Security plan data pledged by Roosevelt
Cradle-to-grave program details up to Congress, President says
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Southern Democrats try to curb Barkley’s power
Outburst of long-pent-up resentment against Senate leader fails to clip his wings, but singes them; threat to quit party post saves him
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Starvation level seen for Germans by autumn of 1943
Embassy attaché says pre-war observations showed food rations inadequate; Nazis shot of doctors and medic al supplies
By Howard D. Fishburn, MD, written for Science Service
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Wagner’s body, guard of honor arrive tonight
Johnstown to observe minute of silence during burial service
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‘Humane’ war rules approve smoke and flame, if non-poisonous
Even burning white phosphorous can be used legally since it produces no toxic effect
By Peter Edson
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Oran, Algeria – (by wireless)
The Army’s Special Services Branch, whose job is to provide relaxation and entertainment for the soldiers, is having a tough time over here.
There are lots of reasons why it’s so tough. They haven’t any money and there isn’t much to buy here even if they had money. Lots of their athletic equipment never showed up, and they don’t know where it is. There are no stage or movie facilities at the camps, and you run onto all kinds of snags in dickering with the local business people for theaters, restaurants, and auditoriums.
But they have made some progress. They’ve picked up a local troupe of singers and dancers with the very un-French name of Robert Taylor Shows, who travel from camp to camp. They have also just hired a local circus, with wild animals and trapeze performers, to visit camps.
Since the Special Services Branch has no money, the soldiers have to pay admission, but they have plenty of money.
Movie people are headaches
There are no plans for bringing over Hollywood people, as has been done in England. They say the reason is that there’s no place at the camps for them to perform, and they are headaches to handle anyway, being temperamental.
But it seems to me that sincere entertainers could perform on the ground, out under the sky, and that thew Army could tolerate a few Hollywood headaches if the troops really benefited – and there is no question about the stars being extremely popular with our troops in England.
They say here that a soldier’s three first needs are: (1) good mail service; (2) movies, radios, and phonographs; (3) cigarettes and candy. Cigarettes are being issued free now, six packs a week, but the other items are very short in Africa.
Every radio in Oran has been bought up by the Army. Music stores are cleaned out. All the camps want more musical instruments; they are even advertising in the newspapers for second-hand ones.
Dancing is revived
Many camps rigged up their own forms of entertainment. Some had bands, and gave big dances which delighted the local people since dancing had been banned during more than two years of German rule.
Boxing is popular in the camps, and tournaments are being arranged. Boxing gloves are one thing that did show up in sizable amounts.
But it is simple athletic games in which lots of men can participate that the Special Services Branch is concentrating on in lieu of better things. Three such games – kick baseball, speedball, and touch football – have been inaugurated. In addition, I’ve seen lots of handball and even badminton being played at the more remote camps.
In town the Red Cross as usual has done a good job of setting up clubs and restaurants for troops on leave. The Army itself supervised the opening of two nightclubs for officers, and is negotiating for clubs for enlisted men, noncoms, and Negro troops.
Men need something to do
But with the shortage of sports equipment in the camps, and the towns so far away and no regular transportation, and with the different customs and different language, in a country stripped of almost everything a person would want to buy, life becomes far different from what it was in England. Some of the harder heads say:
Well, this is war and we’re at the front. The time for coddling troops is over.
But it happens that only a very tiny percentage of our troops in Africa are at the front. The rest are far behind the lines, doing the drab, hard work of supplying the Army or waiting impatiently to get into action. And as the war grows fiercer and troops come back from the front to rest, they will have to have something to do. So, if this is the spot we’ve picked to do our fighting in, I’m in favor of doing as much as possible to brighten dull and cheerless ones.
Highway on Alaska
Pioneers of Alaska road battle bears, mosquitoes and ice
By Tom Wolf, special to the Pittsburgh Press
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U.S. Navy Department (January 9, 1943)
Communiqué No. 245
North Pacific.
On January 7, a force of “Liberator” heavy bombers (Consolidated B-24) dropped bombs on enemy positions at Kiska. Results were not observed.
South Pacific.
On January 7:
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During the morning, a force of “Flying Fortress” heavy bombers (Boeing B-17) bombed enemy areas on the island of Bougainville. Twelve Japanese “Zero” fighters attacked the “Fortresses.” Two “Zeros” were shot down. No U.S. planes were lost.
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A force of “Marauder” medium bombers (Martin B-26) with “Airacobra” (Bell P-39) escort attacked enemy installations at Rekata Bay on Santa Isabel Island. Fires were started and two enemy float-type planes were damaged. Two U.S. planes were shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire.
The Pittsburgh Press (January 9, 1943)
JAP LANDING FORCE SMASHED
Enemy loses 3 ships and 73 airplanes
Fourth vessel set afire; U.S. strafes soldiers on beaches at Lae
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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U.S. fliers again raid Solomons, Aleutians
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Postpone 1942 income taxes, Senator asks
Post-war ‘instalment’ plan cited by George avoids ‘forgiving’ of levies
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U.S. bombers pound Bizerte
Eight Axis planes downed, five of ours lost
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Grand jury indicts woman novelist
Miami, Florida (UP) –
Ursula Parrott, the four-time married novelist who smuggled an Army private out of a military stockade where he was doing 20 days for being AWOL, was yesterday indicted by a federal grand jury.
She was charged with (1) enticing desertion from the U.S. Army; (2) harboring a deserter, and (3) undermining the loyalty, discipline or morale of the Armed Forces.
Assistant U.S. District Attorney Ernest L. Duhaime said the third charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment or $10,000 fine, or both of the other counts could bring a maximum of three years in prison or a fine of not more than $2,000.
