America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

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americavotes1944

State’s Democrats hope to ride with Roosevelt

Name candidates with full expectation of being running mates of President
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Keynoting their campaign with “Victory and a just and lasting peace,” Pennsylvania Democrats have named a slate of candidates for state offices with the full expectation that they will be running mates of President Roosevelt in a fourth-term campaign.

Members of the Democratic State Committee yesterday took the first organized action toward a fourth-term campaign when they adopted a resolution asserting that:

The people of this state and of every other state look to Franklin D. Roosevelt for continued leadership.

The Committee instructed State Chairman David L. Lawrence and other committee officers to circulate primary petitions for Mr. Roosevelt and place his name on the ballot in Pennsylvania’s preferential primary April 25.

Speakers at the Committee’s biennial meeting left no doubt that they expected to fight the 1944 campaign on the international issues as both Chairman Lawrence and Rep. Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia, who emerged as the slated candidate for the party’s senatorial nomination, spoke on that theme.

Mr. Lawrence told the 109 members of the Committee:

What we do in the next election and the next administration will determine the speed of victory, the preservation of that victory and its translation into lasting peace, and the security and prosperity of the American people including the 11 million men and women in service in this war.

After receiving the committee’s designation for Senator, Mr. Myers said:

We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of 1918, 1919 and 1920. If we do, the sons of the men now fighting will fight again in 25 or 30 years.

Mr. Myers, 42, a third-term Congressman and former deputy state attorney general, has been an administration follower throughout his service in Congress. His final selection as the senatorial candidate came in a backroom conference nearly two hours after the committee was scheduled to meet.

Complete harmony

The committee members, meanwhile, waited for word from their leaders and endorsed the selection without opposition.

Complete harmony in the Democratic primary, for the first time since 1936, was assured when Rep. Michael J. Bradley of Philadelphia, who had announced an independent campaign with labor backing for the Democratic senatorial nomination withdrew from the race.

The only opposition in the committee occurred when Westmoreland County Democrats, seeking a state judicial nomination for Common Pleas Judge George H. McWherter of Westmoreland County opposed designation of U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Alvin Jones for a State Supreme Court nomination.

Opposition voted down

The Westmoreland Countians, led by State Senator John H. Dent, were voted down, 86–16.

The committee filled out the state slate by designating Superior Court Judge Chester H. Rhodes of Monroe County, auditor general, and F. Clair Ross of Butler, for nominations to the Superior Court; Third Assistant Postmaster General Ramsey S. Black of Harrisburg, for state treasurer, and State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner of Luzerne Country, for auditor general.

2773

First muster pay may be ready within a week

Services suggest a form for applications; rules given

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2774

I DARE SAY —
The loss to us

By Florence Fisher Parry

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2775

americavotes1944

Wallace warns against slip into Fascism

Labor, business, farmer must cooperate after war to avoid it

Los Angeles, California –
The central problem of post-war democracy for labor business and agriculture will be “to work together without slipping into an American Fascism,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night.

A post-war struggled among “big business, big labor and big agriculture” might bring Fascism, he warned at a Win-the-War rally in Shrine Auditorium in which he predicted a “serious conflict” of “the Big Three” unless they all recognize “the superior claims of the general welfare of the common man.”

Mr. Wallace said:

Such recognition of the general welfare must be genuine, must be more than a polite mouthing of high-sounding phrases.

He added:

Each of the Big Three has unprecedented power at the present time. Each is faced with serious post-war worries. Each will be tempted to profit at the expense of the other two when the post-war boom breaks. Each can save itself only if it learns to work with the other two and with government in terms of the general welfare.

Discussing the post-war aims of workers, businessmen, farmers and returning servicemen, Mr. Wallace said they all merged into a general desire for pursuit of happiness.

Scores big businessmen

Organized labor has become of age and has become a responsible partner of management in operating industry and trade, he said.

He scored big businessmen who “put Wall Street first and the nation second” and warned they “will fight with unrelenting hatred through press, radio, demagogue and lobbyist every national and state government which puts human rights above property rights.”

Farmers, seeking bargaining power equivalent to that of labor and industry, have learned the art of lobbying, he said.

He declared:

They intend to use federal power to hold up farm prices after the war.

Mr. Wallace praised businessmen more interested in serving humanity than in making money for money’s sake.

Small man wants chance

He declared:

The small businessman wants a fair chance to compete in a growing market with fair access to raw materials, capital and technical research.

…and demanded that big business not be allowed to control Congress and the executive branch of government so as “to make it easy for them to write the rules for the post-war game.”

Discussing the returning servicemen, he said:\

These young men will run the country 15 years hence.

He warned that:

Their disgust with pressure group politics wrongly channeled could lead to a new kind of Fascism. But, rightly directed, it may result in a true general welfare democracy for the first time in history.

