Doctor slain; attorney held
Lawyer’s wife detained as chief witness
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Them’s hot words –
Winchell and Pearson draw heavy barrage
Rankin and George ‘blow their tops’ in denouncing two commentators
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Tanks capture 30 Nazis holed up in Italian house
Ex-Pittsburgh fireman charges his vehicle into side of farm building on beachhead
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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WPB allays fears –
Steel to stay near capacity
Increase aluminum production is noted
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Soldier vote may hold keys to 1944 election
Middle class also big factor in approaching campaign
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Campaign-year political polls strongly suggest that the 1944 presidential contest will be decided among the preferences of the great middle classes of town and farm and of the armed services.
The soldier vote could swing a close election this year. That is one reason statesmen of all parties are so urgently interested in the soldier-vote machinery.
The American Institute of Public Opinion in a weekend poll reported that a sampling indicated 51% of the voters want the Democrats to win this year, 49% favoring the Republicans.
Democrats slump
That figure is weighted with the preponderant Democratic preferences of the South. Eliminating those states, the score for 37 others is 52% Republican to 48% Democratic.
The figures reflect a Democratic slump from the 55% of the vote polled by President Roosevelt in 1940. The loss has apparently been among the middle classes because those in the higher income levels in general may be regarded as opposed to the administration, but there is no evidence of any general desertion by labor.
The New York newspaper PM has also dome some polling. It comes up with returns from 100 selected labor leaders representing all the big organizations and some of the independents.
Take big lead
Mr. Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace were overwhelmingly favored to head the Democratic ticket again this year.
This PM poll appears to challenge the reports now rapidly gaining currency that labor is turning on the President, that the railway brotherhoods are angry because the railways were seized, that union labor is generally talking a bolt in protest against wage-freeze orders and increased living costs.
An American Institute of Public Opinion poll last month, however, reported that Mr. Roosevelt had lost some labor ground to the Republicans. A 1940 poll showed 72% of trade unionists favoring Mr. Roosevelt, whereas this year the tally had slumped to 64%.
CIO and AFL seek Army mail rights for union papers
Servicemen’s editions of weekly and monthly publications now barred until soldiers send back their requests
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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In Washington –
Plans laid to distribute war surpluses to civilians
Clayton ready to begin task of allotting manufactured goods and raw materials under Baruch reconversion setup
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New soldier-vote plan
Washington (UP) –
Senate-House conferees turned their attention today to a new compromise soldier-vote plan which pointed to a possible settlement of the complicated issue that has kept Congress in uproar for almost three months.
The plan, offered by Rep. Worley (D-TX), a House conferee, would abolish the anti-poll tax provisions of the 1942 soldier-vote law but would retain a federal war ballot.
Rep. John E. Rankin (D-MS), leader of the fight for the House-approved states’-rights plan, indicated that Mr. Worley’s proposal would prove the way out. He said modification of the 1942 law to eliminate restrictions against state poll tax and registration requirements would “remove the constitutional issue” from debate.
‘Shrewd Yankee horse trade?’
Destroyers-bases swap now questionable bargain
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Nimitz has personal score to settle with Japs in war
Panay was his first command, sunk in 1937
By Boyd Lewis, United Press staff writer
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Editorial: Primaries are for voters
Local leaders of the Republican and Democratic Party organizations, taking their cues from statewide leaders, are conferring, dickering and bargaining to eliminate all “opposition” in the April 25 primaries.
For the sake of “harmony” they are endeavoring to patch up a slate on which a majority of them can agree – and then run everybody else out of the race.
In this enterprise, they are warmly, and even forcefully, encouraged by the big leaders.
The purpose is to avoid party splits, to set up solidarity for the main contest in November.
Some of the motives behind this program may have merit. The “harmony” slate may be helpful to party discipline. It may prevent the kind of mudslinging contests which have characterized factional disputes in so many recent primaries. And probably it will enable the two parties to hoard their campaign funds for the big battles in the fall.
But this backroom slate-making defeats the purpose of primary elections.
Years ago, Pennsylvania, and a great many other states, abandoned the convention form of choosing party candidates for local, state and Congressional officers. The convention system was abolished because it became rotten and anything but democratic. The desires of the voters were ignored. Instead of candidates freely nominated by the people, the voters in November were confronted by candidates handpicked by whatever bosses could control or buy the party conventions. The election became a contest between two cliques of bosses, rather than two parties.
The open primary has not cured that condition entirely. Bosses still control nominations, often by force of fat purses or political patronage rather than by any qualities of leadership.
But the worst of the evils inherent in the convention system have been eliminated, or at least curtailed.
The primary offers any candidate the opportunity to present himself to the people. And political bosses frequently have been defeated in primaries.
