America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

2600

We know, now –
Japs revealed as ‘worse’ than anybody thought

Col. Romulo, on bond trip to Pittsburgh area, tells of warnings that went unheeded

While a smug world was still viewing the invasion of China as an isolated incident, Col. Carlos P. Romulo, then the civilian publisher of a chain of Philippine newspapers, was seeking to shake his brethren out of their lethargy by reporting the atrocities which the Japs were committing against the Chinese.

Col. Romulo explained here today:

But everyone who read the stories simply said, “The Japs can’t be that bad.” And they refused to believe it until they saw the same things happening to their own people.

And that’s the same situation with many Americans. We still can’t believe the Japs can be that bad. I agree the Japs aren’t as bad as the recent War Department report shows them to be. They are worse.

Col. Romulo, personal aide-de-camp to Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the defense of the Philippines and literally the last man to leave Bataan, came to Pittsburgh today with three other distinguished personalities to aid in the Fourth War Loan Drive.

The other guests of honor were authors Louis Bromfield, Fannie Hurst and Clifton Fadiman, who is master of ceremonies of the Information Please radio program.

Col. Romulo left Bataan three hours before the U.S. surrender in an improvised plane held together with bamboo sticks, which had been fished out of the bay and pieced together by soldiers under the late Lt. Col. (then Capt.) W. E. Dyess, one of the officers who escaped Jap internment to tell the world of Nipponese barbarism.

The Philippine colonel said:> When I left Bataan, Capt. Dyess was already emaciated, he had fought alongside the men of Bataan for 4½ months.

Shadow of a shadow

For two months he and the rest of the men had eaten only canned salmon and rice twice a day, and for the last 2½ months we had only a handful of rice each day at 5:00 p.m. [PHT].

But when I next saw Capt. Dyess in a hospital in America, after his escape from the Japs, he was only a shadow of his former self – a shadow of a shadow.

Col. Romulo, who had been ordered to leave Bataan by Gen. MacArthur, said Capt. Dyess told him he was shocked by the Jap cruelties and solicited his aid “to get the War Department to release the story.”

Although anxious to get the story to the public, the colonel defended the delay of the Navy and War Departments in releasing it, on grounds that the government had hoped to get the Japs to change their ways and improve prisoner-of-war treatment.

He said:

Now, the State Department reports it had filed 89 protests with the Japs. From what I know of the Japs, even 8,900 protests won’t change them.

Civilians suffer, too

Jap cruelties, he said, were being perpetrated against Americans and Filipinos while fighting was still going on. The colonel told of one specific instance when he found a captured Filipino Scout hanging from a tree with his face slit from ear to ear.

He added:

And right now, the civilian population in the Philippines is suffering terribly from starvation and lack of medicine.

True to America

Nevertheless, he said, Filipinos are standing by America, “the only people in the Far East to stick by their mother country in time of need.” This he attributed to the absence of American imperialistic designs.

During the Battle of the Philippines, Col. Romulo said the Japs sought to divide the Filipinos and the Americans.

He related:

The Japs directed their propaganda at the Filipinos, calling on us to lay down our arms and be treated as common brothers of a common color.

A whirlwind tour

The Japs pointed out to us that we outnumbered the Americans and they called on the Filipinos to turn on the Americans and help beat them.

But we Filipinos are not brothers of the Japs. We are brother Americans.

The itinerary of the four guests of honor included a breakfast with 300 bond-buyers at Joseph Horne’s Tea Room: a “Dutch treat” luncheon at the Penn-Lincoln Hotel, Wilkinsburg; a rally at 1:30 p.m. ET in the Wilkinsburg High School auditorium; a tea at 3:30 p.m. at the Women’s Club of Mt. Lebanon and a rally at 8:00 p.m. in Syria Mosque.

2601

Russians make attack on Pope

U.S. supplies reach Nazis via Spain, Reds declare

…

2602

Two sisters questioned in Chicago hotel death

Women detained after undergoing lie detector tests; first husband cleared

…

2603

parry2

I DARE SAY —
Offenses, little and big

By Florence Fisher Parry

Sunday evening again we listened to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. give another of his performances as a benevolent master of ceremonies, this time featuring the beautiful relationship that has been inspired by the New Deal between management and labor. Our interlocutor was questioning a young Connecticut boy of 16 on his part in the war of production.