2776

House revives press subsidy

Committee approves aid for small-town papers

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2777

americavotes1944

Oppose propaganda, Bricker tells editors

Columbus, Ohio (UP) –
Newspapers must meet the New Deal’s “calculated purpose to discredit the press” with a threefold attack on government propaganda, censorship and centralization of power in the executive branch, Governor John W. Bricker said last night.

In an address hailed by his campaign headquarters as “the strongest” since he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Bricker warned members of the Ohio Newspaper Association of three “dangers” threatening freedom of the press:

First, the use of the press for propaganda “in the nature of a trial balloon for political purposes.”

Second, censorship:

…the road down which the people of Germany, Italy and Japan were led to slavery and ultimate defeat.

Third, concentration of power in the executive branch of the government, making “the danger to a free press more and more imminent.”

2778

Boilermakers’ union will accept women

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2779

Jack doubts job guarantee after the war

Roosevelt means well, Clevelander allows; fears ‘crackpots’

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2780

U.S. indicts six in whisky inquiry

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Named judiciary chairman

Washington –
Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV) was named chairman of the important Senate Judiciary Committee today to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Frederick Van Nuys (D-IN).

2781

Yanks patrols drive across Bougainville

U.S. raiders wreck 80 Jap planes at Guinea base
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer

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2782

Editorial: Those war profits

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2783

Editorial: Raymond Clapper

This exceedingly fitting and gracious editorial appeared in yesterday’s editions of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Press reprints it as an eloquent tribute to a reporter whose work we were privileged to publish.

Other newspapermen have followed the troops to the field and died in line of duty, but none as well known as Raymond Clapper who might be called a volunteer. A Washington correspondent, he could easily have stayed at his desk in that safe place and continued to write clearly and fairly about what was going on throughout the world. But that happened not to be his way, and he chose to go to the Pacific to get his views on war firsthand.

That was one reason why newspapermen rated Raymond Clapper pretty close to the top among our columnists. If he didn’t score as many sensational scoops as his rivals, he consistently knew that he was talking, or writing, about. He could express his views as boldly and as vigorously as anyone, but he always took the trouble to make sure of his facts. Thus, his writing was characterized by that quietness, that objectivity, that sweet reasonableness which was the measure of the man.

Or just say that he was a newspaperman’s newspaperman, a straight-shooter, a conscientious craftsman, a swell reporter who was killed on the job; and let that be his epitaph.

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Editorial: Dr. New Deal goes south

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2785

Edson: When do wartime profits become ‘unreasonable’?

By Peter Edson

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2786

Ferguson: War books

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

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americavotes1944

Background of news –
Soldier votes and some statistics

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

From present indications, the number of men and women in the Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine will be around 11 million by Election Day, 1944. Of this total, perhaps 7.5 million will be outside the continental United States.

President Roosevelt, in his soldier-vote message to Congress Jan. 26, put the number overseas by Election Day as “more than five million,” but the President evidently slipped up on his mathematics, for that is the estimate given for the Army alone.

Of the 7.5 million overseas on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November 1944, perhaps 1,200,000 will be under 21 (Georgia is so far the only state which has reduced the voting age to 18). Perhaps another 300,000 will be non-citizens, so that the potential voting strength of the Armed Forces overseas will be in the neighborhood of six million.

That is only about 7% of the total potential voting population. It is slightly more than President Roosevelt’s popular majority over Wendell Willkie in 1940, considerably less than his majority over Alf M. Landon in 1936, slightly less than his majority over President Hoover in 1932.

Not likely to be decisive

Some of the six million soldiers eligible will certainly not bother to vote, whatever the facilities provided. Of those who do vote, the division among the two major party candidates is not likely to be much greater than 75–25. In other words, the overseas soldier vote could not decide the 1944 election unless the election should otherwise be considerably closer than the election of 1940, when almost 50 million ballots were cast for President.

From the above statistics, it appears that the overseas soldier vote is not likely to provide either major party presidential candidate a margin of more than 5% of the total vote cast. Under the electoral system of the United States, that must be broken down by states, to gauge its effect.

The Democrats are maintaining that most of the soldier vote will go to the Commander-in-Chief, so that if most of the soldiers are prevented from voting, the Democrats may charge that the election was stolen from them. However, the loss of 5% of his votes in 1940 would mean the loss of only four additional states from Mr. Roosevelt, if the Republican vote were the same as in 1940. These four states are among the largest in the Union – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Wisconsin – and together they account for 104 electoral votes.

Would have made no difference

Mr. Roosevelt received 449 electoral votes in 1940, and the loss of 104 would still leave him 345, considerably more than enough to elect. So, if the Democrats were to lose the 1944 election with most of the overseas soldiers not voting, the loss would be due only in part to the absence of soldier votes, much more to a shift of civilian votes away from the Democratic column since 1940.

