America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

Enemy probes defenses –
Yanks shatter German thrust

Nazis mass 10 divisions for beachhead drive
By Robert Vermillion, United Press staff writer

Hit hard by Stalingrad –
Hitler is fat, tired, stopped

Heinzen: Non-Nazi Germans less devoted
By Ralph E. Heinzen, United Press staff writer

Death takes U.S. Senator Charles McNary

Republican leader, Willkie running mate, ill since fall
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Wendell_Wilkie_and_Charles_McNary_LCCN2016877838
Senator McNary

Washington –
When the Senate again meets next Tuesday, it will adjourn immediately in respect to one of its most distinguished members, Senator Charles L. McNary or Oregon, Wendell Willkie’s vice-presidential running mate in 1940 and long a Republican leader, who died yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Senator McNary, who would have been 70 years old June 12, had been recuperating from a brain operation performed here last November, and appeared to be recovering rapidly until he suffered a relapse two weeks ago. He had been in a coma a few days preceding his death.

Mrs. McNary, the former Cornelia Morton of Washington, and their eight-year-old adopted daughter Charlotte, who were with the Senator when he died, planned to accompany the body tonight to Salem, Oregon, their home and the Senator’s birthplace in 1874. A Senate delegation and Mrs. McNary’s sister, Miss Mary Louise Morton, will complete the party.

Mrs. McNary indicated the funeral will probably be held Friday.

Senator McNary, a first-class politician of statesmanlike proportions, participated positively in shaping the legislation of the past 24 years. He knew Senate rules and made full use of them to snare the opposition. He rarely made what is known as a speech, it being recalled that he delivered only one from 1932 through 1936.

He was a shade or more too liberal for some of his Republican colleagues, but they generally acknowledged him as the shrewdest of their company – even when he was voting with the New Deal, which he did nine of 16 times from 1933 to 1935.

The Senate’s first opportunity to honor Senator McNary will be when it reconvenes Tuesday, after a recess ordered to permit all hands to rest and ponder the circumstances surround the overriding of President Roosevelt’s tax bill veto.

The immediate adjournment will not be mere formal procedure, nor will there be light Congressional hearts aboard the McNary funeral train. Of the men who have served in the Senate since World War I, Mr. McNary probably was the best liked. Certainly, no one was more respected by his colleagues.

Reared in Oregon and one-time associate justice of his state’s Supreme Court, Mr. McNary came to the Senate in 1918 by appointment to fill an unexpired term. He never lost an election since.

Close to Presidents

Although the law and politics absorbed most of his time, he was a farmer by preference and spent his free time on his Salem acres. His interests led him to the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee and in that capacity, he was co-sponsor of the McNary-Haugen agricultural act.

Throughout most of his Senate career, Mr. McNary was in increasingly close touch with the White House, especially through the Coolidge and Hoover administrations.

President Roosevelt knew Senator McNary’s influence and conferred with him frequently in the early formative period of the New Deal. Senator McNary, in turn, not infrequently supported administration legislation, including the National Labor Relations Act, Tennessee Valley Authority and Social Security proposals. Senator McNary worked closely with the President to obtain vast waterpower developments in the Northwest, notably the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams.

Senate post his preference

He was nominated for Vice President in 1940 to run with Mr. Willkie, an assignment he accepted reluctantly. To those enthusiasts who occasionally would tell him he should be nominated for President instead, Senator McNary replied that the idea was ridiculous. He had the only job he really wanted right in the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans were not expected to elect a new leader to replace Mr. McNary for at least several weeks. His minority leadership responsibilities in the Senate had been cared for by his assistant, Senator Wallace H. White Jr. (R-ME), for several months.

Senators White, Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI) and Robert A. Taft (R-OH) have been most prominently mentioned as possible successors of Senator McNary.

Willkie eulogizes ex-running mate

New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie today described the death of Senator Charles L. McNary, as a tragedy which had “taken a man whose ability was never more needed than at present.”

Mr. Willkie said:

Senator McNary had a long and distinguished career. His contributions during the last 25 years in the Senate were many and varied. He had an unusual ability to reconcile conflicting forces, and never was such ability so much needed as in the present crisis. Out of our close association in the campaign of 1940 had developed a deep personal affection.

Roosevelt orders boards to review draft deferments

Government has been overly lenient, particularly with younger man, President declares

americavotes1944

Senators put next move up to Roosevelt

Democrats seeking truce rather than jeopardize election chances

Washington (UP) –
Senate Democrats, having demonstrated their independence, are ready to make political peace with President Roosevelt if he will meet them halfway.

They would rather compromise their differences with the President than have the White House-Congress fight jeopardize the party’s chances for victory in November.

The general feeling is that if the President will work more closely with Congress, submit various phases of the war and post-war programs for Congressional approval and desist from further caustic criticism, he can win almost solid Congressional support – even for a fourth term.

