America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

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I DARE SAY —
Thunder and lightning

By Florence Fisher Parry

The first pictures from the Marshall Islands could be “stills” from the motion picture Gung Ho! now showing at the Fulton Theater. This magnificent motion picture, which tells as would some spare and factual newsreel how Makin Island was raided, is to my mind the best informative feature of the war we have had, with the exception of the actual newsreels.

We have learned so much about the war that it has become very hard for us to credit or be impressed by any fiction that Hollywood can manufacture for its screen. Only a few pictures have succeeded in creating the illusion of reality – really to match that which our newsreels and news pictures reveal. Gung Ho! and Guadalcanal Diary are the best of these. They more closely approximate the facts than any others.

True, we have been given some magnificent war films like The Moon Is Down, The North Star, and Mrs. Miniver, but these have been dramatic stories with plot, romance, theatrical situations. They have been screenplays. Personally I much prefer the newsreel technique to any other; and next to that the kind of factual motion picture of which Gung Ho! is such a splendid example.

Alcoholics

If you are looking for horror of another kind than that which is contained in war and motion pictures, I can recommend to you a neat little psychopathic novel by Charles Jackson entitled The Lost Weekend.

This is a really terrifying revelation of an alcoholic’s conflict. That this book should command such immediate and unexpected attention at a time when the reading public has no patience with less epic problems than those of world survival is testimony to the novel’s extraordinary power.

Here is a good look to put into the hands of any young man who might be indulging the delusion that he can handle alcohol. It is worth a thousand sermons, a million pledges and a billion vain petitions from well-meaning reformers.

I think that if I were one who found that the habit of drinking was taking slow and subtle hold of me, I should be very likely to be jolted out of the spell by the reading of this book. It is a most compelling and horrifying case history.

And in this connection, I am reminded of the amazing success which that comparatively young organization known as Alcoholics Anonymous is meeting with. Starting with a few reformed drunkards who had been saved by some strange, deep spiritual shock which somehow had the power to redeem them, these men began a quiet little crusade to save their fellow sufferers.

Today, this organization has won the gratitude and recognition of the medical profession to the extent that our hospitals utilize, whenever possible, the assistance of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our penal institutions are benefiting by its increasing numbers among their inmates, and Alcoholics Anonymous now have spread their beneficent work into the homes of thousands of men and women who had counted themselves lost.

Peril in Italy

The realization that the Allied forces in Italy are really being driven back closer to the sea has come as a timely shock, and costly as this tragic stand has been and will be, it could not have been better timed to jolt us from our complacency.

Let us pray that this bitter and costly reverse will put iron in the souls of all of us and bring us to the realization that war is long and can be won only by all-out sacrifice.

Let us have more unsparing pictures of the crumpled dead. Let us be made to look upon atrocity pictures, too. There is nothing so poignant as the grotesque and helpless attitude of death. The picture of one young American boy prostrate upon a lonely beach achieves an eloquence beyond the power of pen or prayer.

It is natural, I suppose, for us to be so caught up with this war that we are not aware of the tremendous forces that have been set in motion lately in our country, forces that can in themselves change the structure of our Republic far more than the outcome of any combat victory or defeat. The fourth term issue, for example, is taking shape with all its deadly implications.

I do not believe that in our entire national history we have been confronted with a more critical choice than that which is now taking shape on our political front.

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Bricker’s plea for strike ban meets apathy

Congressmen think time unripe for action at present
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Washington –
Prohibition of strikes in time of war, as recommended here by Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, has not changed that majority Congressional disposition to move slowly on this subject, according to opinion samplings today.

Even some of the Ohio Republican Congressmen expressed privately a regret that the Governor had unveiled this dynamic issue at this time. Another Republican from the Midwest, who has been active in efforts at union-regulatory legislation, took the same stand, but said he thought Governor Bricker had expressed a demand that exists among a substantial number of plain citizens and men in the Armed Forces.

Reasons for apathy

Reasons for the Congressional apathy on the subject are two: No serious strikes are going on now; the House would probably pass such legislation, but the Senate would probably let it die.