“And have you a girl?” asked our Secretary of the Treasury in jocular vein.

“Well…”

“Or maybe,” prompted our Secretary facetiously, “there are more than one?”

The boy answered:

No sir, one is enough to handle at a time.

“You are learning early,” our Secretary of the Treasury told him.

Politicians are not actors. Statesmen are not actors. Presidential aspirants are not actors. When they appear on planned programs, on the radio or stage, they are out of place and out of character, and are very apt to make fools of themselves.

Wendell Willkie on Information Please last night lost immeasurably in dignity and prestige – and no doubt very considerably loused up his chances as a candidate.

O dignity of office, is this too passing from the mortal scene?

I don’t mind so much having Greer Garson telling me what I ought to do for the victims of infantile paralysis, or Ginger Rogers telling me what I ought to do about war bonds. But when our lesser luminaries, who until now have never made anything more impressive than the cover of a dime movie magazine and whose love lives are the Hays Office’s major headache, tell me how I ought to live my life in wartime, I find myself, to say the least, unmoved.

On the other hand, the grand way in which some of our great stars like Eddie Cantor and Joe E. Brown are serving their country at the expense of their very health (for these men are not young and need their every heartbeat) offers us one of the very finest examples of patriotism to be found anywhere.

Why discriminate?

Nothing that has happened in any war in which this country has been engaged has caused the shock which has swept the nation following the revelation of the Japanese atrocities. One would think that we had never before heard, much less credited, such horrors. Yet hideous as are these latest reports, they are little worse than the authenticated atrocity stories which from the very beginning of the war have come out of Europe, and which, it now seems clear, we simply didn’t believe.

Never, in any war, have we had such access to the facts as since the Nazis began their reign of terror. From the pens of the sufferers themselves, from eyewitnesses and from reliable reporters have come floods of documented atrocity stories quite as revolting, in their way, as the horrible report out of Bataan.

But we didn’t believe them.

Was it that we didn’t want to believe them? I wonder. Is it because, deep within us, there IS a race affinity? We cannot believe that a white man, a German, bearing out features, possessing our own fair skin, could torture, slowly, the body and brain of a fellow mortal.

On Arrival and Departure

In the last book by that excellent writer Arthur Koestler, Arrival and Departure, he documents experiences which, for sheer cold-blooded horror, match anything we have heard out of Bataan.

One story alone, that about the mixed transports which run all over conquered Europe, can be found in the current Reader’s Digest, and I recommend its reading along with the atrocity stories now being given full space in our press.

These mixed transports consist of a couple of dozen cattle trucks, or cars, which make up the trainload. The one described by the author consisted of 17 cars, bolted from the outside and unventilated, containing doomed prisoners.

The last seven carriages contained Jews: two loads of useful Jews who were being taken to dig fortifications and five loads of useless Jews, old and sickly ones, to be killed. Two trucks contained political prisoners, two trucks contained young women who were being taken to army brothels and six trucks with people being taken to labor camps. That’s why it was called a mixed transport.

Why can we not face it? Our enemy, white skin or yellow, is evil incarnate, and there is little difference in his various employments of sadism.

2604

Petrillo job fund due for an airing within two weeks

Opposition to unemployment insurance idea based on potential power it gives to heads of union groups
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

…

2605

U.S. casualties rise to 146,186

OWI reports new total, including 33,153 dead

Washington (UP) –
The Office of War Information today announced that total U.S. casualties of the war now amount to 146,186, including 33,153 dead in addition to the recently reported victims of enemy torture.

The number of prisoners of war is given as 29,898. The enemy has reported the prison camp death of 1,933 of those captives, mostly in Jap territory. In addition, 7,700 are believed dead as a result of ill treatment in the Philippines.

This addition, not yet officially figured into the government totals, would place the number of American dead in this war over the 40,000 mark. This is still far below the total of 126,000 U.S. servicemen listed as having died or been killed in World War I.

Of the latest casualty totals, 49,518 are listed as wounded, and 33,617 missing.

