America at war! (1941--) -- Part 2

GOP to adopt Willkie plans?

1940 nominee asks closer world collaboration

Censorship issue involved in official’s auto trip case

Continuance granted; weekly editor’s hometown attorney agrees to rule out controversial stories

Freed by Italians, Yanks to fight again


Navy: Minelayer is lost off Italy

Yank soldier accused of slaying in England

London, England (UP) –
U.S. Army headquarters announced yesterday that Army authorities had charged Pvt. Lee A. Davis, 22, of Temple, Texas, with the murder of one woman and a criminal attack on another at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on Sept. 28.

Authorities said he confessed. A general court martial was planned.

Editorial: America worst

From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editorial: Ernie Pyle

From The Cincinnati Enquirer

The war has produced a great deal of fine writing. Many young reporters have become celebrities overnight through signed articles from the war zones. But the conflict has brought most vividly to the forefront a veteran of the typewriter, Ernie Pyle, whose word pictures from Great Britain and North Africa and the Sicilian fronts have captivated readers of scores of newspapers. Pyle’s name is mentioned among his contemporaries for a Pulitzer Prize.

Not so many months ago, The Enquirer and other newspapers contracted with John Steinbeck to go overseas and write about the common soldier. As Steinbeck warmed to his task, some fine pieces have come forth from his portable. Now Steinbeck is in the thick of it in the Mediterranean. Readers probably expected a typewriter duel of words which would have made journalistic history.

But Pyle has returned home for a well-deserved rest, before going back to the wars, in another zone. And recently he chivalrously commented:

Some people are speaking of Steinbeck and me as competitors in the field of war columning. I’m flattered by the inference. But there is neither competition nor comparison… I’ve always been a Steinbeck worshiper. For my money he’s the greatest writer in the world… I’m glad that Steinbeck is at last with the wars. For he carried to them a delicate sympathy for mortal man’s transient nobilities and beastlinesses that I believe no other writer possesses. Surely, we have no other writer so likely to catch on paper the inner things that most people don’t know about war – the pitiableness of bravery, the vulgarity, the grotesquely warped values, the childlike tenderness in all of us… The war is better for having him in it.

Here is journalism at its best!

Thrasher: Ship production smashes records despite trouble

By James Thrasher

img

Ferguson: Killer

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

Many women are shocked these days to find husbands and sons honored for bravery in battle, tagged with the horrible word “killer.”

A hero’s wife said:

It seems such a strange way to describe Jack. He isn’t a killer. He’s a very kind person.

It is unfortunate that the word so popular in the ‘20s to describe outlaws has been applied to soldiers. We should find another term to describe the men who are fighting for our freedom.

But, I can hear you say, why be so squeamish? To kill the enemy is heroic. We must kill, if we are to conquer.

There’s no denying that, of course, and yet when Jack and Jim and John come home, and look over their treasured clippings in after years, I’m sure they too will cringe at the word, just as the women who love them are cringing now. No man will want to be designated to his children as a “killer” whatever his military exploits have been.

Women who have reared their sons in the precepts of the Christian religion find it hard to fit that word into any mental picture which includes their boys. Maybe this is a sentimental attitude, but I believe it is one we should keep.

By God’s grace, we live in a land of comparative safety. We have escaped the bombings and terrors visited upon other countries, which places an added responsibility upon us. While providing the implements of war and fighting men, we cannot escape another duty – that of preserving the dream of mercy and kindness upon the earth. For if that dies, freedom will be but an empty word.

Background of news –
The President and the reporters

By Phelps Adams, North American Newspaper Alliance

Washington –
Relations between President Roosevelt and the Washington press corps were marked this week by growing resentment following the White House press conference Tuesday at which the President castigated reporters for their handling of stories concerning the impending transfer of Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, to a new post.

Although the President actually did no more than read excerpts from one news story and from two editorials, without voicing any direct comment of his own, he managed by the adroit use of inflection and emphasis to unburden himself of one of the most sweeping criticisms of the press in general that has been heard at the White House in recent weeks.

The whole incident has served to stir a deep feeling of anger within the press corps, many of the members of which feel the President has done them a profound injustice. In order to understand this reaction, it is only necessary to review briefly the facts concerning the origin of these stories.

The source: Army and Navy Journal

The story that Gen. Marshall was to be removed from his present position as Chief of Staff under the influence and pressure of powerful interests first attained nationwide currency through its appearance in the Army and Navy Journal, long regarded as a semi-official publication and whose editor is a close personal friend of Gen. Marshall himself.

When reporters sought to check on this report, they had little or no difficulty in verifying its complete truth. During the period when the controversy was at its height, the regular presidential press conferences were canceled and the reporters, therefore, had no opportunity to seek confirmation or denial from the President. But they did seek and obtain full confirmation from sources, which in the absence of the President, were the most completely authoritative and fully informed.

At this point, therefore, Washington reporters found that they were by no means dealing with rumor and innuendo, as the President suggests, but were in possession of well-authenticated facts which they published.

Fully aired in Congress

The publication of these facts had an immediate aftermath that not only served to contribute to British-American disunity to a highly unfortunate degree, but also led to the publication of reports that the motives underlying the proposed transfer of Gen. Marshall were selfishly political.

The truth is that these stories ascribing the most reprehensible motives to those seeking to remove Gen. Marshall from his present post likewise were inspired to a large degree by government officials and were freely and fully discussed upon the floors of Congress.

In this way, they were reported not only in the nation’s press in its routine coverage of speeches on the floors of Congress, but they were likewise published at government expense in The Congressional Record. In this way, the government itself gave official currency to the very reports for the circulation of which the President now blames the press.

Soldiers want glamor girls to visit them overseas

Jolson: They never want to see another war film

14 generals are promoted by Roosevelt


Lyon is replaced as OWI news editor

Millett: Practical

Teacher vacations at wartime work
By Ruth Millett

Army, Navy tilt at West Point

Pegler: On adequate information

By Westbrook Pegler

Clapper: Free air

By Raymond Clapper

American woman saves 200 fighters for Allies

Etta Shiber turns Nazi prison experience into prize book on French underground for which she manned one station

The home front –
Women who have 35 hours flying time, CAA certificate may be ferry pilots

WAAFs becomes WASP (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots)

Carloadings expected to hold at 1942 levels


Tax on certain federal properties advocated

The Fighting Merchant Marine

American shipping performs Herculean job transporting war’s men and equipment
By Gilbert Love

Völkischer Beobachter (October 3, 1943)

London außenpolitisch auf dem Rückzug –
Bolschewisten und Yankees diktieren den Briten

Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung