Holcomb retires as full general
Navy says he is first Marine to attain rank – Vandegrift takes command today
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Halsey sees foe on run in Pacific
Declares 1944 will produce decisive victories for us in many quarters
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Marines beat off foe in New Britain
Smash Japanese counterblows at Cape Gloucester as enemy dead rises above 900
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Army perfects jungle fighters
Intensive courses at the new Hawaiian center turn out thousands every week
By George F. Horne
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Hitler sees crisis in 1944; warning to Germans grim
London, England (AP) – (Dec. 31)
Adolf Hitler, in a grim New Year’s message to the German people today, offered them only hope of dogged resistance for their very lives and, anticipating invasion from the west, boasted that wherever they landed, the Allies would receive an appropriate welcome.
In a long written message distributed by DNB to German newspapers and recorded from a Berlin broadcast by the Associated Press, Hitler again sounded the German propaganda note that:
In this war there will be no victors and losers, but merely survivors and annihilated.
A separate New Year Order of the Day to the Army called 1943 “a second year of great crisis” initiated by the Russian winter offensive of 1941-42.
In this message, Hitler announced that “the apparent slackening of the U-boat war is based only on one single technical invention of our enemies” and added:
We are not only about to remove it, but we are convinced that we shall succeed in this within a short period.
He did not disclose what the new Allied invention was.
Even as the Russians, in one of their greatest victories of the war, were driving toward pre-war Poland’s borders and drawing near Romania’s frontiers, Hitler said:
A Napoleonic catastrophe seemed imminent for the German front, yet we were able to master the situation.
The Russian front had also been weakened because of the Allied threat in the West, he said.
He declared:
Garrisoning of positions that are absolutely essential for the defense of Europe demanded a shift in the balance of services in the rear and of traffic installations, a process that went on at the expense of the East.
Many reinforcements destined for the East have now been tied down and must assist in protecting the rest of the European living space. This is a cause of many worries and sufferings for you, my comrades at the Eastern Front.
Germany, he said, was fighting with a “fanatical hatred,” and was inspired by the old biblical saying:
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
To the home front, he promised that “retaliation will come” for the Allied bombings.
He blamed setbacks on “Italian treason” and the breach of faith of French admirals and generals which permitted Allied landings in North Africa, but he claimed that “the balancing of our forces is now achieved.”
His dominant theme in the long message was that times were heard but that worse was to come if Germany lost.
Hitler had a propaganda message for the British – that Britain had now lost the balance-of-power position and was at the mercy of her allies, Russia and America.
The year 1943 “brought us our heaviest reverses,” Hitler admitted, but he also contended that after more than four years of war, the German Reich had not lost one square kilometer of its soil.
Discussing what he called the attempt of Britain and the United States to destroy Europe and Germany with Bolshevism, and discipline the German nation through the “Moscow garrotters,” Hitler said:
The necessity of preserving Europe against the Bolshevist danger depends exclusively on the existence of one dominating continental power.
Other Nazi Party leaders also issued New Year messages.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, said:
Nobody who has even lived through 1943, the most difficult year of war, will ever forget it.
We have suffered setbacks and had to shoulder too great burdens, but they have not been decisive.
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Guaranteed wage called 1944 issue
Murray of CIO says demands in steel negotiations will be pushed in politics
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – (Dec. 31)
A minimum annual wage for industrial workers, to be paid and guaranteed by employers, is being built up by the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a major issue for the 1944 elections, Philip Murray, CIO president, disclosed here.
Such a guaranteed wage is one of the principal proposals now being urged upon Carnegie-Illinois Steel and other U.S. Steel Corporation subsidiaries through direct negotiations by the CIO United Steel Workers of America. The steel workers are also contending for a 17¢ hourly wager increase and other concessions.
Going several steps further than in previous declarations, Mr. Murray said that the CIO’s political action committee would be directed to enlist all possible labor and liberal support for the minimum annual wage plan as they only feasible means of protecting the nation’s workers from destructive economic post-war jolts.
Appeal to WLB planned
The CIO chief also made known that he would shortly ask the National War Labor Board to “impose, if necessary, a guaranteed annual wage for steel workers” if the steel corporations refuse to adopt this program.
