Yanks batter Rome airfields
Berlin reports big death toll in suburbs of Italian capital
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Italian fighting flares –
Ortona falls to Canadians
8th Army takes keystones of German line
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Marines repel Jap assaults
Push close to airfields on New Britain
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Fourth term hint is given by President
His disavowal of ‘New Deal’ regarded as start of campaign
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Roosevelt ordered to rest by doctor
Washington (UP) –
The White House announced today that President Roosevelt is suffering from a head cold and will remain in his presidential quarters today.His physician, RAdm. Ross T. McIntire, said the President has no fever, but he thought it best for him to stay away from his offices.
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt’s disavowal of the term “New Deal” as the administration’s reform trademark was widely regarded here today as the first important move toward a win-the-war fourth term campaign.
But others regarded his triumphant accounting of administration policies since 1933 as a reply to those critics who have accused Mr. Roosevelt of having lost interest in the reform era now that a war was underway.
The President tossed the term “New Deal” overboard in a casual conversation last week. He made it official at yesterday’s news conference during which he read a partially prepared statement to nearly 200 reporters who somehow felt they were participating in an historic occasion.
Fourth term drive?
He said the patient – the United States – is not wholly well yet and won’t be until the war is won.
He was asked:
Does all this add up to a fourth term?
The President replied:
Oh now – we are not talking about things like that now. You’re getting picayune. I know you won’t mind my saying that, but I have to say something like that.
His rejoinder recalled a similar set of circumstances three years ago when he was asked whether he would seek a third term. On that occasion he advised the inquiring reporter to go in a corner and put on a dunce cap.
Raises questions
Whatever the motive, the abandonment of the term “New Deal” after ten years of what has come to be called the New Deal-Democratic coalition raises some political questions. The coalition began to sag in the 1942 general elections and buckled badly in scattered contests this year.
Some of Mr. Roosevelt’s left-wing supporters have been intimating that he was running out on New Deal philosophers as well as terms. Some of his conservative party partners have been warning of political disaster unless Democrats dissociate themselves from the New Deal at once.
Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D-CO) said on Dec. 6:
The New Deal is through. If the Democratic Party persists in hanging on to its dead corpse, it will lose the Senate, the House and the governors of every Northern and Western state in the next election.
Guffey’s dispute
Southern politicians have been muttering for months. Their displeasure burst like shrapnel in the Senate this month against Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) who had offended them in his role of New Deal spokesman. It is significant that the Southern bitterness is against the “New Dealers” rather than against the administration as a whole or against the President himself.
New Dealer No. 1 in this town is Harry L. Hopkins, Mr. Roosevelt’s personal aide and confidante. There was speculation here today whether the President might be preparing to get him out of the country in the presidential campaign year. There would be precedent for that.
When Herbert C. Hoover was nearing the test of his second presidential campaign, he summarily removed from his Cabinet and sent to London as ambassador an old man who had been the prophet of prosperity until the Depression came and then had come to be regarded as a crippling political liability.
The old man was Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Mellon did not want to go. But he went.
Left-wing supporters of the administration began to be apprehensive after Mr. Roosevelt, refereeing a bout between Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones, declared Mr. Jones the winner and stripped Mr. Wallace of all participation in the war effort. It was a rebuke rarely equaled.
The New Republic’s Washington columnist on Aug. 23 wrote:
The New Dealers who are not trying to apologize for the President are asking themselves whether Mr. Roosevelt again will become the champion of progressive government once the war is won.
New leadership
The Nation, liberal weekly, said on July 24 after the Jones-Wallace row:
The man who created the New Deal seems intent on destroying it before he leaves office in his flaccid retreat before the Bourbons of his own party. Isn’t it about time for labor and the left to look around for new leadership?
Similarly suspicious, the eighth annual convention of the CIO United Auto Workers on Oct. 7 voted to support a Roosevelt fourth term only on the condition that he took “an aggressive position against the foes of the New Deal.”
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Bitter battle takes shape in GOP Senatorial race
Davis flays Martin-Grundy-Pew faction in party supporting Duff for his position
By Kermit McFarland
A bitter battle for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator, at stake in the April 25 primary, today appeared virtually certain.
Senator James J. Davis practically announced his candidacy on a visit here in which he touched off a bristling attack on the factional leaders who plan to oppose him.
Backed by Governor Martin and the Grundy wing of the party, Attorney General James H. Duff of Carnegie is the leading probability as a candidate against Mr. Davis. While Mr. Duff has made no public statement, the Governor and the Grundy forces have been proceeding as though his candidacy were an accepted fact.