U.S. Pacific fliers wearing flak suits

…

2606

americavotes1944

Willkie to tour West

New York –
Wendell L. Willkie will leave Friday for a speech-making tour through Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Minnesota and Iowa. He will speak chiefly for the Fourth War Loan Drive, but it was understood he would also make several political speeches.

2607

Doctor called on spy charges

Attorney denies client is linked to ring

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2608

Supreme Court splits sharply on OPA ruling

Decision exempting some warehouse companies from control attacked

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2609

New tax pact keeps present income rates

Agreement on $2,311,800,000 is $8 billion short of President’s figure

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WPA cost U.S. $10 billion

8 million given jobs in eight years

…

2610

Woman becomes colonel

Washington –
Lt. Col. Ruth Cheney Streeter, director of the Marines Corps Women’s Reserve, was raised today to the rank of colonel. She is the wife of Thomas W. Streeter of Morristown, New Jersey, and the mother of four children. Her three sons are now in the armed services.

2611

Human bombs rip Nazi tanks in Rome area

Americans blast panzer vehicles to break German trap
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer

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2612

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Italy – (by wireless)
One night I was gossiping in a tent with a bunch of dive-bomber pilots, and one of them who was sitting next to me said in a sudden, offhand way:

I wonder what those Germans in that truck are doing tonight?

He was referring to a truck he had strafed and blown up the afternoon before. Such things sometimes sort of get under their skins. The pilots like to go on a hunt, and it’s thrilling to sweep down and shoot hell out of something, the same as it is to shoot a running deer, but underneath they don’t relish the idea of killing people who aren’t trying to kill then.

The pilot said to himself, “Some of them aren’t doing anything tonight,” and then the subject was changed.

Every time I go to an airdrome, it seems as if I always sleep n the cot of the last pilot who has been shot down. It’s quitenatural, since there are usually just enough cots set up to go around, and you sleep on whichever one is empty. I don’t mind it, because I’m not superstitious. But it does impress you after it has happened several times in a row.

One is afraid of combat

I have found that almost every combat unit has (1) one pilot so nerveless that he thinks his narrow escapes are funny, and means it; (2) a majority who truly love to fly and at times find a certain real exhilaration in combat, but who on the whole exist only for the day when they can do their flying more peacefully, and (3) one pilot who absolutely hates airplanes and keeps going, if at all, only through sheer willpower.

In recent weeks, I’ve known of two pilots who developed such neuroses against airplanes that they had to be sent to a rest spot where they wouldn’t see a plane for six months.

The other night I was talking with a swell lieutenant who said frankly that although he liked planes and liked to fly, he was scared of combat. He admitted he had balled up a good many missions, and he said he was absolutely no good as a combat pilot.

If all this gives you the impression that pilots are worried to death and go around with long faced, then I’ve committed a crime. The pilot I’ve just spoken of is one of the happy-go-lucky type. I suppose pilots as a class are the gayest people in the Army. When they come back from a mission, they’re usually full of high spirits. And when they sit around together of an evening, nine-tenths of their conversation is exuberant and full of howling jokes. There is nothing whatever of the grimness in their conduct that you get in the infantry while it is in the line.

Oklahoman hilarious actor

As an example, one night during supper we heard some terrific shouting in the adjoining room, as though a politician were making a Fourth of July speech. Finally, we moved to the door to see what it was all about, and there sat a roomful 0f pilots before their finished supper plates, giving rapt attention to another pilot who was on his feet delivering a burlesque harangue on the merits of snake-oil hair tonic.

This pilot was Lt. Robert J. Horrigan of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has an infectious grim and a perpetual sense of mimicry. It turned out that his father, now a banker in Tulsa, for many years was on the stage as a magician and his uncle was a famous juggler. The two even toured Europe with their act.

Bob Horrigan would like to go on the stage himself after the war, but he supposes he won’t. his current ambition is to land an airplane on the Tulsa Airport with his family and friends all out to meet him. He wouldn’t even object to a small brass band.

The nicest thing about Horrigan’s impromptu acting is that he gets as tickled as his audience does. His final act is a 100% sound imitation of the unconventional scene of a Messerschmitt shooting down a Spitfire. The audience of pilots yells its delight as though there wasn’t a care in the world.

