Nazis pushed farther back toward Rome
Germans reported planning new ‘Adolf Hitler’ defense line
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Allies smash Rabaul again
Panicky Japs rushing in air reinforcements
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Girl ‘stands up’ colonel so he marries her twin
Original ‘date’ serves as bridesmaid for her sister
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Registry at Chicago hotel studied for slaying case
Killer of diplomat’s wife may have been guest; revenge theory considered by prosecutor
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Millionaire playboy claims he was gambler’s victim
Cry of ‘Welcher’ and mink coat gift highlight trial
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Although our dive-bomber pilots are largely spared the worry of German fighter planes, they are plenty concerned over the anti-aircraft flak and other ground fire. The German ack-ack over the frontlines is smothering. Here’s the way it works:
Suppose our planes make a big circle back of the German lines in order to approach the target from a new angle, which they do every day.
Well, the Germans may pick them up 40 miles from their target. Our men have to fly every inch of that through heavy flak.
It’s a game of wits. The pilots above and the gunners on the ground know each other’s actions so well by now that it’s almost impossible for either side to do anything new.
If our pilots do think of a new evasive maneuver one day, the Germans have it figured out by the next; and vice versa, if the German gunners shoot a different pattern one day, our pilots have it figured out before the next mission.
Constant evasive action
The planes have to fly in constant “evasive action,” which means going right, going left, going up, going down, all the time they are over enemy territory. If they flew in a straight line for as long as 15 seconds, the Germans would pick them off.
A pilot sits up there and figures this way:
Right now, they’ve got a bearing on me. In a certain number of seconds, they’ll shoot and in a few more seconds the shell will be up here. It’s up to me to be somewhere else then.
But he also knows that the Germans know he will turn, and that consequently they will send up shells to one side or the other or above or below his present position.
Thus, he must never make exactly the same move two days in a row. By constantly turning, climbing, ducking, he makes a calculated hit almost impossible. His worst danger is just flying by chance right into a shell burst.
I asked one of the pilots:
Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to fool them about once every two weeks by just flying straight ahead for a while?
He said:
Because they’ve got that figured out too. They always keep the air dead ahead of you full of shells, just in case.
Some freakish escapes
Pilots have some freakish escapes from shell blasts. Several have had shells explode within a foot or two of their plane without getting hurt.
They say it sounds as if you’d fired off a dozen shotguns in the cockpit. The concussion tosses the plane around like a cork, yet often these close bursts don’t damage the plane at all.
A friend of mine, Lt. Jimmy Groswold of Los Angeles, was thrown violently into a dive by a shell that must have exploded within a foot of a tail of his plane, yet there wasn’t a mark on it when he got home.
The German gunners are canny. For instance, on a bad day when there is a high layer of clouds with just a few holes through which the bombers might dive, they’ll fill up those holes with flak when they hear planes overhead.
It isn’t the heavy flak up above or the medium flak on the way down that worries the pilots as much as the small-arms fire from the ground after they’ve finished their dive.
If you’d ever been in a raid on either side, you’d understand. I know that when German planes come over our lines the whole valley for miles and miles becomes one vast fountain of flying lead with bullets going up by the thousands. It’s actually like a water spray, filling the air as far as you can see.
Our dive-bomber pilots have to fly through this every day. They “hit the deck” the minute they’ve pulled out of their bombing dive, for it’s harder to see a plane that is close to the ground. Also, when they’re almost down to earth the Germans firing at them may shoot their own troops – but even that doesn’t stop them, they keep banging away.
The pilots say it’s the accidental bullet they’re most afraid of. They say that nine times out of 10, it’s some goof standing out in the field shooting wildly into the air that gets a hit.
Miss Kellems sticks to guns; can’t pay tax
Morgenthau fails to convince her, industrialist replied
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Penal report recommends Western Pen be abandoned
Study by Maury Maverick of WPB severely criticizes Pennsylvania’s entire prison system
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Farm protest viewed as aid to fourth term
Midwest group proposes to oust Wickard and Black
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Democratic National Committee members gathering here for tomorrow’s one-day meeting were developing enthusiasm today for a fourth term for President Roosevelt.
Representatives of Midwest Democrats have been invited to convene today in a protest meeting curtain-raiser to the national committee session. But all concerned explain there is no protest against Mr. Roosevelt, but only against some of his farm policy advisers.
Today’s meeting has been widely advertised as directed against Harry L. Hopkins and David K. Niles, two of the President’s political intimates. But the farm-conference sponsors deny that, too.
Nebraska committeeman James C. Quigley, who invited representatives of 13 farm states to meet today, said they would be gunning for Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard and Governor A. G. Black of the Farm Credit Administration.
