News photographer slugged by colonel
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Hon. Jap Kale goes to war for us – to aid bond drive
Ida Lupino turns over yen and sen to group which will auction it off during campaign
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Editorial: Soldiers must vote
There is still hope that the Senate can work out some practicable compromise in the soldier-vote fight.
The so-called states’-rights measure passed by the House does not do the job. Under it, most servicemen abroad would be disfranchised, because not all states can or will make the necessary changes in their laws and constitutions to facilitate absentee voting. There should be a federal ballot as a substitute, leaving to the states their constitutional function of counting all ballots.
The issue will be determined chiefly by the Republicans. Their almost-solid party vote – more than 9 to 1 – put over the states’-rights bill in the House. Some Republican leaders in the Senate have been more farsighted in seeking a compromise. Such a compromise probably would become an amendment to the House bill, and would permit both state and federal ballots.
Why should Republicans in the House suddenly become the states’-rights party, and at the risk of alienating soldiers? There seem to be three reasons for this paradox:
One is the real constitutional difficulty in any federal ballot, and the possibility that this will invite contested elections. But some of the suggested compromises eliminate most, though not all, of this danger.
A second reason probably arises from the harsh language used by President Roosevelt in trying to force Congress to act. While what he said about the need for an adequate law and the descriptive terms he applied to the House bill were apropos, his statement was received by many as an unjust smear and as a partisan campaign blast.
The third reason is the Republican fear that the President is accurate in his guess that the soldier vote will be heavily pro-Roosevelt. Of course such partisan considerations do not touch the inalienable right of the eligible soldier to vote. But, unfortunately, both the President and House Republican leaders seem to be thinking more about party politics than about the soldiers’ rights.
There is probably no way to make soldier voting absolutely fair as between a Republican candidate and Mr. Roosevelt. As Commander-in-Chief, and as one far better known to the troops than any Republican candidate can be, Mr. Roosevelt will have an advantage.
That should force the drafters of any federal ballot law, and the War and Navy Departments in handling the ballots, and the states in facilitating absentee voting and counting the results, to lean over backward to prevent the result from being rigged.
But it does not provide reason for disfranchising servicemen.
Background of news –
Tactics in Italy and the Pacific
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Clapper: Guadalcanal
By Raymond Clapper
Raymond Clapper, before setting out with a naval striking force which took him to his death, wirelessed a few columns in advance. Last Jan. 1, upon leaving the country for the Pacific, he had written 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 that he would want us to print, posthumously, these columns written some days ago.
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands – (by wireless)
In the evening after dinner, I sat on a wet front porch with Maj. Gen. Maxwell Murray, commander of the South Pacific forward area, right on the spot where the first Marines landed on Guadalcanal.
No longer is there any war here, for this is far to the rear. Guadalcanal is just a big supply dump. Yet it is not quite as peaceful and serene as most battlefields become when the war moves on and nature smiles again. This was a stormy night, and the wind lashed the surf up onto the little plot in front of Gen. Murray’s quarters. The rain blew in through the screened sides of his native thatched hut.
I wondered how the Marines ever landed here, but that was in August, in the dry season. Now it has rained every day since Christmas, as the first sailor I walked with said. I have found it depressing even in the short time I have been on the island.
Pacific War shrine
Guadalcanal has become a kind of shrine for the Pacific War in the minds of the American people as it was here we won the long jungle struggle with the Japs that stopped their advance and marked the beginning of our slow march toward Tokyo.
Nobody will ever live happily on this place. It is not unpleasant to the eye along the coast. Some spots in our military developments, which stretch for 30 or more miles along the north coast, are as neat and attractive as an outdoor summer colony, with little huts under neatly cleared coconut groves, and little white coral walks edged with stones or small tree trunks. But it is wet. The rain, or what a Californian might call the Guadalcanal mist, drips as it did on the stage for Somerset Maugham’s play, Rain.
The high surf broke two barges loose and they washed up on our beach. The tents were never dry. Everything becomes as wet as the outside of a beer bottle on a warm day.
RAdm. Theodore Wilkinson and I talked for a couple of hours in his office tent with the rain washing in onto the floor. But there is no use bothering about wet floors, nor about the mud that is carried in large cakes on everybody’s shoes.
Your foxhole will be complete full of water unless you cover it with canvas – in which case it will be only half full – although that is not so important here as at Munda, where two nights before I was there 20 men were injured because they stayed in bed instead of diving for their wet foxholes.
Mosquitoes dangerous foe
And when friendly little lizards run up your screen wire walls, you pay no attention. It’s the mosquitoes you must watch out for.
A heroic anti-malaria fight has worked wonders since the days when a high percentage of our men got the disease – and one admiral got it from spending just one night on the island.