2613

americavotes1944

Taylor: Great interest roused abroad in U.S. election

Britons try hard to keep hands off in contest for Presidency
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer

New York –
British leaders I saw in London, leaders in the neutral countries, French leaders in Algiers and the leftovers of the Italian regime in Italy all now show great interest in America’s forthcoming presidential election. To a man they are in an Information Please frame of mind. They lose no time in asking a traveling journalist many political questions.

It goes without saying that the British leaders hope Mr. Roosevelt is reelected. Nothing could be more neutral. Our President is a great future in England. Britons of all ranks are literally proud of him for what they regard as great wisdom and courage in his policy toward England in her darkest hours.

Most British leaders told me that until recently they took Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection for granted. American policy overseas features the President’s omnipotence. This is done in a widespread attempt to impress all foreigners with the finality and long-term effectiveness of whatever President Roosevelt says or does.

Congress-minded

But the British remain very Congress-minded. They learned a sharp lesson in the days of Woodrow Wilson. When Mr. Roosevelt’s party lost ground heavily in both the House and Senate, the British leaders began to sit up and take notice. And as the results of those last elections began to sink in, the British policymakers have, in the words of one of Temple Court’s most famous barristers, “started to reexamine the American political case.”

The British realize fully, and state openly, that it would be fatal for Britain to become in any way involved in America’s domestic politics, or even for Mr. Churchill to reveal a preference for any candidate.

‘Case of measles’

He told me:

I think the more of us who stay away from the United States until after the elections, the better.

Actually, this leader called our elections “America’s case of measles.”

I could find no leader in the British government who did not assume that Mr. Roosevelt would run again. This seems a settled matter as far as their information was concerned. Following our polls as they do, most of them seemed to believe Governor Thomas E. Dewey would be the Republican nominee and there was intense interest in London in him. Nearly every British government officer, industrial leader, union official or banker I met asked me something or other about Governor Dewey.

Others showed an interest in Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio. As for Wendell Willkie as a prospective successor to Mr. Roosevelt, the British have had an opportunity to see and meet Mr. Willkie on their own home ground and to reach much he has written – for his One World is now published in England – and therefore their curiosity is naturally not so evident.

Hand in hand with this current “reexamining of the American political case,” the betting odds at Lloyds on Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection have dropped to even money.

2614

State Department shows –
Only Allied bullets, bombs can end tortures by Japs

Scores of U.S. protests on atrocities against military, civilian prisoners ignored by Tokyo

Washington (UP) –
Bullets and bayonets and bombs are the only language the Japs can understand.

The State Department made that clear today with the publication of new chapters in the continued story of Jap cruelties committed not only against prisoners of war but also against civilian internees.

Neither threats of retaliation against Jap prisoners in American hands, the promise of certain punishment after the war, not appeals that she abide by her pledged word, the State Department disclosed, have swerved Japan from the campaign of abuse she launched against her hapless captives in the early weeks of the war.

Radio Tokyo, commenting on the American disclosure that 7,700 U.S. troops had been tortured and slain after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, announced today that “there will be no change” in the Jap policy in regard to treatment of prisoners of war.

New horrors revealed

The State Department story was released late yesterday by Secretary of State Cordell Hull after an hour-long conference with President Roosevelt. It added new horrors to the account of war camp atrocities published by the Army and Navy last Thursday night.

The Army-Navy account revealed the mass murder of more than 7,700 American and 14,000 Filipino heroes of Bataan and Corregidor. The State Department release went less into statistical detail, but it itemized “categories of abuse and neglect” to which not only war prisoners but also civilian internees were subjected by their “brutal” and “barbarous” and “depraved” captors.

Congress seethes

Congress still seethed with indignation over the earlier revealed atrocities. Rep. Augustine B. Kelley (D-PA) introduced a resolution urging President Roosevelt to enter into agreement with Allied governments to make certain that war criminals shall not find sanctuary in neutral countries “but shall be brought to justice and punished for their barbaric crimes.”

