Two subs sink 13 Jap ships
U.S. raiders make hits near enemy homeland
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C. E. Bedaux, Windsor pal, ends his life
‘Speedup’ expert held by U.S. on suspicion of treason
Bedaux
Miami, Florida (UP) –
Charles E. Bedaux, millionaire industrialist and financier who was arrested by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on suspicion of treason and communicating with the enemy, died in Jackson Hospital last night of an overdose of poison self-administered several days ago.
Bedaux, 56, longtime friend of the Duke of Windsor, had been held by immigration authorities here who were determining the validity of his citizenship acquired in 1917.
Indictment sought
His death occurred as two special assistant attorneys general, Edward J. Ennis and John J. Burling, were preparing to seek a federal grand jury indictment for treason growing out of Bedaux’s activities in Vichy France and North Africa prior to the U.S. invasion of the latter.
Bedaux, inventor of the famous “speedup” system of production in modern industrial plants, had been in custody of immigration officials since last Dec. 23, when he was returned from military arrest in Algiers.
In Washington, Edward J. Ennis, chief of the Justice Department’s Enemy Control Unit, provided a clue to the reason behind Bedaux’s suicide. He said Bedaux was informed the day before his suicide attempt that his American citizenship was valid. That meant he could be tried for treason in American courts instead of being deported to North Africa as a Frenchman and turned over to French authorities for whatever action they might take. This might involve a trial as a traitor.
Found by attorney
Bedaux’s death was announced here by immigration officials and in Washington by Attorney General Francis Biddle.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Biddle said, Bedaux’s attorney found him unconscious in his quarters at the Immigration Service and he was taken to the hospital where he remained in coma until his death. Pneumonia and other complications contributed to his death.
Mr. Biddle said Bedaux, in a note to his secretary, explained he had accumulated a sleeping compound over a period of time from small doses allotted him by medical authorities at the detention station.
Born in France Oct. 10, 1886, Bedaux entered this country during World War I, established himself as a consulting engineer and was naturalized at Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1917.
He became known as an efficiency expert and established companies bearing his name in this country and throughout Europe and the rest of the world, exercising overall management from Amsterdam, Holland.
In 1927, Bedaux purchased a chateau near Tours, France, and his visits to the United States became steadily infrequent.
Friend of Nazis
The special board of inquiry investigating his citizenship in Miami found that Bedaux admitted close friendships among many of the highest-ranking officers of the Nazi Party and of the Vichy French government.
It was said that he was visiting Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Salzburg in August 1939, when the German diplomat was ordered to Moscow to conclude the Berlin-Moscow Non-Aggression Pact.
Bedaux opened his chateau to the U.S. Embassy staff at the fall of France in 1940, it was said, and subsequently appeared to carry on negotiations intimately with the Germans and the Vichy French.
Invited to Berlin
Sent to North Africa in July 1941, at the request of Vichy, Bedaux developed a plan whereby oil refineries on the Persian Gulf could be protected by the Germans against bombing. He was invited to Berlin to discuss this plan less than a month before the United States entered the war, Mr. Biddle disclosed.
In the summer of 1942, Bedaux undertook to construct a pipeline across the Sahara Desert which he said would bring edible oils from French West Africa to shipping points on the Mediterranean in order to relieve the critical shortage of such oils in Europe.
Bedaux claimed that the pipeline could be employed in reverse, it was said, to supply water for the construction of the Trans-Sahara Railway connecting Dakar with the North.
Named French aide
Bedaux was appointed an economic consultant to the German military administration in France and gained authority from Chief of State Pierre Laval for the pipeline. He also obtained permission for the manufacture of 60,000 tons of steel pipe and pumping equipment and 25,000 liters of gasoline in connection with the project.
Reaching Algiers in October 1942, Bedaux set up headquarters in the Aletti Hotel and began to assemble an expedition of men and equipment scheduled to move Nov. 15. British and U.S. forces invaded North Africa Nov. 8. It was shortly afterward that he was arrested.
FBI men killed
When military authorities determined that Bedaux should not be tried by a military court, Mr. Biddle dispatched Assistant Director Percy E. Foxworth and FBI Special Agent Harold O. Haberfeld to North Africa to investigate. They were killed when their plane crashed somewhere over the Brazilian jungles in January 1943, but other agents were immediately sent to carry out the assignment.
Bedaux is survived by his widow Fern, a native of the United States said to be living in France, and a son, Charles Jr., believed to be in North Africa.