A bill to prohibit all wartime strikes is in the House, but until the situation changes it will be “just another bill.” The bill introduced by Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-VA) provides penalties of revocation of rights under the National Labor Relations Act and other labor-protective statutes for any union whose members strike in wartime, whether or not the disturbance is “wildcat” or authorized by the union’s officers.

Political factor

The subject is linked up with the presidential campaign. Republicans see a chance to divide the administration’s labor support this year. Among the leading Republican possibilities, Governor Dewey has made no labor pronouncement, nor has Mr. Willkie.

On the Democratic side, the labor-politico picture may be affected by two oncoming developments:

  • The Department of Justice will find it necessary to make a statement eventually on its investigation of charges that the War Labor Disputes Act has been violated by a collection of a $700,000 political campaign fund under direction of CIO president Philip Murray.

  • Congressman Dies (D-TX) says he will tell the House within two weeks what his investigating committee has turned up regarding alleged cultivation of un-American subversive elements by the CIO’s “Political Action Committee.”

Miners’ protest

Criticism of the administration from the American Federation od Labor and the non-affiliated unions has increased. Among the latter is the United Mine Workers, headed by John L. Lewis, who supported Mr. Willkie in 1940, but might find it hard to do so in 1944. This union’s magazine says in the current issue:

There are any number of honest American labor leaders willing and anxious to vote the Republican ticket if the Republican Party can and will furnish the assurance that it is ready and willing to become the party of the people.

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Ace scores his 20th in raid on Rabaul base

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Jap ships blasted by Yanks off China

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U.S. indicts women in censorship case

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Bond sales 90% of national goal

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Democrats select July 19 to open 4-day convention

Roosevelt’s nomination for fourth term expected on third night; battle for Vice Presidency expected
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s nomination for a fourth term can be expected with some confidence to become an accomplished fact at about 9:30 p.m. ET Friday, July 21 next.

But if you want to bet and play it safe, make it not later than the same hour on the following day, Saturday, July 22, Chairman Robert E. Hannegan of the Democratic National Committee announced yesterday that the streamlined Democratic National Convention would meet Wednesday, July 19, in Chicago.

The committee, which chose the site at a meeting here last month and solicited Mr. Roosevelt to run again, left to Mr. Hannegan the fixing of a date.

Must reach soldiers

Mr. Hannegan would have liked to delay the convention until August but the hare facts of the soldiers’ ballot compelled a July selection.

The ballots cannot be distributed to the armed services until it has been officially established who the Republican and Democratic candidates will be. And if the Democratic nomination were delayed much beyond mid-July, it probably would not be possible for the troops to vote and get the ballots back to be counted.

By ordering the convention to start in mid-week, Hannegan sought to assure a short meeting. His announcement said it was expected that all proceedings would be completed in the remainder of that week – four days. The Republican Convention will begin Monday, June 26, in Chicago.

Vice-presidential battle

Barring a knockdown battle over the vice-presidential nomination, which is more than likely, the Democrats could nominate their ticket and adopt a platform in a couple of days. But both political parties have learned to arrange their convention schedules to take advantage of the best evening radio hours.

Therefore, it is expected that the Democratic keynote speaker – still to be named – will do his stuff on the first night, July 19. The permanent chairman could speak his piece on the evening of July 20 and the Resolutions Committee come in with the platform late Friday afternoon.

Adoption of the platform will probably be the prelude to the nomination of a presidential candidate.

Rayburn mentioned

Then, provided Mr. Roosevelt did not insist on having Mr. Wallace as a running mate again, the vice-presidential nomination could be given quickly to any one of a dozen party stalwarts, especially House Speaker Sam Rayburn. If the convention had serious vice-presidential problems, there would still be Saturday for their solution.

The convention could be run off that fast, or faster, provided good, gray Charlie Michelson does not again decide that each state should have an opportunity to make a seconding speech to Mr. Roosevelt’s nomination. Good, gray Charlie did it that way in Philadelphia in 1936 and it ran into a great deal of oratory.

