America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

The home front –
Women with special college training can join WAC as physical therapy aide

Major study basis for candidates’ selection

Völkischer Beobachter (January 14, 1944)

Die Raubmächte proklamieren:
Schärfste Feindbedingungen für das verratene Italien

Der lachende Dritte – der Bolschewismus

Im Kampf um die höchste Würde in den USA –
Roosevelt schützt jüdische Mörder

Im Schatten der kommenden Präsidentenwahl –
Roosevelts Gegner beziehen ihre Stellungen

Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung

U.S. Navy Department (January 14, 1944)

CINCPAC Press Release No. 226

Aircraft of the 7th Army Air Force attacked installations on Mille Atoll in the Marshall Islands on January 12 (West Longitude Date). There was no enemy fighter opposition. All of our planes returned safely.

U.S. State Department (January 14, 1944)

President Roosevelt to Prime Minister Churchill

London, 14 January 1944

Op priority
Secret

Number 441, personal and secret, from the President for the Former Naval Person.

Your 536. It is my understanding that in Tehran UJ was given a promise that OVERLORD be launched during May and supported by strongest practicable ANVIL at about the same time and that he agreed to plan for simultaneous Russian attack on Eastern front.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ROOSEVELT

The Ambassador in the United Kingdom to the President

London, 14 January 1944
Secret

For the President from Ambassador Winant.

I have just received the following confidential communication dated January 13 from Mr. Eden regarding a matter which you discussed with him at your recent meeting in Egypt:

13 January, 1944

My dear Ambassador,

Before I left Egypt the President mentioned to me that Father Hughes, an English priest who is at present in charge of the Apostolic Delegation in Cairo, had complained to him of the treatment by the authorities concerned of Italian priests and nuns who had been arrested or interned. I told the President at the time that I was sure that there was another side to this question, and informed Lord Killearn of the conversation. I have now in front of me several reports from Lord Killearn which show that I was right, and that Father Hughes, in making these complaints, had, to say the least, allowed his heart to rule his head.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Pittsburgh Press (January 14, 1944)

YANKS RIP ROME AIRFIELDS
4 German bases knocked out by heavy U.S. raids

15th Air Force also hits Yugoslav port; 5th Army troops advance on Cassino approaches
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer

BOMBERS SMASH AT FRENCH COAST
Day-long raid blasts region near Channel

Boulogne believe target; Mosquitoes hit Germany during night
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer

In New Britain –
Allies step up attack on Japs

Arawe beachhead scene of renewed fighting
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer

….

Budget faces drastic cuts

Much ‘water’ is reported in estimates

7 dead, 75 hurt in Texas wreck

Troop train skids, crushes a wooden coach

Murray keeps mum –
Fundamental rights plea made for CIO vote fund

Pressman’s advice to CIO cited in summation of events leading to prosecution demand
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

parry2

I DARE SAY —
Christmas in January

By Florence Fisher Parry

New York –
The theater is my business when I’m in New York, so to the theater I hide, and let who will attend the exhibits, the concerts and the opera. If you have a week here with a dozen shows to cover, there’s little time left for the other arts.

Tired? Tired of show-doing? What a silly question. What physical exertion is employed in going to the theater I have always been at loss to imagine. One sits in a comfortable orchestra seat in pleasant darkness surrounded by civilized persons who keep quiet and mind their own business. At intermission one can limber one’s bones and partake of refreshment.

As for this employment taxing the brain, what call the current attractions can make upon the cerebral centers is beyond my powers to conjure.

Not the real McCoy

We had scarcely arrived here last Thursday morning when word came to us of the smash hit of Ruth Gordon in her very own play Over 21. I have already reported the enchantment we found in the matinee performance, albeit the comedy purported to show the “hardships” endured by the camp-following wives of our men in training, and succeeded only in giving us a glorified version of the real McCoy.

To returned wives, who have known what it was to live without plumbing, heat, refrigeration, electricity and even more basic conveniences, the “living room of 26D, Palmetto Court, Miami, Florida,” was a palatial Eden, and Miss Gordon’s Mainbocher wardrobe the war’s most cruel anachronism. But the comedy and its star and cast – directed with uncanny skill by George S. Kaufmann – is definitely my favorite of all the new pieces in town.

Because we would have had to stand to see it, we eschewed The Voice of the Turtle that same evening, hoping for a better break later in the week. As you know, this three-character comedy with Margaret Sullavan and Elliott Nugent playing the bemused kismetters is the smash comedy hit of the season, and it is to the everlasting credit of the “press” handling it that it has not gone to their heads, but that they continue to bend backward to assist the desperate out-of-town reporter who, perversely, MUST see only the hits for which no seats can be got at any price.