Mr. Duhaime said Miss Parrott would be arraigned Jan. 15 and tried in February. Her bond of $1,000 was continued.
Pvt. Michael N. Bryan, 26, the soldier and former guitar player in the Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw orchestras, may be tried on desertion charges or he may be turned over to federal agents to face trial in New York on an indictment charging him with having a hand in running a “reefer parlor” where marijuana was sold.
Morgantown mine fire claims lives of 13 men
Morgantown, West Virginia (UP) –
The death toll in West Virginia’s latest coal mine disaster was fixed today at 13.
Joseph Stewart, manager of the No. 15 mine of the Pursglove Coal Company, at Scott’s Run, near here, announced “we have no hope at all” that any of the men still trapped by a fire two miles underground would be found alive. Sixty-five men escaped the blaze.
Four bodies have been removed from the mine. Nine others are still missing.
Gas-masked rescue crews continued today to fight the fire, which raged more than 24 hours after it began early yesterday when, it was believed, a coal car was wrecked, possibly by a fallen trolley wire.
Mr. Stewart expressed hope that the fire may soon be brought under control, although the rescue crews, working in relays, had not reached the blaze. Their progress was slowed as they neared the fore scene. The men were using rock dust and chemicals to fight the fire.
Bodies removed last night were those of Rene Leroy, of Morgantown, and Paul Pozega and Charles Hart, both of Pursglove. Asphyxiated by the dense smoke, they were found huddled in the No. 14 air course on the other side of the fire.
The body of Guy Quinn, 43, of Morgantown, a mine foreman, was recovered earlier.
Still missing were Earle McCabe, James Tanner, Ralph Riffle, Ralph Tresler, Merle Benhart, James Carter, John Lagka, Robert Kiser and Frank Robinette, all of Morgantown and Scott’s Run.
Six months ago, an explosion at the company’s No. 2 mine, also near here, killed 20 men.
I DARE SAY —
He’s come a long way
By Florence Fisher Parry
Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt has come a long way since he was elected President of the United States 11 years ago on a platform of strict economy and balancing the budget.
As I listened to him give his State of the Union charge to the 78th Congress, it seemed impossible that I was listening to the same man whose voice I had heard for the first time as the Democratic Convention met to nominate its candidate for President, and a silver-voiced supporter rose to acclaim Al Smith as the Happy Warrior.
Could this strong and tolerant and resolute voice be the same that lashed sardonically at our Supreme Court, advocated and attempted revamping and packing it, encouraged bureaucracy, and surrounded himself with Redford Tugwells and created a government of the New Deal, for New Deal and by the New Deal?
Could this be the bitter campaigner of 1940? Surely not; not this reasonable statesman whose every word was charged with harmony, reassurance and a strong new confidence.
Once to every man
Truly, men rise with the circumstance. The measure of a man cannot be accurately taken unless he is challenged to match his stature with crucial times. It is conceivable that, destined to spend his Presidency in a bickering peacetime administration, Mr. Roosevelt might have relapsed into a cynical defeatist, soured by opposition and embittered by criticism.
But slowly, one by one, the lesser traits gave ground to the great urgency of fateful times.
None but his stubbornest enemies could deny or begrudge him the conquest he made over the listening people of the world, when he addressed the 78th Congress: the most impressive, reasonable and charitable speech of his career.
There was no rancor; no sarcasm; no recrimination. A sweet temper pervaded his address. Only when he spoke of our enemy did his voice carry the old-time edge of sarcasm which used to be directed with patent relish at his home front critics. All his malice seemed to be concentrated into a capsule of revenge reserved only and wholly for the common foe.
To evaluate fairly the achievement of President Roosevelt, one must weigh it against the American landscape of 1930, when he first loomed as a possible candidate for the presidency.
It was the year, you remember when we were reeling under a blow too stunning to realize, and we were still going through the motions to which a long era of prosperity had conditioned us… The era which ended in that historic year, that tragic year 1929. The end of a pipedream. The end of our fond illusion that there weas such a thing in this imperfect world as security and trust.
Remember?
Remember 1929?
The incredible era
Remember the big boards of Wall Street? When a 10-point gain a day was the normal rise in stocks, when Montgomery Ward rose from 200 to 400, when 5-million-share-days were the order of the day? The Federal Reserve Board may have felt the beginnings of uneasiness; the farm belt banks, closing right and left because of farm foreclosures, may have been apprehensive; but the country was on a prosperity binge and nothing could stop the celebration!
Coolidge had put the seal of quiet assurance upon the American future:
The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.
Government was keeping its nose out of business. Andrew Mellon was being called “the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton.”
The Prince of Wales and Charles Lindbergh were the most popular young men of the day. Al Capone was taking in millions of dollars from his various gangster rackets and Prohibition was riding drunkenly in a slipping saddle.
Our relations with Japan were considered ideal. The Washington Naval Conference had settled for all time the disturbed conditions in the Pacific. We had 10 light cruisers, most of them overaged, and eight under construction, so we felt justly safe. We laughed in our sleeves at David Lloyd George, even then considered a little dotey, for saying:
As things are now the nations of the world are heading straight for war – not because anyone wants it, but because no one has the courage to stop the runaway horses.
Just about that time, Franklin D. Roosevelt rode into office on an economy platform. He would balance the budget. He would inaugurate a New Deal. The public debt was $17 billion. But he would fix all that. He would oust the money changers from the temple. He would institute new uses for leisure, of which there was to be an abundance.
He has come a long way since then. A long way. It has chastened him. His latest address stands as evidence of that.