All in confidence

The seconders clamored to be heard because Mr. Michelson, wily as he is good and gray, passed the word in confidence to everyone in the hall that the platform microphone was connected with a nationwide hookup and that the second speakers would be heard everywhere, including back home.

Some of them even signed off with a “Good night, Myrtle” after reporting that their state, too, was honored and then some to second the nomination of and so forth–.

The fact that there was actually no nationwide hookup always delighted Charlie and he felt that the seconders had just as much fun out of it as though they really had been on the air.

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americavotes1944

GOP leaders divided on foreign policy

By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
A real issue developing within the Republican Party on foreign policy was projected into sharp relief during the two-day visit here of Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio to promote his campaign for the party nomination for President.

It does not revolve about old-fashioned “isolationism,” as such, which Governor Bricker said is not an issue in the campaign. He added that anybody who charges isolationism in this campaign will be raising a “phony” issue.

The issue concerns how far the “international cooperation” to which the party had pledged itself in the Mackinac declaration of last September shall do, how it shall be implemented, and in this important question there is a basic cleavage within the party, one which must be fought out at the convention.

Governor Bricker is for international cooperation and collaboration, which he says should be implemented, but does not say how. He wants no superstate to “direct the course of American destiny,” but this country must remain free in international affairs and all nations must retain their sovereignty.

This raises the question, which is stressed by the other viewpoint within the party, as to how any country, including the United States, can associate itself in an international organization to keep the peace without giving up some of its freedom of action, or “sovereignty.”

This viewpoint is represented by Wendell L. Willkie; former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, who favors a United Nations organization with a parliament and an international police force; Senator Joseph Ball (R-MN) and others.

The Republican Post-War Advisory Council confronted the issue at Mackinac and compromised with its declaration for:

…responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world.

Landon asks coalition to oust Roosevelt

Knoxville, Tennessee (UP) –
Former Kansas Governor Alf M. Landon last night called for a union of Republicans and Democrats in the November election to oust President Roosevelt and “clean house” in Washington.

In a Lincoln Day speech, the 1936 Republican presidential candidate asserted that:

It is painfully evident to an increasing number of real Democrats that they must turn their back temporarily on the political party of their fathers in order to keep American faith with their sons and daughters.

Mr. Landon attacked the President’s “win-the-war” slogan and said the claim of one man that one party had a monopoly on such a slogan was “the cheapest and sleaziest kind of politics.”

Called an insult

He said:

The President’s attempt to substitute “win-the-war” for the “New Deal” as a campaign slogan is an insult to every member of our fighting forces.

Mr. Landon said the issues which will be decided in the November elections can all be summed up as:

Will our country continue to move toward the national socialistic state which is the objective of the New Dealers, or will we keep the faith? – the faith of our fathers; the faith of our sons and daughters who fight the war.

He asserted:

Fascism is here in America and its name is the New Deal.

‘Hypnotic ringmaster’

Already the big and the petty bureaucrats of Washington are developing all the facets of an arbitrary regime. And that is fascism – no matter by what name it is called by its genial and hypnotic ringmaster.

He charged that Mr. Roosevelt had entered into agreements with foreign representatives without consulting the State Department and added that:

It is a matter of common knowledge that there are entirely too many agencies studying problems, arguing abstract issues, bickering among themselves and interfering with the miracle of production by farmers, labor and business.

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Wallace urges jobs authority

Milwaukee, Wisconsin (UP) –
“Jobs will be our number one economic problem the moment peace comes,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night in which he proposed the creation of a jobs authority with responsibility and power subject only to the President and Congress.

He told an audience of 2,000 persons in the municipal auditorium:

We should have some sort of organization that can get at least as prompt action on behalf of jobs as the War Production Board got on behalf of fighting material.

Willkie makes disunity charge

Tacoma, Washington (UP) –
The Roosevelt administration has forfeited its right to moral leadership because “it has lost the sense of the importance of unity which has saved us in previous national crises,” Wendell Willkie declared last night.

