Invasion news pattern backed
Eisenhower gets plan for second front coverage
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Doctors work as bomb fall near hospital
Beachhead area hit at busiest time of day in surgical wards
By Homer Bigart, representing combined U.S. press
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Simms: Clue is sought to attitude of Soviet leader
Early developments hinted in Russian capital and on frontiers
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Lewando: Tropical Revue, smash hit at Nixon provides thrills from beginning to end
Versatility of Katherine Dunham’s company is shown in amazing dances ranging from the primitive to modern hot numbers
By Ralph Lewando
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Democratic Party loses House numerical majority
Republicans in 5 states press for byelections to capitalize on GOP trend
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Democratic membership in the House again has fallen below a numerical majority and Republicans in five states are pressing for byelections to capitalize the trend toward the GOP.
The five states are those with Congressional vacancies. The latest is in Illinois’ 7th district, a thickly populated Cook County constituency in the political domain of Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly.
Rep. Leonard W. Schuetz, a Democrat who represented that district, died here Sunday, reducing the Democratic membership of the House from 218, a bare numerical majority, to 217, which is just below the majority line.
The Democrats fell to 217 once previously in this Congress but had just received their 218th seat again last week in a special election to fill the vacancy created by the death of Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D-AL).
4 held by Democrats
Of the five vacancies now existing, four are for seats formerly held by Democrats. They are those of Mr. Schuetz and of the late Lawrence Lewis (D-CO), Joseph A. Gavagan (D-NY) and Jack Nichols (D-OK), both of whom resigned. The fifth vacancy was created by the death of Rep. William H. Wheat (R-IL).
If and when byelections are held, Republicans might take all five seats. Mr. Gavagan’s district in New York City is probably the safest for the Democrats. Mr. Nichols’ Oklahoma district will send a Republican or a staunchly anti-New Deal Democrat to the House, according to reports from there.
GOP confident
Republicans are confident they can carry Mr. Lewis’ Colorado district despite the fact that it lies in Denver and the Democrats uniformly find their greatest strength outside the South in urban communities.
Mayor Kelly’s Cook Country machine is formidable. But even there the Republicans believe they have a better than even chance to pick up a seat. Mr. Schuetz won in 1942 by only 2,000 votes of 257,000 cast. That margin is so slim that the slightest thing could reverse it.
Oregon man named Willkie manager
Portland, Oregon (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, Republican candidate for President in 1940, officially threw his hat in the ring last night and announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination, naming Ralph H. Cake, national committeeman from Oregon, as his pre-convention manager.
Mr. Willkie also named Mrs. Frank Reynolds, national committeewoman from Indiana and a former treasurer of the Hoosier state, as head of the women’s organization and promised as “active and intensive campaign would be waged in every state where a primary contest developed.”
Campaign workers would be organized in all states, he added.
His candidacy would probably be no surprise, Mr. Willkie explained, since he had already announced his entrance in the primaries in Nebraska, Wisconsin and Oregon.
The Republican Party must demonstrate through its platform that the “war can be brought to a conclusion, or can be fought effectively, or more effectively” with a change in administration, he said and that:
It has a better comprehension and understanding of domestic, economic and social questions and can handle the adjustments with which the United States will be confronted when the war is over.
Wallace urges people’s peace
Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
“In the peace to come, the New Deal will not be dead,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace declared last night, “but if it is dead, the Democratic Party will be dead, and well dead.”
The Democratic Party is the people’s party, Mr. Wallace told a mass meeting at the Minneapolis Auditorium.
The war, he said, is a people’s war and the peace must be a people’s peace.
Mr. Wallace added:
By looking toward peace, the farmers, workers and soldiers will increase, not diminish the intensity of our all-out war effort.
Mr. Wallace urged the adoption of post-war policies which would give greater industrial, economic and agricultural strength to the West and South where the “ten million poorest people live.”
Earlier in the day, Mr. Wallace made a plea for continued support of the Roosevelt administration and told leaders of the Minnesota Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties that:
If Mr. Roosevelt is elected again, he will be helpless unless you send Congressmen to support his administration.
He said:
It is not fair to allow a fine progressive President to be left in a position to kowtow to a conservative crowd.
Retain Democrats, Truman pleads
Jacksonville, Florida (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO), describing the coming national election as the most important in history, said last night that a Republican victory could affect adversely the progress of the war.
Mr. Truman said at a Jackson Day dinner here:
Democratic defeat at the polls this year could hamper, delay, and confuse the conduct of the war and imperil the peace.
Editorial: Snails and soldier ballots
Since Congress has wasted so much time playing politics with the soldier vote bill, the last the Senate and House conferees can do is to arrive at their compromise quickly. There is no excuse for more delay. There is a very practical reason for speed.
