America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

2648

americavotes1944

Bell believed set to oppose Senator Davis

Duff’s withdrawal leaves no other candidate for Grundy, Pew
By Kermit McFarland

Lieutenant Governor John C. Bell of Wynnewood, Montgomery County, is the leading probable as the anti-Davis candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Bell, a potential candidate all along, becomes the principal prospect as a result of the positive refusal of Attorney General James H. Duff to enter the race.

If he runs, Mr. Bell will be supported by Governor Martin, his chief political backer, former U.S. Senator Joseph R. Grundy, and Joseph N. Pew, wealthy Philadelphia oil man.

Mr. Bell is a Pew protégé and Mr. Grundy, up to now, has been averse to running him against U.S. Senator James J. Davis, who will seek renomination in the April primary.

No other candidate

But the refusal of Mr. Duff to run leaves the Grundy-Pew axis virtually without any other candidate.

Chief factors pointing to Mr. Bell’s selection are these:

  • He is the most available candidate.

  • He has the strong backing of Mr. Pew.

  • While he is not held in high favor by the Governor and Mr. Grundy, Mr. Grundy is so set on trying to beat Senator Davis he is likely to take any “reasonable” candidate.

Mr. Grundy was once a member of the U.S. Senate, by appointment of the late Governor John S. Fisher. But in his first campaign, Senator Davis beat him – and badly – for the Republican nomination.

Failure in past

Efforts of the Pew-Grundy combine to beat Mr. Davis six years ago ended in a similarly dismal result.

Mr. Bell is 51, a lawyer, finance chairman of the Republican campaign in 1938. Secretary of Banking in the James administration and Lieutenant Governor since January 1943. He belongs to the Old Guard faction of the party and is bitterly anti-New Deal, a qualification which rates first with Mr. Grundy and Mr. Pew.

2649

Supreme Court rides for fall, justice fears

Disregard of precedent may cause public to lose faith

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Umpire closes door on Ford hearing

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2650

Heavy fighting ahead for U.S. in Marshalls

Invasion opens assault on Japan’s inner ring of defenses

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2651

U.S. bombers blast French invasion coast

Mosquitoes harass Berlin; 20,160 tons dropped by RAF in month

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2652

Eyewitness on invasion!
Shelling smothers Kwajalein defenses

American bombardment sets big fires in Marshalls base as Marines storm ashore
By Robert Trumbull, representing combined U.S. press

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Roosevelt: U.S. won’t hold Jap-held area

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2653

americavotes1944

Willkie, Dewey, Stassen in Wisconsin primary

Madison, Wisconsin (UP) –
A slate of Republican convention delegates pledged to former Governor Harold E. Stassen of Minnesota will be entered in the Wisconsin presidential preferential primary April 4, Dr. F. L. Gullickson, former GOP state chairman, announced today.

Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and Wendell L. Willkie will also be represented by slates of delegates in the primary election.

2654

In Washington –
McNutt favors military view on labor draft

Legion reports support of all of services, 75% of people

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2655

Stallings to write screen story for movie on Salome

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2656

Russia moves to strengthen voice in peace

Foreign affairs autonomy for Red states seen aimed at Britain

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2657

Americans drive several hundred miles toward Tokyo in one giant Pacific sweep

Strongest points in Jap-occupied Marshalls enveloped
By Hal O’Flaherty

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Japs occupied islands in 1914

Marshalls built up since into powerful base

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2658

22 U.S. planes lost in flight from Gilberts

All but six of pilots saved as Corsair fighters run into storm

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2659

americavotes1944

Editorial: Some are counted, some aren’t

They are being counted – those young Americans on the warships, in the air, on the beaches of the Marshall Islands in this greatest of our battles with the Japs.

They are being counted – those young Americans who press forward today against the Germans’ fire, over the hills and plains of Italy, on to Rome.

Their comrades have been counted on a hundred bloody battlefields, from Attu to Bataan to Guadalcanal to Tunisia – and white crosses mark the places where they stood when they were counted.

But some of their representatives in Congress, trustees of the government for which those young men are fighting and dying, don’t want to be counted – not even at $10,000 a year.

Today the Congressmen are voting on the question of whether the Armed Forces shall be permitted to vote in the next election by state ballots or by federal ballots. But they are not deciding this issue by a record roll call, which would provide a public count of where each Congressman stands.

They are deciding it by a “teller vote,” that being a parliamentary device by which lawmakers register their will anonymously – to the end that when election time comes constituents will not know where they stood or how they were counted.

Gen. MacArthur said:

Only those who are ready to die are fit to live.

Only those Congressmen who are ready to vote in the open on the merits of this issue or any other, without weighing party considerations and the danger of political death, are fit to make our country’s laws.

2660

Editorial: Not propaganda

There has been widespread public protest that the government used the Jap prison atrocity report for propaganda purposes. Because it was made in the midst of the Fourth War Loan Drive, many people accepted it as a horror story designed to boost bond sales.

This charge isn’t true. The report was not timed for the bond drive – that was accidental.

The Chicago Tribune had obtained and widely syndicated a story written by Lt. Col. W. E. Dyess, one of the escaped prisoners. This forced the government to reconsider its policy of withholding the story, which it could no longer enforce. We believe that the government acted wisely in making the report official, instead of permitting a portion of it to be revealed through the medium of a Chicago paper.

The Army and Navy apparently realized that publication of the story would bring shock and grief and terrible uncertainty to the families of every American soldier or sailo9r reported missing in the Pacific theater of war. Therefore it had refused to sacrifice, for propaganda effect, the feelings of those American families. When it became impossible any longer to do so, the story was released. And it was merely by chance that the release came in the midst of the War Bond drive.

But once the report was made public, inevitably and legitimately it was used as an added reason for buying bonds and for increased effort all along the home front. There is only one answer to the Jap atrocities – the retribution of complete and final Jap defeat at the earliest possible moment.

Let us get on with the job!

2661

americavotes1944

Editorial: The President says oh

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

There is some small speculation on the question whether President Roosevelt, saying “Oh: when a fourth-term resolution was presented to him, meant the expression to convey surprise, approval or dissatisfaction.

There are, of course, always the further possibilities that he intended the oh of depreciation, or the shrinking oh, or the wool-gathering oh which denotes that the speaker has not kept up with the conversation.

Possibly, also, the President intended to say “Oho,” and committed a typographical error. If he did, this would explain nothing at all, Oho being open to an equal number of interpretations. The best guess is that he meant exactly what he said, and that it was the noncommittal oh, the big round empty oh, the oh of the present non-indicative mood.

2662

Editorial: The Pacific offensive begins

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2663

Edson: Patterson tells how Army would use service law

By Peter Edson

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2664

Ferguson: Two stories

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

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2665

Richberg backs U.S. control of labor policies

Attorney urges post-war action to restore free enterprise

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2666

CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
‘Awaits without’

By Maxine Garrison

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2667

Pegler: The Capitol

By Westbrook Pegler

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