Mr. Willkie told the Pierce Country Republican Club at a pre-Lincoln Day observance:

Only in the Republican Party can the nation reforge a feeling of national unity, strong enough to stand the tests that lie ahead of us.

He assured the administration of promoting disunity and cited as an example the recent railroad strike call which he said was brought on by the President’s “equivocal answers, broken promises and delaying tactics.”

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McCormick lifts hat from ring

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Robert R. McCormick, publisher of The Chicago Tribune, said today he has sent Secretary of State Edward J. Hughes a formal request to withdraw his name from the presidential preference primary in Illinois April 11.

Congressman to resign

Lafayette, Louisiana –
Congressman James Domengeaux (D-LA) said today that he had passed an Army pre-induction examination and will return to Washington to resign as representative from Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional district before entering the Armed Forces.

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24 bodies not recovered –
River gives up parts of plane

Cold hampers search for airliner’s victims

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In Washington –
Father-draft fight renewed by Wheeler

Senator protests discharge of single men with slight physical defects

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Ships hammer enemy atolls

Wake also blasted by U.S. heavy bombers

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Cold wave cause of 15 deaths

By the United Press

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americavotes1944

Editorial: That non-partisan plank

Since it was first proposed some months ago that foreign policy be taken out of the political campaign by Republicans and Democrats accepting the same foreign plank in their platforms, more and more politicians have shied away from the idea.

It is not orthodox. Anyway, the old-line bosses cannot make up their minds which party it would help most – and, as usual, they put partisan considerations first.

The people are more intelligent; they are thinking about the country first. At least that is the indication of the recent Gallup Poll of Republican voters.

They were asked:

Do you think that both Republicans and Democrats should take exactly the same stand for an active part in world affairs in their party platforms in 1944?

With 21% undecided, 58% answered Yes and only 21% No.

The reasons given by the majority were as significant as the vote:

First, world affairs should be treated by a complete nation, not by political parties;

Second, if our political parties squabble among themselves over foreign policy, other nations may take advantage of the disunity in such a way as to harm American interests.

What can the politicians say to that?

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Editorial: ‘Reprinted by request’

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Editorial: How soldiers get a vote

Some time ago, the U.S. Senate passed the Eastland “states’ rights” soldier-vote bill.

Last week, the House amended the Eastland bill and passed it, sending it back to the Senate.

This week, the Senate vote to lay aside the Green-Lucas soldier-vote bill, which provided for a federal ballot and take up the House-amended Eastland bill.

Senator Barkley, the Democratic Leader, then offered the Green-Lucas bill as an amendment to the House-amended Eastland bill.

Senator Ferguson of Michigan then offered an amendment to Senator’s Barkley’s amendment – in other words, an amendment to an amendment to an amendment. It was adopted.

Senator Taft of Ohio then offered an amendment to the Barkley amendment. It was rejected.

So, the Senate adopted the Barkley amendment, as amended by Senator Ferguson, thus writing the Green-Lucas bill, which had been laid aside, into the Eastland bill.

Senator Taft then reoffered his amendment as an amendment to the whole works, and was defeated again.

Then, for the second time, the Senate adopted the Eastland bill, which now included the Green-Lucas bill, which the Senate previously laid aside, after both the House and the Senate had amended the Eastland bill.

The whole business then went back to the House which rejected it. Now delegates from each house are trying to determine where they stand.

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Editorial: Don’t shift the blame!

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Editorial: British hospitality

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Edson: U.S. pilots live to tell dramatic story of crackup

By Peter Edson

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Ferguson: Exaggerated sex

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

The term “frustrated old maid” must be dropped from the American vocabulary, says Mrs. Bertha Hess of the Dallas Hygiene Association.

She says:

It’s nothing but male propaganda, and women should take a stand against such arrant nonsense.

Our discussion centered around post-war problems. Everybody had agreed we would have a surplus of women and that the male shortage would force many to live without husbands. So, we may as well consider ways and means for feminine happiness in a world which cannot supply each girl with a mate.