Invited to the conference were national committeemen and state chairmen from North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Mr. Quigley said he hoped the conference would help win back to the Democratic Party the farm vote “lost by such misfits as Wickard and Black.”
Looks to ‘the peace’
Mr. Quigley is for a fourth term, explaining that “President Roosevelt should write the peace.”
He added:
Who should make the peace is going to be the whole issue this fall. If the Republicans ever hope to win, they will have to produce a statesman who can sit down with Stalin and Churchill and hold his own.
Maine committeeman F. Harold Dubord said he was for a fourth term and predicted that Mr. Roosevelt could carry Maine this time. He lost in his first three tries.
California committeeman Culbert Olson said he and many other members were for the President again. Oregon committeeman Howard Latourette said his state would send a Roosevelt delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
It’s purely personal
Reports of Midwest rumblings against Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Niles have been interpreted as reflecting considerable farm sentiment against a fourth term for Mr. Roosevelt.
Mr. Hopkins was the actual ringmaster of the 1940 Democratic National Convention at which the President was nominated for a third term. Until the war began to absorb his interest, Mr. Hopkins was generally regarded as the administration’s most active political figure, next to Mr. Roosevelt.
Mr. Niles has been charged in the anti-Roosevelt camp with responsibility for fourth term strategy. He is one of six administrative assistants to the President.
According to report
Mr. Hopkins is a special assistant to the President in addition to his responsibilities as a member of the Red Cross Central Committee, chairman of the Munitions Assignment Board, member of the War Mobilization Committee, and trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
Other than persistent published reports, however, there is no evidence here that the farm state conference is intended as a challenge of any kind to a fourth term.
Poll: Survey begun on national service law
Main question is whether such a step now is necessary
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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U.S. told boycott of Argentina only way to avoid war
Remirez government converting inhabitants from nationalism to anti-Americanism, at an alarming pace, report states
By Roger W. Stuart, World-Telegram staff writer
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Alcoa union asks retroactive rule on pay increases
Aid of WLB sought in establishing Jan. 20 as effective date of adjustments arising from negotiations
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Racial groups plan active part in 1944 vote drives
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Color and racial discrimination will be kept a live issue through this session of Congress and the 1944 political campaign, according to plans being made here by a conference of more than 100 leaders of Negro and other minority groups.
Their main effort will be centered in the next few weeks on urging Congress to enact legislation, just introduced, to make a statutory and permanent agency out of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, which was established by presidential order June 25, 1941.
March is planned
This committee, now under investigation by a House committee on a charge of exceeding its authority, would be made into a commission of seven $10,000-a-year members, and would be empowered to issue orders and cause the punishment of persons who resist them, including employers in interstate commerce and officers of labor unions maintaining bars to membership on color or racial grounds.
A “mass march on Washington” to impress Congress with the demand for this bill is in a stage of advanced planning, said B. F. McLaurin, national organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who declared it would be “a peaceful demonstration intended to prevent possible violence and rioting in the middle of war, or after the war.”
Such a march was planned in early 1941, and is said to have been averted when President Roosevelt agreed to appoint the Fair Employment Committee. A. Philip Randolph, the Harvard graduate who heads the sleeping car porters and is guiding the present Washington conference, went on the radio on two nationwide hookups to call off the march.
Committee called blunder
In the first session of the conference, Mr. Randolph charged President Roosevelt with “a great blunder” in appointing a committee to seek a solution to the present controversy of FEPC with 16 Southeastern railroads and some of their unions of white employees. The committee has met with outright refusal from these railroads to obey its directives ordering employment of Negroes, and the unions have ignored the committee.
The committee is headed by Judge Walter P. Stacy of North Carolina. Its appointment, the Negro leader said, was:
…a delaying tactic which kept us from being farther on our way. Some Southern railroads already have begun to give jobs to colored men who were heretofore barred, and there has been definite progress. The President must be made to see that he made a great blunder in that the Stacy Committee serves to give aid and comfort to the recalcitrant railroads.
To write political planks
The conference also plans a meeting of Negro politicians prior to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer, to draft proposals for incorporation into the party platforms.
The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, headed by David Dubinsky, is announced as contributor of $5,000 to an expense fund now at $25,000.
Among well-known names listed in the membership of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission are those of Senators Capper (R-KS), Gillette (R-IA) and Wagner (D-NY); several members of the House; William Green, Philip Murray, R. J. Thomas, Walter Reuther and other labor leaders; Msgr. John A. Ryan, Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas and Wendell Willkie.