Local leadership
Locally Senator Davis’ campaign will be headed by County Controller Robert G. Woodside recently reelected to a fifth term; Sheriff Robert J. Corbett, C. J. McBride of the 31st Ward, long an organization stalwart, and the Young Republican group.
County Commissioner John S. Herron, also Republican County Chairman, will undoubtedly be among the leading backers of Mr. Duff.
Senator Davis said:
Reports indicate certain men and interests are pooling their personal wealth, their political positions and their personal influence to gain control of the processes of government.
Can hold whip hand
These forces are in position to collect enforced contributions from reluctant contributors. They can hold the whip hand of dismissal over many people, both in public and private employment. They are able to make concessions to, or to threaten reprisals upon many thousands of our citizens to support those whom these interests will designate.
Senator Davis named no names, but there was no disguising his targets – joseph R. Grundy, dean of the Old Guard and perpetually a Davis opponent, and Joseph N. Pew, perennial money prop of the Republican organization.
He denounced the “pernicious practice” of “spending vast, uncountable sums to control the selection and the election of candidates.” Their ability to spend and raise campaign funds has been the chief basis of power for both Mr. Grundy and Mr. Pew.
Pew guns for Davis
Mr. Pew has given no sign of his support of Mr. Duff, until now at least preferring Lieutenant Governor John C. Bell, but he appears to be more interested in licking Mr. Davis than in any other project. Mr. Bell is anxious to run for the Senate, but a three-way split is unlikely – it would only help Senator Davis.
Senator Davis, for the first time, was defeated when he sought the Republican nomination for Governor last May. This defeat has encouraged the Grundy-Martin forces in their efforts to unseat him, an effort in which they have previously failed three times.
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Roosevelt nettled?
Lewis’ ‘face’ pops up again in seizure of railroads
Drastic action attributed by some to anger over union victory in mines case
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Critics’ award won by anti-Nazi film
New York (UP) –
The anti-Nazi motion picture, Watch on the Rhine, has been selected by New York film critics as the best picture of 1943, it was announced today.
Paul Lukas was voted the best actor of the year for his part in the picture and Ida Lupino was named as the best actress for her role in The Hard Way. Maj. George Stevens was cited for his direction of the film The More the Merrier.
A special award was voted the U.S. Army Signal Corps for its films, Why We Fight and Report From the Aleutians.
Simms: Ring of steel will tighten around Japan in New Year
Tokyo, other enemy war confers will be bombed, but few expect end of war in next 12 months
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Invasion staff of Eisenhower almost filled
Britons named naval and air commanders of Allied forces
By Joseph W. Grigg, United Press staff writer
London, England –
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Allied invasion command neared completion today with the announcement that two Britons, Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay and Air Chf. Mshl. Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory – had been appointed naval and air commanders-in-chief respectively.
Another in the alternate series of announcements in London and Washington revealed that Gen. Eisenhower’s deputies for the naval and air phases of the European invasion would be British veterans renowned in their fields and tempered by long experience.
Helped at Salerno
Adm. Ramsay, an amphibious expert since early this century, supervised the Allied landings in Sicily and at the Salerno beaches of Italy, and took a prominent role in the planning of the entire Mediterranean campaign.
Marshal Leigh-Mallory has shouldered a large share of the responsibility for the organization of Britain’s fighter offensive for the past two years, and is an expert in the synchronization of fighting services. He laid out the aerial operations incident to the Dieppe attack.
Doolittle named
Balanced against the delegation of the two key posts to Britain were Gen. Eisenhower’s appointment as supreme commander and the assignment of Lt. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz as commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces over Europe and Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle to head U.S. air forces in Britain and as commander of the 8th Air Force.
Other members of Gen. Eisenhower’s new staff are: British Air Chf. Mshl. Sir Arthur W. Tedder, deputy commander under Gen. Eisenhower, and Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of British ground forces.
Two outstanding gaps in Gen. Eisenhower’s command were the places of Adm. Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham and Gen. Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, deputies under Gen. Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Theater. But Adm. Cunningham was already in London as British First Sea Lord and obviously will take a major role in the invasion in one capacity or another.
Plan Balkan push
The fact that Gen. Alexander, who fashioned the 8th Army campaign and was largely responsible for the victories in Tunisia and Sicily, remains in the Mediterranean indicated that that theater was not going to be written off by stabilizing the Italian front, but that a Balkan campaign was probably planned.