The temptation for press and box office to grow heady over a hit is one all too often yielded to, transforming the most affable box office into a kind of restrained Gestapo headquarters. Standing beside a certain box office the other night, a little heady over my own blessed fortune in being able to bag a rare two-on-the-aisle for a distinguished success, I overhead a customer say to the Lady-Behind-The-Window:

What YOU need, Miss, is another Depression!

The dusky Moor

We went that same night to see Early to Bed, for after such a prolonged run the assumption is that there must BE something there, and found it to have the most apt title of any show in town, full of broad buffoonery, bright dancing, dull innuendo and many, many costumed performers whose names on the program were as plentiful as upon the credit sheet of a super-movie.

It is not, to be quite frank, my kind of show, but the quantity-seekers will get their money’s worth, for had it been a circus it would have required four rings, not three with the sideshow and concert thrown in for good measure. There is always room and need, in New York, for exactly this kind of musical; and I recommend it heartily to the couple of whom I write yesterday, who didn’t, you remember, like Othello.

Which brings me to this highly-publicized and discussed prestige production of the season, the Theater Guild’s ambitious and unique Othello with the powerful Negro Paul Robeson as the dusky Moor. I shall give a fuller report of this production in Sunday’s column; suffice it to say here that I am resolved never again to accept the critical opinion of my betters when it comes to this most personal of all the arts, the theater.

Othello, as presented by the Theater Guild, is NOT the Othello of my strictest dreams. It is challenging, powerful, sensational and popular. But Paul Robeson, in my opinion, does not give a powerful or even distinguished performance; rather does he produce a sonorous and tragic figure of solitary and somehow touching inadequacy. His Othello commanded my pity, but never my admiration or deep homage.

Hillman says post-war rate of $100 billion

Sloan plan called bid fir unemployment for 10 to 15 million


Retail buying and war costs set high marks

Jack & Heintz excess profit $7 million

U.S. to recover money through taxation and withholding payments

americavotes1944

In Washington –
State-controlled soldier-vote bill is given approval

House Elections Committee’s measure rejects Army and Navy plea for federal distribution of ballots

Soldier vote issue may affect 7 million

Washington (UP) –
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-MA) said today that seven million American fighting men will be overseas by election time in November.

Mr. Lodge made this estimate at a Senate Elections Committee hearing on the Lodge-Austin compromise soldier-vote bill.

President Roosevelt in his Christmas Eve broadcast said 3,800,000 men are already overseas and that the total will reach five million by July 1.

Washington (UP) –
The House Elections Committee today approved a soldier-vote bill leaving control over absentee ballots for servicemen and women in the hands of the states.

The proposal would authorize the Secretaries of War and Navy to send cards to all members of the Armed Forces and the Red Cross, merchant seamen and civilians serving overseas, requesting them to notify the secretary of their home state if they desire an absentee ballot. The state officials would then forward the ballots and upon their return dispatch them to local election boards.

Retains Senate provision

The committee-approved bill retains that provision of the Senate legislation recommending to the several states that “appropriate machinery” be enacted to handle the disposition of the presidential ballots.

The principal difference between the bill approved by the House committee and that passed by the Senate is that the House measure provides that the Secretaries of War and Navy should place in the hands of service personnel overseas by Aug. 15 a postal application for a ballot.

The Army and Navy have gone on record as holding that only a system of federal distribution of ballots is workable. Both bills reject that contention.

Coalition defeats bill

The House committee voted 7–5 for the bill, with four Republicans and three Southern Democrats approving it.

The coalition defeated a “compromise” proposal offered by Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX), which would have provided for a federal ballot commission to prepare ballots which would be transmitted to servicemen and women by the Secretaries of War and Navy.


Weiss urges soldier vote

Washington –
If Congress could find no constitutional objections to the draft, it shouldn’t raise such a question about the right of soldiers to a federal ballot in the coming election, Rep. Samuel A. Weiss (D-Glassport) told the House of Representatives.

Mr. Weiss presented petitions signed by 10,000 Allegheny County residents, representing 3,100 men in the armed services and urging passage of a soldier-vote bill.

‘Jet’ secrecy lauded by War Department


Enemy manpower still in millions

AP to appeal membership order of court

Judges ban competition as factor in accepting newspapers


FCC decides against banning newspaper ownership of radio stations

By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Funeral services held for Clare Luce’s daughter