In this campaign, the bosses, operating under the guise of party “harmony,” are attempting to restore the old convention system.
This system may be more subtle than the convention plan, but it smacks of the same dangers.
A few party leaders, many of them self-appointed, summon potential candidates behind closed doors and decide this candidate may run and that candidate may not.
In some cases, the leaders have called in the elected party committeemen from the precincts and allowed them a determining voice. This perhaps gives the slate-making an air of democratic processes, but the principle of the primary is still being violated.
Primaries were created to give the people a chance to pick their own candidates. The people don’t get that chance unless there is a free entry of candidates, unhampered by pressure from bosses, or office-holders or professional politicians.
Editorial: Model for a President
This year of decision, in which the American people will determine the course and character of their government for the next four fateful years, will have need of every possible guidepost.
The election of a President is alone one of the most crucial steps ever to confront any people. Who the nominees will be cannot now be foretold. Fate has a strange way of taking a hand in decisions of such moment, and hardly indeed would be the prophet daring to make a flat prediction now.
Obviously, however, an election determined by discord, disunity and noisy, bitter argument is not what the country wants. The task must be faced with calm, with dignity, with informed judgment. And history provides us with more than one example of the type of man required by the times.
One hundred and twelve years ago, in observance of the centennial anniversary of Washington’s birth, Daniel Webster summed up the characteristics of the first President which fitted him so eminently for his all-important role in the shaping of the Republic. These words were spoken of Washington, and they describe a lofty standard. But read them with the nation’s present-day need in mind and, as the year progresses, measure each candidate against them:
In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. To commanding talents, and to success, the common elements of such greatness, he added a disregard of self, a spotlessness of motive, a steady submission to every public and private duty, which threw far into the shade the whole crowd of vulgar great.
The object of his regard was the whole country. No part of it was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His love of glory, so far as that may be supposed to have influenced him at all, spurned everything short of general approbation. It would have been nothing to him that his partisans or his favorites outnumbered, or outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, those of other leaders.
His principle it was to act right, and to trust the people for support; his principle it was not to follow the lead of sinister and selfish ends, nor to rely on the little arts of party delusion to obtain public sanction for such a course. Born for his country and for the world, he did not give up to party what was meant for mankind.
There is a model of political virtue which no crisis could dominate or conquer.
Edson: Political hokum starts campaign in usual manner
By Peter Edson
Washington –
Everyone has his own ideas about what the fifth, sixth or umpteenth freedoms should be after the first four, but even this early in a presidential campaign, you begin to long for a day when there might be freedom from political bunk.
Maybe that’s asking for too much.
Freedom from fear and from want seem easy of attainment when stacked up alongside the ideal of achieving freedom from hokum and hooey out of the mouths of people running for office.
All you have to do to get a line on the 1944 brand of political palaver in platitude is to read, consecutively, the speeches of those citizens who, inspired solely by the highest of motives, have put personal ambition to one side in order to save their country.
No one party has a corner on this malarkey. If you have the idea that the Republicans are dishing out more demagoguery than the Democrats, that’s simply because there appear to be more Republicans running for high office.
Thus far, Henry Wallace has been doing most of the open field running for his side, as against a half-dozen opponents – Dewey, Willkie, Bricker, Dirksen, and the party spokesmen, Landon, Bud Kelland, Joe Martin and Chairman Harrison Spangler.
‘Deathless’ driblets
Examples? Paste these on the leaves of your scrapbook of recipes on how to make applesauce:
Henry Wallace in Seattle:
American Fascists [are] those who believe that Wall Street comes first and the country second and who are willing to go to any length… to keep Wall Street sitting on top of the country.
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker in Washington:
The Republican Party is the liberal party in America. The New Deal is reactionary.
Wendell Willkie in Portland:
I am sick – sick at heart – at our transferring our problems to one who by legerdemain has created the impression that he is able to handle our problems better than we can ourselves.
Kansas Ex-Governor Alf M. Landon in Nashville:
…the national socialistic state… is the object of the New Dealer.
New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in New York:
The first attempt to establish an American autocracy took place [on March 4, 1933] as the result of the election of what used to be known as the Democratic Party.
But–
Enough? This is just one day’s catch, hooked, of all times, on the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, who made a reputation on his honesty, who was something of an orator himself, and who calls to mind that crack about not being able to fool all the people all the time.
In American political campaigns, the politicians have come to believe that the people expect hyperbole, twisted reasoning, glittering generality, name calling, appeal to the emotions. Maybe those qualities in a political speech do liven up a campaign and make it interesting.
It is still comforting to think, however, that the American people are smarter than their politicians and see through illogical utterance like an X-ray finding the rat tail in a baloney.