The State Department story disclosed that starting on Jan. 13, 1942, five weeks after Pearl Harbor, this government had sent Japan from one to 11 protests a month – 89 in all – charging such crimes against American prisoners as starvation, torture, solitary confinement, illegal prison terms, corporal punishment and plain murder.

All of protests futile

Mr. Hull said the list of protests was released to acquaint the American public with the department’s attempts to persuade Japan “to treat American nationals in its hands in accordance to human and civilized principles.”

Significantly, the last of the protests, dated the very day on which the Army-Navy atrocity account was published, listed 18 specific complaints – all of which had been cited repeatedly in previous representations. Two years of diplomatic spade work through “the protecting power,” Switzerland, had succeeded in removing not a single ground for protest.

Jap promise recalled

The list of representations disclosed that as early as Nov. 17, 1942, the State Department was protesting against crimes so serious as to warrant the use of the word “atrocity.” On that date, this government protested against “six cases of atrocities perpetrated by Japanese authorities.”

The protests constantly called to Japan’s attention the fact that although she is not a signatory to the Geneva prisoners of war convention, she had promised to apply the humane principles of that convention to U.S. prisoners.

Threatened retaliation

The State Department release disclosed that early in he war this country threatened – in the mild language of diplomacy – to retaliate against Japs in American hands unless the enemy changed his tactics. There has never been any indication, however, that the U.S. government ever carried out such a threat or even seriously considered doing so.

On Feb. 14, 1942, the State Department disclosed, the United States informed Japan that this government might:

…have to reconsider its policy of extending liberal treatment to Japanese if assurances are not given by the Japanese that liberal principles will be applied to Americans.

The promise of punishment for those responsible for crimes against U.S. prisoners had been published before. It was made on April 12, 1943, after the Jap government executed U.S. airmen who fall into enemy hands after the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.

Ask list of wounded

Through the list of protests there ran repeated requests “for lists of American wounded, sick and dead;” for permission for Swiss and International Red Cross representatives to visit prison camps in Japan, China, Thailand and Burma; for adequate food, heat, clothing, medicine.

In connection with efforts to get names of prisoners, the list revealed that on May 25, 1943, the State Department was still trying to get a list of civilians captured when the Japs conquered Wake Island on Dec. 22, 1941.

Senator condemns atrocity release

Washington (UP) –
Senator Dennis Chavez (D-NM) charged yesterday that the government release of the story of the Bataan atrocities more than a year after they occurred was “inopportune and inhuman.”

Senator Chavez said mothers throughout the nation, who had been told for many months that help was reaching their sons in prison camps, were now told that they “suffered the agony of the damned.”

Senator Chavez shouted:

Why was it necessary? I have only heard one answer. The Secretary of the Treasury says we will sell more bonds.

New Mexico, he said, felt the blow deeply for the entire New Mexican National Guard was lost on Bataan.

Senator Chavez cried:

It is a shame that American mothers have to suffer as they have suffered without our at least holding out the hope that Gen. MacArthur will receive 1,000 planes instead of a negligible number.

Red Cross explains delay in report

1280px-American_Red_Cross_Logo.svg

New York (UP) –
Richard F. Allen, vice chairman of the American Red Cross in charge of insular and foreign operations, said yesterday the report on Jap atrocities was suppressed six months ago while an attempt was made to send supplies to American prisoners.

He said at the North Atlantic Conference of the Red Cross:

We thought it more important for the prisoners of war to get relief than for the American public to know what happened.

Mr. Allen said that at the time the Red Cross learned of the atrocities committed against American prisoners in the Philippines, it also received a Jap suggestion that supplies be sent via Vladivostok.

The Japs proposed to transship the supplies to prison camps, Mr. Allen said. The supplies were sent six months ago, but it is reported that they are still in the Soviet port.

2615

Lady paratrooper nervous!

Ann Savage not at all happy when she has to leap from plane in a movie scene

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Ann Harding prefers home life to career in movies

Retires to give her full time to being wife of famous conductor
By Ernest Foster

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2616

americavotes1944

Duff refusal puts a crimp in GOP plans

High command searches for likely man to oppose Davis

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – (special)
The Republican high command was in a dither today as State Attorney General James H. Duff of Carnegie declined to become a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Duff had a showdown meeting with Republicans in Philadelphia yesterday. Although they insisted that he throw his hat into the ring for the seat now held by Senator James J. Davis, the Attorney General said he would not seek the office.