Whatever the nature of the final measure may be, one thing is certain. The states will have to pass upon and count the ballots. This will be true whether the so-called states’ rights bill of the House is accepted, or the Senate-modified federal ballot bill, or the more probable adjustment of the two.
But the rub is that many states are not geared for this responsibility. Not only changes in state laws are required, but in some cases state constitutions must be modified to make such mass absentee voting practicable. This takes time.
Meanwhile, several governors take the position that they cannot call their legislatures into special session and otherwise start the involved technical preparations for a changeover until they know definitely the scope and requirements of the federal law. So further delay by Congress easily might defeat the purpose of the law by making state compliance impossible in the relatively short time remaining.
Nobody is in any doubt as to where the American public and the servicemen stand on this issue. The demand that the men doing our fighting for us be allowed to vote is virtually unanimous – as members of Congress discovered when they went home for the recent recess.
The point for the politicians to remember is that pious motions and slick parliamentary jokers will not be acceptable to the public this time. Here is one case in which only results will count. If the fighting men are disenfranchised, come November, they and their families and friends and all believers in democracy will hold the politicians responsible. Excuses will not help.
Ferguson: Women’s emancipation
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Dr. Albert E. Wiggam reminds us that Olive Schreiner, one of the first great feminine leaders, prophesied long ago that women’s emancipation advances only when it is to men’s advantage. History has proved her right.
Women have moved into new fields only as men profited financially from those changes, and as they saw how easy it was to persuade women to take on additional duties.
No one can deny that every freedom gained by women has given an additional freedom to men. Rebecca West puts it this way:
It is certain that men suffer from a certain timidity, a liability to discouragement which makes them reluctant to go on doing anything once it has been proved that women can do it as well. This was painfully illustrated during the slump in both Europe and America where wives found to their amazement that if they got jobs when their husbands lost theirs, the husbands became either their frenzied enemies or relapsed into an infantile state of dependence and never worked again.
Nowhere is Miss Schreiner’s point so strongly proved as in marriage. There, women have achieved many liberties, but at a high rate of exchange. The woman with the latchkey finds that her man stays out at all hours, too. Divorce, which was first arranged in order to free the wife from an unbearable situation, has bred vast irresponsibilities in men. Thousands of emancipated women are forced to support as well as rear their children.
But I see a light along the horizon. Now that women have joined the Army, maybe they’ll do its work so well that the men may feel it wise to stop war before they expose their ignorance on what has been, up to now, their pet monopoly.
In Washington –
Foes of subsidies for newspapers rally for battle
Bill to provide funds for bond ads in small papers is called ‘senseless grab’ on behalf of weeklies
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Draft board head testifies –
High-ranking U.S. aides rejected in mental unfits
Big percentage of 4-Fs turned down as ‘psychoneurotics,’ House committee is told
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Mail service to Italy will resume soon
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CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
So, so pretty!
Women traffic officers might present a problem
By Maxine Garrison
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
He couldn’t even talk about his operation!
From a letter sent to Ernie Pyle by a newsreel cameraman, hospitalized in Italy:
Dear Ernie:
When they wheeled me in here, I felt like a slow-motion tennis ball going over the net at Forest Hills. Everybody’s head moved from left to right, and vice versa on the other side of the ward.
You see, the hospital grapevine or village tom-toms had given out the news that a war correspondent was being wheeled in. I understand the tension was terrific until I came out of the morphia. The first question all and sundry asked me was not how I felt or what was wrong with me but – did I know Ernie Pyle.
When I said I knew him slightly, I became quite popular, and questions flew right and left.
This note is to ask you to come over for a few minutes and say hello to some of these broken lads. It would please them beyond description, and there are many things and incidents here that would interest you as well.
Considering the cubic content of suffering within the four walls, it really is a very happy dump.
In Italy – (by wireless)
For several days, I’ve been living with an infantry company of the 34th Division. The 34th is the oldest division on this side of the Atlantic. It has been away from home two full years.
Two years is a long time overseas, even if you do nothing but travel around and work hard. But when, in addition, you fill two years with campaign after bitter campaign, a division of men eventually becomes wise and worn and old, like a much-read book or a cottage that wears its aging stone stoutly, ignoring the patchwork of new concrete that holds it together.
Today, in any frontline rifle company of around 200 men in the 34th, you find usually fewer than a dozen men who came overseas with the division originally. In one battalion, not a single one of the original officers is left.
That doesn’t mean they’ve all been killed, but it does mean that through casualties of all sorts, plus sickness and transfer and some small rotation back to the States, a division has almost a complete turnover in two years of fighting. Only its number remains the same. But even a number can come to have character and life, to those who are intimate with its heritage. I was with the 34th as long as June of 1942, in Ireland, and I have a feeling about it.
Remarkable Lt. Jack Sheehy
I came to the regimental command post in a jeep after dark one night.