Here, as at Munda, among the most conspicuous things you see when approaching by air are the white crosses in the cemeteries. Our vast airfields tell you at once that enormous developments have taken place under American occupation.
That always impresses me – the six of what we do – just as any downtown American business section is on a physical scale unapproached in any other country. Anything we do, we do it big. Great piles of ammunition, rations, and every other article of war are to be found all over the Pacific up to our frontlines. That is now true of Guadalcanal.
This is not an ideal base, for there is not protected anchorage, but it was the only place available at the time. And as Gen. Murray said, once you get your work table set up, with big repair shops and vast accumulations of reserve supplies, it is difficult to move very often. You wait until the line moves a long way up before making another jump.
Guadal isn’t anything like what it was when Dick Tregaskis was living through his Diary out here. For a while they called it a rest camp. But now the men are just as anxious to get away as they ever were. Gen. MacArthur is putting in an 18-month rotation scheme for some of his troops who have been in combat areas longest, and it is working out similarly in this South Pacific area.
Old-time minstrel show prospered for 60 years then faded out entirely
By Douglas Gilbert, Scripps-Howard staff writer
First of three articles.
This is the centenary of the minstrel show, and where is there one troupe to celebrate it? It is amazing that so vast an expression, which beguiled millions of Americans from 1843 to the turn of the century, should have left its mark nowhere in the contemporary theater.
Vaudeville still prevails, sometimes in revival, and in our nightclub floorshows, where a semblance of the old two-a-day theater exists. The circus still heralds New York’s spring. But no ghost in blackface haunts our stage. Nothing is left of the minstrel technique.
Minstrelsy, the only theatrical entertainment indigenous to the United States, has been dead for years. George M. Cohan rattled its bones in the season 1908-09 with the Cohan & Harris Minstrels. He took the troupe on tour and Charlie Washburn, his drumbeater, says it cost Cohan $100,000. In 1930, Kilpatrick’s Old-Time Minstrels played briefly at the Royale Theater. No producer brave, or stupid, enough has attempted a revival since.
Some phases of minstrelsy are surprising. Its entire presentation was based on blackface and the Negro’s folkways and songs. Yet the Negro had little or nothing to do with its form. It originated with and was developed by white performers.
Dixie is sole survivor
The late George H. Primrose, a blackface star for 50 years, said that the first production of a minstrel show was given at the Bowery Amphion, Feb. 6, 1843. The performers were Dan Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock and Dick Pelham.
Only Emmett is remembered – through his song, “Dixie.” Even “Dixie” had nothing to do with the South except through the allusion in its lyric. Emmett wrote it in New York on a blustering winter’s day and he really meant the line, “I wish I was in the land of cotton.” He wrote the song for a “walkaround,” the invariable finale to the minstrel show’s first part.
Dan was 80 and had long lived in retirement on a small farm near Mount Vernon, Ohio, when Al G. Fields, a popular minstrel manager and performer, induced Dan to travel with his show in 1895. Dan rode in the street parade in an open barouche with banners on its side proclaiming, “Dan Emmett – Composer of Dixie.”
He was introduced to the audience after the first party walkaround, then the band played “Dixie” with the inevitable response while Dan bowed feebly. He was a good draw, but troublesome to care for on the road, and Fields only took him out that one season.
Fields evades New York
Fields was an interesting fellow, seemingly took delight in proving his amusing quirks. One of them was that he would never play New York. He always felt that New York audiences wouldn’t care for his style of playing, and he was right.
One season in the late ‘90s, he was persuaded against his better judgment to fill an engagement at the Grand Opera House. The attendance was miserable and on the last night, Primrose, Billy West, Lew Dockstader and several other prominent minstrels took a stage box to cheer him up. Before the final curtain, Fields stepped to the footlights and said:
Ladies and gentlemen, take a good look at me because you are not ever going to see me again.
They never did, in New York.
Neil O’Brien
Neil O’Brien, who at 75 is probably the oldest living minstrel, confirms Primrose’s statement that the first minstrel show was given in 1843 by Emmett, Whitlock, Brower and Pelham. He says they met at a boarding house and fixed up a musical act with songs and funny sayings and then worked the pubs for throw money. They were successful and the engagement at the Amphion followed.
Emmett was a fiddler, the others played bones, tambourine and banjo. Throughout its years of public presentation, the banjo has always been the musical symbol of minstrelsy – another curious phase of the entertainment.
That the banjo was the instrument of the Southern Negro – and thus the proper heritage of minstrelsy – has been disputed, and with authority.
Banjo idea disputed
I have seen the Negro at work and I have seen him at play. I have attended his cornhuskings, his dances and his frolics. I have heard him give the wonderful melody of his songs to the winds… I have heard him scrape jubilantly on the fiddle. I have seen him blow wildly on the bugle and beat enthusiastically in the triangle. But I have never heard him play on the banjo.