In support of this indication was the transfer of Maj. Gen. Ira C, Eaker, head of the U.S. 8th Air Force and an expert in daylight bombing, to become Allied air commander in the Mediterranean, and the shift of Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, one of America’s foremost tank officers, from command of all U.S. forces in Britain to become deputy supreme commander of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean under British Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson.
All Allied resources will hit enemy
Washington (UP) –
Both the United States and Britain “will hit the common enemy with everything available,” the U.S. High Command pledged today.
The pledge was apparently issued in reply to Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D-CO), who said Saturday that Americans would comprise 73% of the Western Europe invasion force and British and Canadian troops the remainder.
The High Command did not reveal the proportion to be used but it noted that Britain, with one-third of the population of the United States, has considerably more troops in the Mediterranean than the United States. The High Command also declared flatly that “there has been no disagreement between American and British chiefs of staff” in the matter of the invasion proportions.
Poll: Public favors two-term limit on presidency
Sentiment, however, is linked with popularity of White House incumbent
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
For the first time in six years, a periodic sampling of public opinion on the issue of amending the Constitution to limit the presidency to two terms, a majority of Americans voters are today in favor of such a plan.
An anti-third-term amendment, approved this year by the legislatures of four Midwestern states, will be taken up by many other state legislative bodies in the coming months, and because of heavy support among Republicans, may find its way into the GOP presidential platform next June.
The sentiments of the nation’s voters on the two-term amendment have been recorded at regular intervals since as early as 1937. Always a majority of voters with opinions on the subject have opposed the idea until the present date. Now, more favor it than oppose it.
Present trend shown
The trend is revealed in Institute surveys on the following issue:
Interviewing Date 11/25 – 12/1/43 Survey #307-K Question #3aWould you favor adding a law to the Constitution that would prevent any President of the United States from being reelected in the future if he has already served two terms?
| Yes | No | |
|---|---|---|
| 1937 | 49% | 51% |
| 1938 | 48% | 52% |
| 1939 | 42% | 58% |
| 1940 | 41% | 59% |
| April 1942 | 46% | 54% |
| Today | 54% | 46% |
In both surveys this year, only one person in every 14 (7%) had no opinion.
Depends upon party
Sentiment on the two-term issue is closely bound up with the question of how well-liked the incumbent in the White House happens to be.
Republican voters are overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the presidency to two terms. Their vote is 81% today. Democratic voters, on the other hand, oppose the idea by 72%.
Still another reform often proposed concerning the presidency is to limit it to one six-year term with no reelection. Senator O’Daniel (D-TX) has introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for a six-year term, and Ohio Governor John W. Bricker recently came out in favor of the same reform.
While the majority of voters oppose a six-year term, nevertheless there has been a rise in the number approving the change.
Six-year term opposed
The trend is revealed in surveys by the Institute on the following issue:
Interviewing Date 11/25 – 12/1/43 Survey #307-T Question #3bWould you favor changing the term of office of the President hereafter to one six-year term with no reelection?
| Yes | No | |
|---|---|---|
| 1936 | 26% | 74% |
| 1939 | 24% | 76% |
| Today | 34% | 66% |
Roosevelt sums up achievements as he sings ‘New Deal’ swansong
‘Old Doe New Deal’ cured patient, he says
Franklin D. Roosevelt – he called in a new doctor.
Washington (UP) –
Here is a play-by-play account of President Roosevelt’s news conference recital yesterday of the accomplishments of the New Deal and its replacement by a “win-the-war” administration.
The discussion began when a reporter asked:
Mr. Roosevelt, after our last meeting with you, it appears that someone stayed behind and received word that you no longer liked the term “New Deal.” Would you care to express any opinion to the rest of us?
The President said he supposed someone would ask that, and that he would have to be terribly careful in the future how he talked to people after press conferences. He went on to say that what the newspaperman had printed was accurate reporting. Mr. Roosevelt said he had hesitated for a bit as to whether he would say anything further about it, and it all came down, really, to a rather puerile and political view of things.
Some people, he said, have to be told how to spell “cat,” even people with a normally good education. A lot of people have forgotten entirely.
How did the New Deal come into existence, he asked himself, answering that it was because in 1932 there was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America. He was suffering from a grave internal disorder – he was awfully sick. And they sent for the doctor.
In 1933, many things had to be done to cure the patient internally. And they were done – though they took a number of years, the President continued.
