troops, inviting them into their homes, and turning over to them the one big club in town. But the Belgians are strict about their women, and a soldier can’t have a date unless the whole family sits around. And if it gets to the point where you are trusted alone with a girl, then you’re practically married.
At one time, there were quite a lot of American soldiers in Leo, but the need for them has ceased and they have now been moved out. When I was there about three dozen men were living in a camp built to hold thousands. It was like living with a couple of friends in the Empire State Building.
They had a few trucks left, but no jeeps, so for personal transportation they gave me a two-and-a-half-ton truck, in which I noisily whisked back and forth between the camp and the town and was the cynosure of all eyes, I assure you.
‘Round robin’ letters among soldiers ruled ‘dangerous’ by War Department
Vital information too easily obtained by enemy
…
Interior bill approved
Washington –
The Senate yesterday passed and sent back to the House the 1944 Interior Department appropriations bill carrying heavy increases for irrigation development and other projects to spur wartime food production.
U.S. Navy Department (June 20, 1943)
Communiqué No. 419
South Pacific.
On June 18:
-
During the night, Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers attacked Kahili, Buin Area. Large fires were started.
-
On the same night, Mitchell (North American B‑25) medium bombers attacked Ballale Island, Shortland Area.
In Wilson Strait (south of Vella Lavella Island) six Japanese barges were strafed.
The Vila runway on Kolombangara Island was also bombed by a Mitchell bomber.
On the night of June 18‑19, Navy Catalinas (Consolidated PBY) patrol bombers and Army Liberators attacked Japanese positions on Nauru Island. Large oil fires were started and a considerable amount of damage was caused in the dispersal area and among the living quarters.