Trip canceled
Bedaux had been a friend of the Duke of Windsor for many years. The Duke and Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson were married in Bedaux’s chateau near Tours in June 1937.
Several months later, when the Duke and Duchess decided to go to the United States to study industry and housing, Bedaux appeared as sponsor of the trip. His sponsorship caused a loud protest from labor and the trip was subsequently canceled.
Baruch reports –
Ways to avoid chaos at end of war given
Two offices to handle demobilization, reconversion recommended
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Night bonuses placed by WLB on areas basis
Policy outlined in ruling that reverses order in Milwaukee
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In Washington –
Subsidy ban veto will be refought on price control
Farm bloc foes will pass credit agency extension, then challenge bill continuing price curbs
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Soldier vote hopes
Washington (UP) –
The germ of hope for enactment of compromise soldier-vote legislation was kept alive today as states’ rights adherents and federal ballot supporters mulled over three compromise proposals – but it was a feeble germ.
House and Senate conferees were to consider the proposals when they meet again Monday, but there was no indication that the House conferees would back down from their adamant opposition to any form of federal ballot. They voted 3–2 against considering any plan whatsoever.
A dropkick, he says –
Diplomatic drinking liquor costs U.S. $300,000 a year
Appropriation wins over protest that we feed ‘em, why wine ‘em to make ‘em like us
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Former governor dies
Wilmington, Delaware –
Richard C. McMullen, 76, former Governor of Delaware, died of a heart attack at his home yesterday.
Weirton Steel case examiner for NLRB dies
E. G. Smith was preparing brief on close shop when taken ill
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‘Scuttle butt’ on flattop keeps men ‘rumor happy’
Gossip of news-thirsty sailors embroiders facts with wildest fantasy
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Editorial: ‘By Raymond Clapper…’
Raymond Clapper’s last dispatch, an unfinished column which he apparently interrupted to set out on the flight that cost his life, is printed today.
It may have seemed remarkable to some that we should continue printing Mr. Clapper’s column for so many days after his death. And it has indeed been remarkable – a notable testimonial to the hardworking nature of this great reporter.
It was no matter of chance which enabled us, when Ray Clapper set out from Washington for the Pacific, to continue his column daily without interruption. Whereas some of us might have considered the arduous journey to Australia and the South Pacific islands job enough in itself, he managed not only to keep his column coming in daily, but to build up a “cushion” of advance columns against the day when he would go to sea with a task force and be unable because of radio silence to send us anything for days and perhaps weeks.
And when the task force did set out, and he could no longer deliver his copy, he kept on turning out columns so that he would be ready when transmission was available. After his death, the Navy delivered these articles.
He was as hardworking a newspaperman as we have ever known.
Editorial: ‘Scarcity economics’
Vice President Henry Wallace is warning the country against the danger of what he terms the “American fascists of Wall Street” who, he contends, believe in “scarcity economics.”
This philosophy of scarcity economics, he adds, must be displaced by a doctrine of “economic abundance.”
But doesn’t Mr. Wallace recall the days, not so long ago, when pigs and cotton were being plowed under in America on grounds that such “scarcity economics” would end the Depression and lead us to prosperity?
And wasn’t that policy of scarcity economics being administered not from Wall Street, but from Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington – through the office of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace?
Perhaps there is something to the old saying that the memory of man is short-lived.
Ferguson: Fascinators as symbols
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Sometimes I wonder whether we can win the peace with women all wearing fascinators. There is, of course, nothing wrong with fascinators. They are merely one of the pieces of equipment women use to call attention to themselves.
And there is something appealing about a pretty face framed in a piece of colored cloth. At the start of the war, there was a sweet unselfish motive apparent when all over the country women began simplifying their dress. They seemed to be saying:
I will restrain my desires for self-expression and postpone them until the war is over.
But shawls have always been symbols of submission. Poor downtrodden people have worn them for centuries. And the trouble with poor downtrodden people is that they are sometimes poor in spirit.
Now if these pretty little fascinators we see around denote cooperation, well and good. But if they mean that the women are willing to take orders while waiting to the men to get the war over, then I think we should probe more intently into their possible significance.
Post-war America will need women who refuse to be submissive. And for that reason, the shawled heads of our young girls do give me a turn as they pass in almost constant procession.
The shawls are pretty, and the fascinators fetching. But let us hope they are not symbolic of a return to a certain old-fashioned way of thinking, when women tied down their spirits as they tied up their heads.