Chairman Spangler of the Republican National Committee has reported that informal polls taken by his friends indicate that most soldiers overseas are inclined toward the Republican ticket. If that be true the Republican presidential candidate will suffer if most of the soldiers don’t vote.

The states, with their electoral votes, carried by Mr. Willkie in 1940 by less than a 5% margin were as follows:
Colorado 6
Indiana 14
Iowa 11
Maine 5
Michigan 19

These five states accounted for about two-thirds of the total electoral vote for Mr. Willkie.

2788

Tokyo labels treatment of captives too lenient

Another Jap broadcast recites tale of ‘love and benevolence’ toward war prisoners
By the United Press

The Tokyo radio said today that Kimachi Yamamoto, Vice Minister for Occupied Areas in Asia, told the Diet Thursday that “our treatment (of war prisoners) is too lenient in comparison to that given our prisoners by our nations.”

While Yamamoto’s statement was confined to internment camps in China, a later Tokyo broadcast offered the more inclusive statement that Jap military forces:

…are at all times carrying out a war of moral principles which uphold righteousness and humanity and never mistreat prisoners.

The Jap broadcaster then substantiated this claim with what he modestly termed a “beautiful account of love and benevolence.” The account concerned a Chinese “commander” taken prisoner at the Yunnan front in November 1943, “who thought that if captured, he would be killed.”

The speaker said that because of the “warm care” accorded him, “the officer’s misunderstanding melted away” and he offered such wholehearted cooperation that “his subordinates surrendered in great numbers.”

Tokyo ended the “beautiful account of love, etc.” by declaring that it demonstrated the “high moral principles” of the Japs and showed that the Allies “must be trying to deceive heaven” in charging mistreatment of prisoners.

Washington (UP) –
The information bulletin of the Soviet Embassy charged today that Finland is trying to annihilate all Soviet war prisoners.

2789

Millett: Should baby be priority?

Or must motherhood await war’s end?
By Ruth Millett

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2790

Big baseball confab opens in New York

By Jack Cuddy, United Press staff writer

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2791

clapper.ap

Clapper: A hard war

By Raymond Clapper

Raymond Clapper knew that when he set out with our naval striking force, he might be unable to send any dispatches for many days. So he wirelessed a few columns in advance – from New Guinea, from Munda, from Guadalcanal, and from aboard an aircraft carrier. Other manuscripts may have been found among his effects aboard the ship from which he flew to his death.

Before leaving the country, Mr. Clapper wrote that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” His mission was to help increase that awareness. Hence, we feel sure that he would want us to print, posthumously, the columns that will appear during the next few days.

Munda, Solomon Islands – (by wireless)
It is already a long, hard war for most of the men out here.

Some of the outfits that were among the first to hit the beach at Guadalcanal are now over here. They have been through two hard campaigns. And the Marine airmen are still at it in the rain, mud, jungle. It is rugged living. There are no women, and men go around naked.

I have just spent an evening in barracks with the pilots of one of the most famous Marine torpedo-plane squadrons in the South Pacific. It is the second oldest in the Marine Corps, and was the first squadron on Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, where it brought down 15 Jap planes in the first 10 days.

Listen to some of their stories and you know it not only will be a long, hard war, but has already been one, so far as they are concerned.

It was land or else–

One skinny little guy over in the corner had not said anything, but after an hour somebody asked:

Did you hear what happened to him?

The finger was pointed at Lt. Garth B. Thomas of Dallas, Texas, who brought in his torpedo bomber a few days ago with a live bomb stuck in the bomb bay and ready to go off at the slightest jolt.

Lt. Thomas, who is 24, ordered his two gunners to jump, and they parachuted into coconut trees without a scratch. Thomas then tried to figure and swing out onto the wings, which are midway of the fuselage. Each time he gave it up, as he couldn’t figure out how to jump and clear the elevators.

His hydraulic system had been knocked out, so he could not use his flaps, or brakes. Also, one wheel was stuck.

I asked him what he thought as he went through 15 minutes of landing preparation, suspended between the ground and eternity. He replied:

I kept thinking I would land easy or else.

He shook for a day

At that point, Lt. G. C. Stamets, also of Dallas, interrupted to say:

You should have seen GB next day. His hand was still shaking so hard he rattled a sack of lemons he was carrying.

Anyway, he finally got his wheels down and came in to a landing. Then to his horror a slight ground loop began, but fortunately the plane went into a taxiway and stopped without smashing.

Lt. Thomas jumped out and started to run, warning others away. A bomb disposal man came and found that the bomb fuse was only four inches from striking the bomb-bay doors, which would have meant the end.

I asked the lieutenant what he did after that. He said he went to Rabaul on a bombing mission the next day. That is the kind of life led by this young fellow, who was an adding machine salesman until he enlisted in the Navy in January 1941. He began flight training in April 1942, after having been up in a plane just once in his life. He has six weeks more out here, after which he gets to return home.