There were certain specific remedies that the old doctor gave the patient. The people who are peddling all this talk about “New Deal” today, he said, are not saying anything about why the patient had to have all those remedies. He thought those critics should be asked directly just which of the remedies should now be taken away from the patient, especially if he should come down with a similar illness in the future.
The patient is all right now – he’s all right internally now – if they will just leave him alone, he added emphatically. The President continued that two years ago, after the patient had become pretty well, he had a very bad accident. This time it was not an internal trouble. Two years ago, on Dec. 7, he got into a pretty bad smashup – broke his hip, broke his leg in two or three places, broke a wrist and an arm. Some people didn’t even think he would live, for a while. And then he began to “come to” again. The President said since then, he has been in charge of a partner of the old doctor. “Old Doctor New Deal” didn’t know “nothing” about broken legs and arms. He knew a great deal about internal medicine, but nothing about this new kind of trouble.
So, he got “his partner, who was an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Win-the-War,” to take care of this fellow who had been in this bad accident. And the result is that the patient is back on his feet. He has given up his crutches. He isn’t wholly well yet, and he won’t be until he wins the war, the Chief Executive continued.
He added that he thought this allegory is almost as simple as learning again how to spell “cat.”
The “Old Doctor” saved the banks of the United States and set up a sound banking system.
He continued his roll call with one of the old remedies – the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – to guarantee bank deposits, supposing there must be some people, because they raise so much smoke, who would like to go back to the old system and let any bank, at will, go and lose all their depositors’ money without redress.
In those days, he said, two other remedies prescribed were saving homes from foreclosure, through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation; and saving farms from foreclosure by the Farm Credit Administration. He supposed some people today would like to repeal all that and go back to the conditions of 1932, when the people out West mobbed a judge who was trying to carry out the law of the land and foreclose a farm.
Then there were such remedies as rescuing agriculture from disaster by the AAA and the Soil Conservation Act; providing truth in the sale of securities and protecting investors through the SEC. He recalled saying that there is an undercover drive going on in this country today to repeal the SEC – urging that people be allowed to sell any kind of securities to the widows and orphans and everybody else in this country. A lot of people would like to do that, to take off all the protection, and let “Old Mr. Skin” skin the public again.
Another remedy was slum clearance – decent housing. There hasn’t been enough done yet in slum clearance. He did not think that most people who have ever seen slum developments would advocate stopping that, or curtailing the program, saying of course there may be a few – a small percentage of – real estate men who would like to stop all government interest in housing.
Reduction of farm tenancy was another specific.
Again, in the old days, “Doctor New Deal” put in old-age insurance; he put in unemployment insurance. He did not think the country would want to give up old-age insurance or unemployment insurance, although there are a lot of people in the country who would like to keep us from having it.
He said the “Old Doctor” took care of a great many crippled and blind people through the federal aid system and some people want to abolish all that.
And then there was the public works program, to provide work, to build thousands of permanent improvements – incidentally giving work to the unemployed – both through the PWA and the WPA. There were provided federal funds through FEEA, for starving people who had reached the end of their resources; minimum wages and maximum hours; the Civilian Conservation Corps and reforestation; the NYA, for thousands of literally underprivileged young people.
Abolishing child labor was another remedy. It was not thought to be constitutional in the old days, but it turned out to be, he said.
There were also reciprocal trade agreements, which of course do have a tremendous effect on internal diseases; stimulation of private home building through the FHA; and the protection of consumers from extortionate rates by utilities; the breaking up of utility monopolies, through Sam Rayburn’s law.
The resettlement of farmers from marginal lands that cannot be cultivated profitably; regional physical developments, such as TVA; getting electricity out to the farmers through the REA; flood control; and water conservation; drought control and drought relief; crop insurance and the ever-normal granary; assistance to farm cooperatives; conservation of natural resources.
Although his list totaled up to about 30, he said he probably left out half of them.
But at the present time, he added, the principal emphasis, the overwhelming emphasis should be on winning the war. In other words, we are now suffering from that bad accident, not from an internal illness, he said.
Mr. Roosevelt said that when victory comes, the program of the past, of course, has got to be carried on, in the light of what is going on in other countries. It will not pay to go into a military isolationism. This is not just a question of dollars and cents, although some people think it is, he said. It is a question of a long-range policy, which ties in human beings with dollars, to the benefit of capital and the benefit of the human beings.