For years, psychologists have built up the idea that continence is bad for people. It sneaked into our thinking via the Freudian wave, and has never been dislodged. Yet it is a damnable doctrine, dangerous to public morals. Many sane people have developed sex obsessions because such a fallacy was foisted upon them.

Every day we meet women who refuted the theory – sweet, sane, sensible, busy, happy women, valuable members of their families and the community. If they sorrow in secret because they lack husbands and children, they do not invite our pity since they are anything but pitiable.

Sex is an alluring subject as well as an importance force, but in our time, it has been exaggerated so that it dominates the social scene. In the future, girls must be taught to realize that men and women can derive satisfaction from intellectual stimulation and through love that encompasses all of humankind.

The single life has never carried any social stigma for men. There is no reason for women to be afraid or ashamed of it.

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Background of news –
How Lincoln conducted a war

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

As the leader of the United States in a long, bitter, and difficult war, Abraham Lincoln revealed two characteristics which on the surface seemed contradictory, yet really were complementary. On the one hand, he compromised and temporized with opposition, often surrendering to it when it proved too strong for him. On the other hand, when he considered certain steps necessary to win the war, he took them of his own volition, without legislative or constitutional sanction, until he was roundly abused as a dictator.

Lincoln was even ready to evacuate Fort Sumter, if that would deter Virginia from seceding. He is reported to have observed:

A state for a fort is no bad business.

At the outbreak of war, he delayed for several months summoning Congress into special session to act on the secession. Lincoln called for volunteers, proclaimed a blockade of the South, enlarged the Navy, expanded the Army beyond the limits set by law, ordered money spent for which Congress had not voted appropriations – all before Congress recognized “a state of insurrection.”

As to Lincoln’s suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, opinions still differ as to whether the Constitution gave him or Congress that power. At all events, Congress ultimately passed legislation which in effect ratified the extra-constitutional action the President had taken, so in this respect he could not be said to have flown in the face of Congressional sentiment.

He put up with Cabinet feuds

On many occasions the anti-Lincoln group of radical abolitionists and anti-appeasers of the South held a majority in Congress. Cabinet members squabbled among themselves; Lincoln kept them together for the sake of political unity. He even held on to Secretary of the Treasury Chase, although Chase was manifestly angling to defeat the President for the Republican presidential nomination in 1864.

Lincoln yielded to Congress when that body set up a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War which sadly interfered with the presidential and military direction of belligerent activities. Lincoln treated the committee with consideration, yet prevented it from actually taking the general conduct of the war out of his hands.

Professor James G. Randall, in the Dictionary of American Biography, notes that Lincoln took his defeat philosophically when Congress passed over his opposition the West Virginia bill and the Second Confiscation Act.

Lincoln had neither legislative nor constitutional authority for the Emancipation Proclamation, unless that be deemed strictly a military move to help win the war. The Proclamation did not affect slaves in the slave-holding states supporting the Union, nor in Union-held Tennessee and sections of Virginia and Louisiana.

Harsh hand with newspapers

It is true that Congress had enacted a measure to free slaves who came within the Union lines, who joined the Union armies, or who were “rebel-owned.” However, this legislation was not cited by the Emancipation Proclamation, which cites for authority merely an earlier presidential proclamation in the light of a warning. Earlier Lincoln had asked Congress in vain to provide compensation to slaveowners.

When, in May 1864, The New York World and Journal of Commerce each printed a proclamation which they mistakenly ascribed to Lincoln, he ordered the “editors, proprietors, and publishers” arrested and brought to military trial. Furthermore, despite the First Amendment, Lincoln directed the Army to occupy the newspaper premises and prevent further publication until he gave the word.

The midterm election of 1862 increased the strength of the anti-Lincoln Republicans in Congress. Until military victories came along in the late summer of 1864, Lincoln’s reelection seemed doubtful. As it was, with only the Union states voting, the Democratic candidate, Gen. McClellan, received 45% of the total popular vote – 48% in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and 49% in New York.