The words are those of Joel Chandler Harris.
One of the great and most popular shows in the history of minstrelsy, George Christy’s Minstrels, featured the banjo. Christy, a pioneer, lasted for years and made much money. His was the first minstrel troupe to invade England. The British took to the entertainment at once and minstrel shows were a pronounced success in England for years.
It is too easy, across the years, to disparage the minstrel show. Against the speed and sophistication of our own revues and musicals, it was a doddering, awkward entertainment with silly grimaces and sillier jokes.
But its bombast was good-natured, its jubilation sincere. Throughout its 80-odd years of life, it was a family show. Indeed, its performers accented its appeal to children with gawdy uniforms, the blare of brass in the time-honored 11:45 a.m. parade, and with nursery jokes of the why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road type.
Shady jokes rare
Its entertainment was couched, not to the morals of its times, which were no better than ours, but to the mores, which were vastly different. A respectable woman of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s publicly exposed two anatomical parts – her hands and her face. In the legitimate theater, allusions to the female form were sparse and guarded.
In the minstrel show, they scarcely existed beyond the mention of “a pretty girl.” No women appeared in the strict form of the minstrel show, it was masculine nonsense solely. Moreover, minstrels, playing to a mixed audience that included children, were forced to keep it clean. Eventually this became the tradition. A “blue” joke or sexy double entendre in a blackface show was rare.
Because of its crazy quilt hit-or-miss pattern, the minstrel show developed an amazing assrtoment of curious characters, some of whom could do nothing else but clown in blackface. Charlie Reynolds was unique.
Reynolds, who worked for Simmons & Slocum Minstrels, could neither sing nor dance and he was tone deaf. He could never learn more than a few words of any song. He could handle neither tambourines nor bones, and when telling a story, he collapsed helplessly before reaching its point.
Arresting personality
But he had an arresting personality and an irresistible humor and his sway over an audience was complete. His dialogue, method and style, as old-timers recall them, were infantile, sometimes insane. But he was a popular performer. He died in Vineland, New Jersey, 40 years ago in the poorhouse.
Lew Simmons was one of the friendliest and best-liked men in the profession. It may surprise most baseball fans that Lew, not Connie Mack, was the first manager of the Philadelphia Athletics. The fact is commemorated in an old song by H. Angelo called “The Baseball Fever,” which was published in 1867.
The humor of any situation was the first thing Lew saw, even if the joke was on him. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and there he died on a visit – struck down and killed by a beer truck. Doubtless Lew drew a celestial chuckle out of that. He was a great guzzler.
Morganthau incompetent, House told
Republican likens Treasury work to that of Secretary’s farm
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Overseas unit of OWI changed
Three quit by request; two others named
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U.S. Navy Department (February 9, 1944)
Joint Statement
For Immediate Release
February 9, 1944
The following joint Anglo‑American statement on submarine and antisubmarine operations is issued under the authority of the President and the Prime Minister:
The year 1944 has opened with a very satisfactory first month for the Allies in their continued campaign against the U‑boat.
In spite of the limited opportunities to attack U‑boats owing to the extreme caution now exercised by them, more were destroyed in January than in December. This has been accomplished by unrelenting offensive action of our surface and air forces.
The amount of merchant ship tonnage sunk by U‑boats during January 1944 is amongst the lowest monthly figures for the whole war.
The German claims should, as usual, be ignored as they are grossly exaggerated and issued purely for propaganda purposes.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 258
For Immediate Release
February 9, 1944
Aircraft of the 7th Army Air Force, search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two and warships of the Pacific Fleet continued attacks on enemy‑held atolls in the Marshall Islands on February 6 and 7 (West Longitude Date).
Several small enemy boats were sunk at Jaluit Atoll on February 6, by search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two and fighters of the 7th Army Air Force.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 261
For Immediate Release
February 9, 1944
The USS BURNS (DD-588), a destroyer commanded by LtCdr. Donald T. Eller, sank an entire convoy of four enemy ships in the Marshall Islands area on January 31 (West Longitude Date).
The BURNS was attached to a carrier task force and was sent to rescue Navy fliers forced down at sea. Returning toward the task force, she encountered a tanker, a medium cargo vessel, and two smaller craft, and sank all with gunfire.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 9, 1944)
Beachhead lines hold despite rain of steel
Nazis claim breaks below Rome, dispatches say attacks fail
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Nimitz dares Japanese Navy to be battle
Admiral intends to drive across Pacific to get bases in China
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
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Marauders rip railway town
Americans bomb junction northeast of Paris
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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Raid erases jitters –
Dixon: Helen and her nurses have what it takes
Near breaking point on Rome beachhead, they pitch in to help after hospital bombing
By Kenneth Dixon, representing combined U.S. press
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U.S. officers charge –
Germans shoot litter bearers
Yanks also say Nazis use Red Cross as shield
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Soldier vote bill sent to conference
House rejects federal plan adopted by Senate; deadlock seen
Washington (UP) –
The House today rejected the Senate’s federal ballot amendments to the soldier vote bill and sent the disputed legislation to conference for attempt at some final settlement.
