German tanks fail to dent Allied lines
By Homer Bigart, representing the combined U.S. press
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Federal uses of paper stock to be checked
Budget Bureau called in as committee seeks to ease pinch
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Union head likens Richberg Plan to negotiated peace
Trainmen’s leader says both schemes would undermine war effort by harming people’s morale
By A. F. Whitney, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen president
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Lewis warns AFL to accept UMW quickly
Miners’ chief threatens to withdraw his bid for readmission
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Bricker raps labor draft, administration
Coverup for bungling, Ohio presidential candidate calls proposal
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio brought his campaign for the Presidency into Pennsylvania today with a blast against the National Service Act proposed by President Roosevelt for the drafting of men and women for war work.
In a press conference in his William Penn Hotel suite preliminary to a McKinley Day address before United Spanish War Veterans at the hotel tonight, Governor Bricker declared there has been no necessity shown for the proposed labor draft.
He charged that the act:
…is only a smokescreen to cover up the administration’s bungling and failure to cope with and handle the muddled condition in industry that has led to many strikes.
On soldier vote
He characterized the labor draft proposal as an extension of bureaucratic control and asserted:
There is no reason to put American men and women workers under the jurisdiction of draft boards.
Commenting on the soldier vote bill before Congress, Governor Bricker said there should be federal-enabling legislation passed, but that our soldiers should be entitled to vote the same kind of ballot they would receive if they were at home.
He suggested the soldier vote be handled by the Army and Navy, but that it be kept on a state basis as well as national.
Soldier bonus die
Governor Bricker said his program toward erasing the federal deficit would be to reduce taxes, to slice federal payrolls to a necessary working number and to slice salaries where they were far out of proportion.
Regarding the mustering-out pay for soldiers, Governor Bricker said it was entirely fair and certainly no more than soldiers deserve for their sacrifice of income and opportunities.
He charged that what the nation needs most today is a change in the philosophy of government as well as a change in the administration.
Visited nine states
He declared:
We must make the people masters of their government, rather than servants to it.
Governor Bricker said it had not yet been determined whether he will enter any of the state preferential primaries. He has visited nine states thus far since announcing his presidential candidacy in Chicago last December.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Around the airdrome they joke about how one pilot won his victory over an enemy plane.
It seems he caught a tiny observation plane, similar to our Cubs, while he was out on a low-level mission. As soon as the frightened little enemy saw our ships, he got as low to the ground as he could. One of our planes pulled up and came down at him in a dive. The little plane was so slow that our pilot misjudged its speed and completely missed him. But as he shot on past, his propeller blast caught the little ship, threw it upside down, and it dived into the ground – quite fatally.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.
You laugh at some very sad things in wartime. For instance, the pilots tell with merriment about the fate of a German motorcyclist.
Our planes were strafing a mountain road one day. They saw this German motorcyclist, who in his terror kept looking back over his shoulder at the approaching planes, and consequently rode right off the highway and over the edge of a 400-foot cliff.
In describing what it feels like to fly one of our high-powered fighting planes, one of our pilots said:
You’re just sitting there with a thousand horses in your lap and a feather in your tail.
Mushily patriotic scenes booed
One night I went into a little Italian town with some pilots to see the movie This Is the Army. The Air Forces had taken over a local theater, and as long as you were in uniform all you had to do was to walk in and sit down. About a third of the audience were pilots and the rest mechanics. I couldn’t help but be interested in their reaction to the picture. On the whole they applauded, but every time the action got a little gooey or mushily patriotic, you could hear a combination boo and groan go through the audience. Soldiers at the front can’t stomach flag-waving from back home.
I’ve just had a letter from a couple of lieutenants in the Army Postal Service enclosing their plan for saving soldiers a lot of letter writing.
Novel idea, but it won’t work
Their plan is based on the theory that the soldier could write just one V-letter and have it mailed to eight or 10 different people back home. That would be accomplished by writing extra addresses on a special pad; then in the laboratory the letter could be photographed over and over, slipping on a new address each time.
It’s a novel idea, but I’ve inquired around among soldiers about it and I’ve yet to find one who wants to write the same thing to a lot of people.
Imagination still occasionally gets the best of some of our letter writers. I heard the other day of a soldier who wrote to his girl that he had been wounded, and then wrote his mother and tipped her off that he had just made it up.
Non-flier gets Zeros in Italy
And another one who doesn’t fly at all wrote home that he had just shot down three Zeros. That’s really good going, especially in Italy, and tops my own record. The most I’ve been able to destroy in one day was an Italian vegetable cart.
Geographical notes: Mt. Vesuvius has a couple of streaks of red lava running down the side from the cone. They show up wonderfully at night and are fascinating. The volcano smokes continually.
The other night in Naples, we had a couple of small earthquake shocks which shook our cots and scared us half to death.
Editorial: Guffey and Southerners
Led mainly by Senator Byrd of Virginia, a backsliding bloc of Southern Senators has revived the idea that Senator Joe Guffey, Pennsylvania’s leading coattail rider, should step out as chairman of the 1944 senatorial campaign committee.
Offhand, we can’t get much excited about whether Mr. Guffey steps down from this job or not.
As a matter of fact, we doubt that his presence as chairman of the senatorial campaign committee will make a whole lot of difference. By our standards, his name at the top of the committee’s stationery would not be regarded as exactly an asset.
But Mr. Guffey has been chairman of this committee in several campaigns. Up to now, there has been no complaint from Senators Byrd, Bailey of North Carolina or Smith of South Carolina, chief characters in the act of being incensed about Senator Guffey.
As a matter of fact, the chief cause for this demand for Senator’s Guffey’s scalp comes, not so much from base opinions these Southern gentlemen may have of Pennsylvania’s junior Senator, as from the fact that he said hard things about their opposition to a soldier-vote bill.
Senator Smith is the only one of this incensed trio who is a candidate for reelection this year. And if Senator Guffey’s position as chairman of the senatorial campaign committee turns out to be a liability to Senator Smith, it seems to us Senator Guffey, for once, will be performing a genuine public service.
The truth is that Senator Guffey was not too objectionable to these colleagues until he let loose with several blasts at an “unholy alliance” of Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans which he said was responsible for defeat of a soldier-vote bill.
Whether or not the alliance was “unholy” may be a matter of opinion, but any group which deprives the Armed Forces of a vote of achieving an “unholy” purpose.
On that issue, Senator Guffey can make no mistake if he maintains an unyielding obstinacy.