A few hours later, Mr. Duff returned to Harrisburg and issued this brief statement:

To end any conjecture there may be respecting my attitude on the United States Senatorship: I am not and will not be a candidate.

Party leaders had been banking on Mr. Duff’s entrance into the Senate race at the April 25 primaries. They were so sure they could convince him to become a candidate that they shunned all other possible candidates – until last night.

Now, the time is running short – Saturday is the first legal day to circulate nominating petitions – and a suitable candidate must be found.

Shortly after Mr. Duff gave his final answer to former U.S. Senator Joseph R. Grundy and Joseph N. Pew Jr., organization leaders, Governor Martin and George I. Bloom, his secretary, left for Philadelphia to join the parleys.

Loaded for Guffey

On the surface, Mr. Duff’s withdrawal would appear to be a gain for Lieutenant Governor John C. Bell Jr. of Philadelphia, who would like to be the organization candidate in opposition to Senator Davis.

However, many of the state leaders feel that the candidate should come from Western Pennsylvania. This stems from their desire to run Col. Jay Cooke, former Philadelphia Republican leader, against U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey in 1946.

Col. Cooke is now overseas with the Armed Forces. He was defeated by Mr. Guffey in 1940.

In this connection, it was learned that some leaders have injected Secretary of Internal Affairs William S. Livengood Jr. of Somerset into the picture.

Four years to go

Mr. Livengood, who has been eyeing the governorship race two years hence would prefer to stay in his present post which pays $10,000 a year, the same as a Senator receives.

He started his present four-year term last spring.

It was reported here that Mr. Livengood had already declined to become a candidate for the Senate but had not closed the door to the idea if organization leaders insisted that he make the race in the interests of the Republican Party.

2617

americavotes1944

In Washington –
GOP is hit by fact that soldier vote embarrasses ‘em

Taft and Brewster blame administrations for delay
By John L. Cutter, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Senators Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and Owen Brewster (R-ME) today blamed the administration for the delay in passage of soldier vote legislation.

They accused proponents of the compromise Green-Lucas Bill of prolonging debate by seeking passage of a substitute for legislation already approved by the Senate. The charge was voiced in reply to a plea by Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) that the Senate complete action today or tomorrow on the substitute – the Green-Lucas measure.

Pointing out that the Senate has debated the new bill more than a week, Senator Barkley protested that:

If it takes these soldiers and sailors as long to win… as it takes the Senate to provide them with a vote, the war will last until the presidential election of 1972.

Senator Taft charged that “all the delay is caused by the insistence of the administration that the Senate reverse its action of Dec. 3.” The Senate on that date passed a bill which recommended that the various states amend their absentee voting laws if necessary to facilitate soldier voting by state ballot.

Senator Brewster recalled that after President Roosevelt demanded speed, House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. (R-MA) requested unanimous consent to take up the pending soldier-vote bill immediately, but Speaker Sam Rayburn refused to recognize him for such a purpose.

Democratic maneuver may force record vote on issue

By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
House Republican leaders acknowledged today, by calling a party conference, that their membership had been maneuvered into an embarrassing position on the soldier-vote bill.

On the eve of consideration of the issue, they called the conference to try to ease the fears of some members that support of the Rankin “states’-rights” bill, which President Roosevelt has called a “fraud,” might endanger them politically.

They are also worried about the refusal of the House Rules Committee, dominated by a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats, to provide for a separate record vote on the federal-ballot bill of Rep. Worley (D-TX) backed by the President.

On today’s schedule

Mr. Roosevelt’s demanded that members “stand up and be counted” on this measure so their constituents could know how they voted.

Republicans must face this issue squarely when the House takes up the Rankin bill, scheduled for today.

For a group of Democrats, led by Rep. Anderson (D-NM), have worked a maneuver of their own to force the Republicans into the open. They have pledged more than enough members to require a record vote at the outset on their question whether there should be a record vote on the Worley bill, which will be offered as a substitute.