The action, by voice vote, had been predicted inasmuch as the House last Thursday rejected by a vote of 215–164 an attempt to write federal ballot provision onto the states’-rights bill which it subsequently passed.
In view of that House margin against federal ballots, the House conferees were expected to stand steadfast against the Senate efforts to incorporate such a system into the bill.
House conferees named
Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX) of the House Elections Committee, although a proponent of federal ballot legislation, moved to bring the bill before the House and then asked that the House turn down the Senate amendments.
The House agreed, and Speaker Sam Rayburn named the following House conferees: Mr. Worley, John E. Rankin (D-MS), Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC), Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA) and Harris Ellsworth (R-OR).
The House conferees stand 3–1 in favor of a purely states’-rights bill. Mr. Worley and Mr. Bonner are the only two administration supporters.
Second bill to committee
The Senate in addition to amending the state’s-rights bill had passed a separate federal ballot measure. Chairman Rayburn said he would send this second bill to the House Elections Committee. This would be merely a formality, inasmuch as it was expected no effort would be made to bring it out of committee unless the administration, if defeated in conference, decides to make a final attempt to provide a federal ballot.
There were indications that the amended bill was headed into a tangle that might block final passage of any new system of voting by members of the Armed Forces.
Something must give
If any legislation is to be enacted either the House or Senate will have to give in. it appeared that if there is any yielding it more likely would be in the Senate. The margin against the federal ballot in the House was considered large enough to defeat any compromise attempt there.
In adding the federal ballot to the House-approved Eastland-Rankin states’-rights bill yesterday, the Senate vote was 46–40.
Some quarters believed that eventually Congress would merely pass legislation amending the 1942 soldier-vote act to provide that the Army and Navy shall expedite transmission and return of state ballots. But both administration and coalition groups said such proposals would be premature at this time.
How they stood up to be counted
Washington (UP) –
The roll call vote on a motion by Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY), by which the Senate wrote the federal ballot provision into the House-approved “states’-rights” soldier vote bill was:
YEAs – 46
Aiken (R-VT)
Andrews (D-FL)
Austin (R-VT)
Barkley (D-KY)
Bone (D-WA)
Burton (R-OH)
Chandler (D-KY)
Chávez (D-NM)
Clark (D-ID)
Clark (D-MO)
Danaher (R-CT)
Davis (R-PA)
Downey (D-CA)
Ellender (D-LA)
Ferguson (R-MI)
Green (D-RI)
Guffey (D-PA)
Hatch (D-NM)
Hayden (D-AZ)
Jackson (D-IN)
Johnson (D-CO)
Kilgore (D-WV)
La Follette (PR-WI)
Langer (R-ND)
Lucas (D-IL)
Maloney (D-CT)
Maybank (D-SC)
McFarland (D-AZ)
Mead (D-NY)
Murdock (D-UT)
Murray (D-MT)
Pepper (D-FL)
Radcliffe (D-MD)
Stewart (D-TN)
Thomas (D-OK)
Thomas (D-UT)
Tobey (R-NH)
Truman (D-MO)
Tunnell (D-DE)
Tydings (D-MD)
Vandenberg (R-MI)
Wagner (D-NY)
Wallgren (D-WA)
Walsh (D-MA)
Walsh (D-NJ)
Wiley (R-WI)
NAYs – 40
Bailey (D-NC)
Ball (R-MN)
Bankhead (D-AL)
Bilbo (D-MS)
Brewster (R-ME)
Bridges (R-NH)
Brooks (R-IL)
Buck (R-DE)
Bushfield (R-SD)
Butler (R-NE)
Byrd (D-VA)
Capper (R-KS)
Caraway (D-AR)
Connally (D-TX)
Eastland (D-MS)
George (D-GA)
Gerry (D-RI)
Gurney (R-SD)
Hawkes (R-NJ)
Hill (D-AL)
Holman (R-OR)
McClellan (D-AR)
Millikin (R-CO)
Moore (R-OK)
Nye (R-ND)
O’Daniel (D-TX)
Overton (D-LA)
Reed (R-KS)
Revercomb (R-WV)
Reynolds (D-NC)
Russell (D-GA)
Shipstead (R-MN)
Smith (D-SC)
Taft (R-OH)
Thomas (R-ID)
Wherry (R-NE)
White (R-ME)
Willis (R-IN)
Wilson (R-IA)