The weekly wage guarantee, Mr. Murray explained, would be computed on the basis of a 40-hour workweek. That section of the contract proposal reads in part:
Such minimum weekly wage shall be computed on the straight time average hourly earnings for the year preceding the effective date of this contract, or such portion during which the employee may have been employed, plus the general wage adjustments included in the new contract, multiplied by 40 hours.
Another proviso says:
For each week during the life of this contract that the employee for reasons beyond his control does not receive a sum equal to this minimum, the company shall make up the difference.
First movement of kind
Mr. Murray said:
So far as we know, this is the first time that a labor organization anywhere has undertaken to seek the establishment of an annual minimum guaranteed wage through collective bargaining.
He pointed out that industry in the United States, through the tax laws, has guaranteed itself post-war protection. Provisions have been made, he added, “though these various measures, to afford security for American business after the war is over.”
He went on:
That may be a good thing but certainly the same thing should be done to protect the interests of American workers.
The annual wage is a sensible way of combating widespread unemployment. If we’re going to spread income and afford workers a just share of the national income, it can be done only through this proposal.
Under the proposal as submitted, if a worker’s average hourly rate has been $1, his guaranteed weekly pay would be $40, the year around, or annual pay of $2,080.
Other demands by the union include one week’s paid vacation for employee with three years or less service, and two weeks for those over three years; time-and-a-half pay for overtime learners not to receive less than the common labor rate; all employees who are in the Armed Forces or Merchant Marine to receive vacation pay while in service.
Destination Tokyo, a highly eventful submarine drama, with Cary Grant and John Garfield, opens at the Strand
By Bosley Crowther
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THREE FIRST-PERIOD GOALS MARK TORONTO VICTORY OVER RANGERS BEFORE 15,403
Carr, Morris, Kennedy tally in opening nine minutes on garden ice
Bibeault excels in nets; checks 33 shots as Rangers press to win on Patrick’s 60th birthday
By Joseph C. Nichols
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ODT insists on Chicago
Tells Spangler City has more Pullmans for convention travel
Washington (AP) – (Dec. 31)
The Office of Defense Transportation has reinforced its proposal that both major political parties hold their 1944 conventions in Chicago with a statement that more than three times as many sleeping cars arrive daily at the Illinois city than at any other Midwest point.
In reply to an inquiry from Harrison E. Spangler, chairman of the Republican National Committee, seeking a “list of other cities which might be used with the least interference with our transportation problem,” H. F. McCarthy, director of the ODT’s Division of Traffic Movement, said:
Indicative of Chicago’s dominance is the following table showing the number of beds in regular-line sleeping cars terminating at various favorably located cities:
Chicago 11,368 New York 7,129 St. Louis 3,240 Detroit 1,528 Kansas City 1,279 Cleveland 1,235
McCarthy added that:
The supply of sleeping cars is extremely limited, all available extra cars being dedicated to troop train service.
Editorial: Auld Lang Syne
Wherever the English tongue is known, the words of the Ayrshire plowman were sung last night. They were heard in the wardrooms of ships in dangerous waters, in quarters within sound of the frontline, and probably in prison camps. Like Burns himself, the old song had a humble origin. The music was a tavern ditty, the first line, at least, Allan Ramsay’s. But it is out of humble things, out of the earth, out of taverns, out of the hearts of rough men deeply moved, that greatness often comes.
This is a song of going-away, of the anguish of empire, a song for soldiers, sailors and pioneers. It is a song of the brae and the burn whose sons know them no more, of playmates long since scattered, of hands that were soft as children’s once and now are red and gnarled with toil.
It is a song of friendship, too, and one that will never die. Last night, amid all the uproar – the uproar of merriment in safe cities and of guns and pounding waters and high winds elsewhere – it seemed to have a special meaning.
For the most important fact about the new year is the friendship of the two great nations whose people sing this song and of the nations with which they are united in the battle for justice and of peace. In more than one sense in past times, the “seas between us braid hae roar’d.” We have known suspicions and estrangements. The old friends were scattered when the enemy took up his march. Almost too late they joined against him. The old cry went down the glens, the old call was heard beyond the mountains and the seas. By bitter lessons we have all learned that only by “auld acquaintance” standing firm together can freedom be kept safe.