This motion may fail, but at least there will be a yea-and-nay vote on the question of secret voting, and administration leaders will interpret votes against a record vote as against the Worley bill. They will have this available for the fall campaign.

Republicans have become uneasy over their alliance with Southern Democrats behind the Rankin bill, which would leave voting to the diverse state laws, and which Secretaries Stimson and Knox have said could not be administered effectively.

Since President Roosevelt in his message tried to make support of the federal-ballot bill a party measure, there has been a softening in Southern Democratic ranks. Republicans were perturbed today by reports that some Southern Democrats might desert them in the question of keeping the vote secret, although most Southern Democrats will still back the Rankin bill.

White supremacy issue

Likewise, Republicans have been embarrassed by the motives behind Southern support of the “states’-rights” bill. Southerners are being accused of wanting to maintain state restrictions – poll-tax requirements, etc. – so that Negro soldiers cannot vote, and this does not fit well with Republican hopes to win back the Negro vote in Northern cities.

Senator Eastland (D-MA), co-sponsor with Rep. Rankin (D-MS) of the “states’-rights” bill, blurted this into the open in the Senate yesterday. He said Southern soldiers did not want the Green-Lucas bill – the Senate counterpart of the Worley federal-ballot bill – because it would threaten state control of election machinery.

He said:

They are fighting to maintain white supremacy and state control of election machinery.

2618

americavotes1944

Guffey promises statement after soldier vote passes

By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

Washington –
U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA), unceremoniously dropped as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, will have more to say about that later – but not until the Senate has disposed of the soldier-vote bill.

Meanwhile, prominent Democratic leaders are predicting that Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney (D-WY) will have been appointed to succeed him.

Mr. O’Mahoney said today that he was “definitely not a candidate,” but few believed he would turn down the offer if it came through a unanimous vote of the Democratic steering committee.

Fourth term is issue

The Wyoming Senator has not yet committed himself on the fourth-term question, and it is pointed out by some that he has not been extremely close to the administration since the Supreme Court revision fight in 1937.

Should he become chairman of the campaign committee, he would be placed in the position of fighting for President Roosevelt’s reelection should the President decide to run again.

Mr. Guffey said today he doesn’t want to jeopardize action on the soldier-vote measure by continuing, just now, either of two current arguments revolving around his activities.

But after the soldier-vote bill has passed the Senate, he said:

I intend to issue a full and complete statement concerning these matters, about which there has been so much confusion and misinformation.

The matters he will answer are as follows:

  • Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley’s action in removing Mr. Guffey as campaign chairman for the Senate Democrats.

  • Senator Harry F. Byrd’s assertion that Mr. Guffey’s action in trying to force District of Columbia officials to give an appointment to his personal physician was a “contemptible act.”

Mr. Guffey was apparently nettled by the outcome of his feud with the Southern wing of the Senate Democrats which brought demands from Senator Byrd for his replacement as campaign chairman, even though he had planned to relinquish the job long ago.

Mr. Byrd and other Southerners began demanding Mr. Guffey’s scalp after the Pennsylvania Senator charged the federal soldier-vote bill was killed by amendment by an “unholy alliance” of Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans.

At the time, Mr. Guffey let it be known that he had been trying to get rid of the job to which he was twice appointed, and expected to be replaced because one of Pennsylvania’s Senate seats is involved in this year’s election.

It was also reported at the time that Mr. Guffey had handed his resignation to Senator Barkley about Dec. 1. Several weeks ago, there were indications that administration forces, in a move to appease Southern Democrats, would dump Mr. Guffey. Mr. Barkley, who appoints the campaign chairman, wouldn’t comment.

A new rule is found

When he announced the forthcoming change, however, Mr. Barkley said Mr. Guffey had resigned, and promised a further statement in a few days. Mr. Guffey promptly said he had been removed, and said he would make his statement later.

In the delicate maneuvering to avoid hurting anybody’s feelings, a brand-new Senate precedent was discovered – that a campaign chairman can’t serve when an election is underway in his own state. Previously, the practice was to replace the campaign chairman only when his own seat was up for election, some Senators contended, and that was why Mr. Guffey stepped out of the post in 1940 when he was reelected.

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Editorial: Another prediction

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