Regimental handed me down to battalion, and battalion on down to the company I was to stay with. They were bivouacked for the moment in an olive grove, with their company command post in a stone Italian farmhouse – the first time their CP had been inside walls since they hit Italy five months ago.
The company commander is Lt. John J. Sheehy of New York City. The division was originally all Iowa and Minnesota men, but now you’ll find men from everywhere. The Iowans are the veterans, however, and they still stand out.
Jack Sheehy is tall and thin, and quite young, and of course he’s Irish. In the regiment, he is considered pretty remarkable. Any time you mention him among higher officers, they nod and say:
Yes, Sheehy is a case.
I don’t know exactly what causes this, but I gather from innuendo that he is addicted to using his noggin in spectacular ways in the pinches, and that he fears neither German soldiers nor American brass hats. He is an extremely likable and respected company commander.
Proud of men, and vice versa
Lt. Sheehy used to be a clerk for American Airlines in New York. He says that after the war he’s going into salesmanship of some kind, because he figures his gift of gab will carry him through – which surprised me, because during all the time I was with him, he was far from garrulous, but actually very kind and reserved.
I’ve never seen a man prouder of his company than Lt. Sheehy, and the men in it are proud, too. I’ve been around war long enough to know that nine-tenths of morale is pride in your outfit and confidence in your leader and fellow fighters.
A lot of people have morale confused with the desire to fight. I don’t know of one soldier in 10,000 who wants to fight. They certainly don’t in my company. The old-timers are sick to death of battle, and the new replacements are scared to death of it. And yet the company goes on into battle, and it is a proud company.
Clapper: Carriers
By Raymond Clapper
This is another of the final group of dispatches from Mr. Clapper, who was killed in the battle of the Marshalls.
Aboard an aircraft carrier, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
The first task of our aircraft carrier force in the invasion of the Marshalls was to move in ahead of the landings and pound Kwajalein and Ebeye Islands, with the special object of knocking out the Japs’ planes and making their airfields unusable.
After that, we raced out to Eniwetok Island to destroy the airplanes and airfield there and to block any attempt by the Japs to reinforce the Marshalls from Truk.
Our carrier force pushed farther westward into the Central Pacific than any American forces had advanced across this route, which is rapidly becoming the most active area in the whole Pacific and certainly the scene of the largest naval forces.
The powerful carrier force with which I have traveled during the battle of the Marshalls is only one of several of similar size, hitting from various directions in intricate coordination. It is doubtful if the Japs have been able to determine which carrier force has been doing what.
Jap deception suspected
Our large force and others cruised for days without being detected, without seeing an enemy plane, without any submarine coming up.
At times it was uncanny. You wondered whether the Japs were up to some clever deception. It was hard to believe they were so weak that they were compelled to let this whole area go by default so far as airpower was concerned. Yet that seems to be exactly what happened.
The morning after we hit Eniwetok Island and wrecked its airfield, including 17 large Japanese bombers, the ruins of burned planes were still on the runway untouched. We achieved complete surprise, although we had not dreamed that this would be possible.
When our planes first struck Kwajalein in the early-morning darkness, the island was sound asleep. There was no sign of searchlights, or of detection devices having picked us up. There was no anti-aircraft fire until after our first wave of planes had hit the airfield, waking up the garrison. Then it became fairly hot. Several of our planes returned with flak holes, and one fighter was shot down.
“We sound reveille for them,” said Adm. F. C. Sherman as he received reports on his flag bridge from the bomber pilots.
Adm. Sherman achieved fame as the skipper of the old Lexington when she went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and also for the No. 1 rule he enforces among his pilots:
Kill the **** scientifically.
Campaign carefully organized
Aircraft carriers have served as real capital ships in the battle of the Marshalls, while the battleships, although present in large numbers, have served in a secondary or supporting function. Each carrier force has usually been accompanied by one or more big battleships, giving them an enormously powerful escort.
The original conception of the battleship was that it would stand up with enemy battleships and slug it out toe to toe. We have plenty of them here, so that any attempt by the Japs to come out and fight with their fleet would have found us able to outgun them by far.
We went into the battle of the Marshalls with a most impressive force. We took no chances. It has been a cautious, carefully organized campaign. It was delayed until abundantly sufficient forces could be assembled, and then these were put into battle on a plan of operations that was designed to avoid some of the difficulties encountered at Tarawa.
The key to the whole thing, however, was the elimination of Japanese airpower, and the prevention of the Japs from ferrying planes in over their stepping-stone route, which reaches back to their homeland in short hops that any fighter plane can make.
At Eniwetok, our particular carrier force broke that link in the Japanese air chain. Looking back now in the light of what did not show up, it seems the Japs must have decided not to risk heavy destruction of their limited number of supply planes in a defensive air battle that they would have been certain to lose.