In the midst of war, we can still drink “a cup o’ kindness:” to the infantry of the line, to whom this day brings no rest, no comfort and no surcease from peril; to the seamen who sent the Scharnhorst down, who covered the South Sea landings and who take the cargoes into port; to the men in the air, steadying the plane for the target run, with maybe an engine shot out and maybe a gunner dead. We can lift our cup to all who speak the English tongue, from Adelaide to Charing Cross, from Sioux City to Land’s End.
We can lift it, the goodwill and sober hope, to others who may yet learn this song and whose songs we may yet learn: to the Russians, who have broken the German armies; to the Chinese, ragged, underfed, under-armed, who have not learned the word surrender in any language; to Frenchmen of the breed that stood so stoutly at Bir Hakeim; to all the unconquered peoples of the conquered nations. For all of them and all of us these days, too, will sometime be Auld Lang Syne.
If we go forward in that spirit, victory is ours – and the year is ours, and all the years.
Editorial: The Nibelung New Year
Adolf Hitler showed a good judgment of news values yesterday when he made “the Bolshevist danger” the main theme of his New Year’s diatribe. The Russian advance, now resumed at a great pace west and southwest of Kiev and in the Dnieper bend, is the outstanding military event of the year, just as the surrender of Italy was the outstanding political event.
A year ago, the army of Marshal Paulus was still holding a precarious position in front of Stalingrad. That army no longer exists. Between Stalingrad and the peak of yesterday’s Russian march lie more than 700 miles. In their retreat, the Germans have equaled Napoleon’s mileage and their losses have been more than Napoleonic. The Ukraine is strewn with the human and mechanical wreckage of their strength. It is the grave of Nazi hopes – and Hitler’s words prove that he is well aware of the fact.
The grave was dug by the Russian Army and people, with as much help as Britain and the United States could furnish. We have sent, for example, down to Oct. 31, 7,000 planes, 3,500 tanks, 130,000 submachine guns, 150,000 trucks, 25,000 jeeps, besides metals, chemicals, machine tools, food and seeds. The air offensive over Western Europe, the land attacks in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and the growing threat of a new front across the Channel have diverted German strength from the Russian lines, but the Russians, under superb generalship, with civilian workers producing beyond all pre-war expectations, have bought back their soil with Russian sweat and blood. The land of masses and of mass armies has also revealed an extraordinary individual performance.
From the very beginning, Hitler’s one chance of realizing his dream of world domination lay in dividing the Western nations from Russia and in crushing them separately. He attempted to achieve this objective first by propaganda, and when that failed, by war. He had some victories in each field, but he lost the propaganda campaign entirely and now he is losing the military campaign. Yesterday he was repeating familiar and futile words. They must have rung unconvincingly, even in German ears.
For the truth is that the historic choice, fully recorded at Tehran, was made long ago. The Western nations have welcomed Russia as a partner in the war and post-war world. Russia has abandoned her policy of isolationism. It is too late for Hitler to break up this union. Its forces are closing in on him. He cannot withstand the Russians as they thrust toward Poland and Romania. What does he think he can do when Gen. Eisenhower pulls his great bow to its utmost tension and lets the new arrow fly?
The little half-gods, the Nazi Nibelungs, must hear behind the voices of Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and the rest the song of coming doom.
McCormick: A grown-up America faces the year of decision
By Anne O’Hare McCormick
The year 1944 will be a year of decision and a year of test. Gen. Eisenhower predicts that it will see the end of the European war, and this means that Britain, Russia and the United States will have won from Hitler the power he aspired to when he threw down the gantlet in 1939. They will have won the power and the responsibility to reorganize Europe.
The European nations were already weak, weary and torn with internal strife when the Nazi drive began. Hitler’s plan of conquest was based on the assumption, largely justified, that all of Europe was as divided as Germany was when he took over. He thought he could ride to continental power over the same divisions, frustrations and hates he had exploited to achieve mastery in the Reich. He was the first to realize a truth that Stalin has now accepted: he saw that the old force of nationalism, harnessed to the new force of socialism would make a formidable team out of the two strongest impulses in the modern world.