This post-war program, of course, hasn’t been settled on at all – except in generalities. Recalling the meeting in Tehran and the meeting in Cairo, he said we are still in the generality stage, not in the detail stage, because we are still talking only about principles. Later on, the United Nations will come down to the detail stage. He said we don’t want to confuse objectives by talking about details now.
He said it seems pretty clear that we must now plan for an expanded economy which will result in more security, more employment, more recreation, more education, more health, better housing – so that the conditions of 1932 and the beginning of 1933 won’t come back again.
Now, have those words been sufficiently simple and understood to write a story about, he asked the reporters.
He was asked:
Does that all add up to a fourth-term declaration?
The President replied:
Oh, now, we are not talking about things like that now. You are getting picayune. That’s a grand word to use – another word beginning with a P – picayune. I know you won’t mind my saying that, but I have to say something like that.
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
On the way back from the front the other day I stopped in an evacuation tent hospital to see Dick Tregaskis, the war correspondent for International News Service, who was so badly wounded a few weeks ago.
Dick got a shell fragment through his helmet and it ripped his skull open. He is alive at all only by a seeming miracle. Even after he was wounded, other shells exploded within arm’s length of him, yet he escaped further injury.
He still has his battered steel helmet. It has a gash two inches long in the front and a smaller one at the left rear where the fragment came out. The blow knocked off his glasses but didn’t break them.
Even with such a ghastly wound, Dick walked half a mile down the mountain by himself until he found help. Late that night he arrived at the hospital, was put to sleep on morphine, and Maj. William Pitts performed the brain operation.
It was Maj. Pitts’ fourth head operation that night. He took more than a dozen pieces of bone and steel out of Dick’s brain, along with some of the brain itself. He and the other doctors are proud of pulling Dick through – as well they might be.
At first, Dick had little use of his right arm, he couldn’t read his letters, and he couldn’t write. Also, he couldn’t control his speech. He would try to say something like “boat” and a completely different yet related word like “water” would come out.
But his progress has been rapid. During my visits he made only a couple of small mistakes such as saying “flavor” when he meant “favorite.” But he always keeps trying until the word he wants comes forth.
He works at recovery
The doctors say he is a marvel. While other patients usually lie and wait for time to do the healing, Dick works at it. He constantly uses his arm to get it back into action, and he reads and talks as much as he can, making his mind practice.
While I was visiting him the second time, a corporal in the Medical Corps came in with a copy of Guadalcanal Diary, which Dick wrote, and asked if he would autograph it. Dick said he’d be glad to except he wasn’t sure he could sign his name.
He worked at it several minutes, and when he got through, he said:
Why, that looks better than the way I used to sign it.
And after the boy left, he said:
I always like to be asked to sign a book. It makes me feel important.
Dick Tregaskis is a quiet and scholarly type of newspaperman. His personal gear is in the same room I’m living in back at the base camp, and I notice his books are the Shakespeare type. He wears tortoise-shell glasses and talks slowly and with distinctive words. He is genuine and modest.
His manner belies the spirit that must drive him, because he has by choice seen a staggering amount of war. He has been through four invasion assaults in the Pacific and the Mediterranean. He wrote the famous Guadalcanal Diary, which sold half a million copies in America and has been made into a movie. He is a very thoughtful person and was as eager to know about my book as if it had been his own.
Mark Clark looks up
Dick is married and his home is in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He is the tallest correspondent over here, being 6’5”. Gen. Mark Clark, who is 6’2”, always says he’s glad to see Tregaskis because he’s one of the few men he can look up to.
One of the surgeons laughingly remarked that if Dick had been short like me, he might never have been wounded, but Dick said no, that where they were that day, with no cover anywhere, even “the tallest midget in the world would have got it.” He meant the shortest midget, but we understood.
Dick wears a size 14 shoe and once had to travel all the way from Guadalcanal to New Caledonia to find a new pair. He is strong and muscular but really thin, and his health is not too rugged. The last thing he did before going to sleep with morphine the night he was wounded was to warn the doctors against using any drugs that would stimulate his diabetes.
The hospital where he spent the first three weeks was only a few miles behind the lines. It was swathed in mud, and Dick lay on a cot in the middle of a dirt-floored ward tent crammed with other patients.
A few days ago, they moved him to a general hospital farther in the rear, and in a short time the Army will send him back to America for final recuperation. They’ve now taken a big patch of skin off his leg and grafted it onto his head to cover the wound. They predict he will be ready for the front again within six months.