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
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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.
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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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.
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.
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
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.
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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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.
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.
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:
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Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley’s action in removing Mr. Guffey as campaign chairman for the Senate Democrats.
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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.
Editorial: The party line
Earl Browder, America’s No. 1 Communist, is urging the Republican and Democratic parties to “explore the possibility” of a single presidential candidate in 1944.
Mr. Browder says thus “unprecedented measure” should be taken to “meet an unprecedented emergency.”
Being unlike any other, this war, of course, is posing unprecedented problems for Americans which they are meeting with unprecedented measures.
But even these unprecedented measures must lie within the basic framework of democracy or we should be guilty of scuttling the very thing we fight to preserve.
There is never – and can never be – such an unprecedented emergency that the people of a democracy must yield the fundamental right to choose their representative and, above all, their chief representative – the President.
Whether Mr. Roosevelt is to receive a fourth term, or whether some Republican or some other Democrat is to be entrusted with the Presidency, is for the people to decide.
An election campaign which would present but one candidate to the people would be a denial of the democratic concept of freedom of choice.
It would, in fact, constitute a scrapping of democracy for the “one-party line” of the Communists.
Editorial: An insult to whom?
Senator Taft calls President Roosevelt’s soldier-vote message an “insult to Congress.”
Maybe so. But what would you call Congress’ mismanagement of this issue?
It will be an insult, and more, to the Armed Forces if they are deprived in the least degree of an opportunity to vote.
Background of news –
New Dealers woo Farley
By George Van Slyke, North American Newspaper Alliance
New York –
President Roosevelt’s bid for a truce with the conservative branch of the Democratic Party marks a complete reversal of the politics of his two preceding national campaigns and is accepted today by leaders in both the New Deal and right-wing camps as confession of concern over the fourth-term candidacy.
If the White House were not alarmed over the deep split in the party ranks, it is regarded as certain that the national committee dominated completely by the President would not have about-faced in its sessions Jan. 22 in Washington and made its amazing appeal to James A. Farley to forget the past and come back home.
For the first time since the long battle was waged through the President’s second term to purge the Supreme Court and old-line Democratic Senators and Congressmen has Mr. Roosevelt made such a move for harmony.
Party unity deemed essential
Second only in political importance to the formal launching of the fourth-term campaign six months in advance of the original White House schedule, the overture to Mr. Farley as head and front of the anti-fourth-term candidacy is the most significant move so far made by the New Dealers.
Following Mr. Farley’s battle against the third term in the 1940 convention, he fell into disfavor with the President and New Deal politicians and was dropped without ceremony or apology.
It has been an open secret for the last year that Mr. Farley was the driving power behind the anti-New Deal campaign against a fourth term. Now that the campaign is actually underway, the fourth-term managers have recognized that Mr. Roosevelt must have a unanimous party behind him in the 1944 election if he is to overcome the losses he had sustained on the home front in the last four years.
This is the first definite move initiated by New Dealers in more than six years to bridge the old party split, most serious in the Democratic ranks since the Prohibition fight in the 1928 campaign with Al Smith as the nominee.
Post-election brushoff expected
Judging from all surface indications, the old party chiefs with the exception of the Hague-Flynn-Kelly combination are distinctly cool to the New Deal overture. Evidently, they regard it as a mere gesture which would hold through the campaign this year by […] Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy and the New Deal bosses and then collapse and […] further assurance on that subject.
Mr. Farley has made no comment on the action of the Democrats in lauding him to the skies as their greatest leader. It has not been possible to reach him for comment which in itself is unusual as he is as a rule approachable on any political subject.
He is leaving in a few days for a six weeks’ business trip across the country and his office has stated it was to be strictly a business tour. However, it will not be surprising if the Democrats flock around to see him in every state he enters.
Reports of steel plant closing to be probed
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3-point plan advanced for Nazi economy
Allied control over German fiscal policy urged after war
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