Conquered never submitted
But he ignored the fact that the sense of nationhood is as intense in the smallest states as it is in Germany. Fortunately for the three great powers that slowly combined to defeat the Nazi dream of empire, this stubborn spirit of resistance of the lesser peoples held the fort until the big guns were ready to breach the walls. It is hardly too much to say that the fragmentations, the excessive nationalisms, which make it impossible for Europe to live in a world of larger units also make it impossible for Europe to die. If Hitler had been able to conquer Europe, if he had succeeded in convincing Poland or France, Yugoslavia or Holland that German hegemony was tolerable, the war would have been lost in 1940. If Europe had stood with Germany, neither Russian nor Anglo-American force could have taken the fortress.
The decisive factor in this war is not the four-power alliance, omnipotent as that combination of strength will be in the peace. The decisive factor is the crowd presently pushed into the background – the loose, amorphous federation called the United Nations.
The force of nationalism
This came together before the great powers merged. The truth is that not a single European people, and this goes for the satellites as well as the prisoners of war, accepted Hitler’s claims. Like it or not, our first line of defense was the force of European nationalism. This is a fundamental reality the victors will have to face. Stalin has faced it for Russia. He dissolved the Comintern because in twenty-five years it did not win a single nation. He has dropped “The Internationale” because he has learned that it will never have the appeal of a national anthem. This reality will have to be taken into account in the reorganization of the continent. The primary problem of victory will be to reconcile the force of nationalism – the force that won the war – with the compromises among nations and the concessions of sovereignty that will be necessary to maintain the international equilibrium that spells peace. For if it is clear that order cannot be maintained without force, it is equally clear that it can never be maintained by force alone. Except for a breathing spell, nations cannot be kept quiet unless they have an independent status and a conscious stake in the general security.
Many hardships ahead
For the United States, 1944 will be a hard year. This country will have to pour out blood, resources and energy as never before to ensure the victory Gen. Eisenhower expects. His appointment in itself signifies how large our share must be in the desperate struggle ahead. Victory, moreover, will bring burdens as onerous as the sacrifices of war. We shall have to assume a major responsibility for the future of Europe at a time when our minds and hands will not be free to concentrate on European problems. We shall be fighting with all our strength in the Pacific. We shall be distracted by a political campaign at home.
When Tobruk fell, the position of Churchill seemed much more precarious than the President’s. The Prime Minister in Washington during that crisis was strongly incline to agree with Roosevelt’s arguments that a fixed tenure of office for the Executive was safer and sounder than a system in which the government could be voted out of office any time. But as the President’s term nears an end, the advantages are all with the system that can put off a general election as long as necessary. Of the Big Three, Roosevelt is the only one who must face election in the decisive year of the conflict.
It is up to us
This decision is added to the others weighing upon the American democracy during the coming year. The judgments we are forced to make in our own affairs and the affairs of the world are new in our experience, new in the effect they will have on the course of history. The terrible burdens of maturity descend upon us while we are still hesitant and unprepared. But nations never go out to meet destiny. It always catches up with them at an unexpected turn of the road. On this grave and portentous New Year’s Day, it is well that Americans have to realize that they have passed the point where they can blame other powers for the mistakes of war or the failures of peace. The end of war is the beginning of the struggle for peace and of our inescapable responsibility for the world born in 1944.
Board to survey security program
Proposed extension to include small businessman to be studied this year
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Women fix aims on post-war jobs
Miss Anderson says many will need to keep working during reconstruction
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DRASTIC CUTBACKS BEGUN IN ALUMINUM
Two plants are shut down in Queens and two in Jersey – act here to save goal
Output 12 million pounds; major curtailments are still to come – plants owned by DFC, run by Alcoa
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Hanley takes oath of office as 57th Lieutenant Governor
Governor Dewey, Senators, members of family and Spanish War veterans attend – Senate Majority post to be filled Tuesday
By Warren Moscow
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1943 stock trading biggest in 5 years
278,741,765 shares traded on exchange here – bond volume a record since 1936
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OWI HEAD ASSAILS PRESSURE GROUPS
He voices doubt that ‘home front’s is keeping pace with its fighting forces
War crisis called near; he warns against optimism on rise in civilian supplies – hits three newspapers
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