Up to Roosevelt

If the President won’t compromise, however, he can expect the campaign year to be marked with further rebellion such as the one this week which saw Senate Democrats win Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) from his control and overwhelmingly reject his veto of the $2,315,000,000 tax bill.

A majority of those who participated in this week’s rebellion hope, for the good of the party as well as their own political futures, that the episode has ended. They realize that Republicans could make political capital of a lengthy fight between the President and his own party members in Congress.

Virtually all of them expect Mr. Roosevelt to be a candidate for a fourth term.

Even the most vigorous administration opponents despair of keeping the nomination from Mr. Roosevelt if he wants it, and they’d rather have a fourth term than get a Republican President and see their party swept completely out of national control.

Wants his aid

Some of those who opposed the third term in 1940, but now are up for reelection themselves, have been soft-pedaling their opposition to Mr. Roosevelt of late.

They don’t want to change Presidents while the war is on. They also figure they might reap some advantage from having his name at the top of the ticket.

Of the 39 Democrats who voted in the Senate yesterday to override the tax bill veto, the President probably could count on better than two-thirds of them to make speeches for a fourth term.

Mrs. Hoover estate willed to ‘boys and their daddy’

‘Lucky to have had such a father and I’m lucky’ because of ‘three such men,’ letter says

San Jose, California (UP) –
The estate of Mrs. Herbert Hoover will be divided between her “two boys and their daddy,” a letter written by the wife of the former President disclosed today.

Mrs. Hoover wrote the informal letter to her sons, Herbert Jr. and Alan, two months before she died of a heart attack in New York Jan. 7, to replace a mislaid will. A hearing on admission of the letter to probate will be heard in Superior Court here March 8.

Mrs. Hoover told her two sons:

You have been lucky boys to have had such a father, and I a lucky woman to have had my life’s trail alongside the paths of three such men and boys.

Naming her sons executors, Mrs. Hoover disposed of an estate valued in excess of $10,000 in what she called “a series of friendly requests.”

She said:

To your daddy, I bequeath all my interest and rights in the community property acquired by us during our married life.

The former President will also receive her invested funds while the Hoover home at Stanford University and all real estate, except unspecified property in Washington, will go to her sons.

Furnishings and pictures in the Hoover home should be divided among members of the family, “of course including daddy first,” Mrs. Hoover wrote. Any cash remaining in her bank account after her personal affairs were settled, she suggested, should go to her grandchildren as “pocket money.”

Mrs. Hoover told her sons:

You both have been good boys and an immeasurable source of happiness and satisfaction to me. I know I can trust your disinterestedness and judgment in seeing this tiresome task through.

What manpower shortage?
Restaurant has 3 cashiers to keep the unions happy

Timid proprietor has to call in mediation board before he can punch own register

I DARE SAY —
Barkley had a good secretary

By Florence Fisher Parry

‘My Day’ in Pittsburgh –
First Lady ‘hitchhikes’ here after train wreck

Mrs. Roosevelt: Durable peace depends on individuals, not on ‘blueprints’
By Maxine Garrison

No-strike deal offered U.S. by independents

Confederation’s bid for place on WLB carries veiled threat
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Rabaul rocked 21st day in row

33 tons of bombs rained on South Pacific base
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer

Col. James Roosevelt receives Silver Star

With a half Nelson –
Mother-in-law wins first fall in Heinz melee

Hair-pulling match staged by socialites over custody of child


Judge to rule in Chaplin case

Attorney asks dismissal of white slave charges

Editorial: Baruch on public works

Editorial: The opium war

Editorial: Troubadour of the AGF

Edson: Range of naval forces stepped up in this war

By Peter Edson

Ferguson: The king business

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

americavotes1944

Background of news –
President, party and Congress

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

Gen. Washington, Woodrow Wilson has pointed out:

…set an example which few of his successors seem to have followed… he made constant and intimate use of his colleagues in every matter that he handled, seeking their assistance and advice by letter when they were at a distance.

The record shows that President Roosevelt, even in the pre-war years of his administration, consulted very sparingly with his party leaders.

The “soak-the-wealth” administration tax program of 1935 was sprung without warning upon a Congress which had been led to believe that the President desired no new general revenue bill in that year. The undistributed-profits tax program was placed before Congress in 1936 without Congressional leaders having been consulted, and in the following year, revision of the tax was demanded by Chairman Harrison of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator Robinson, then Senate Majority Leader, complained that he had not been consulted on the President’s Supreme Court plan of 1937, and Chairman Farley of the Democratic National Committee was not a party to the President’s purge attempt of 1938.

‘Intrusion’ resented

Party leaders complain that at the same time President Roosevelt has intruded into what should be their private province. His “Dear Alben” letter to Senator Barkley in 1937 was supposed to have shown presidential preference for Mr. Barkley over Mr. Harrison for the post of Senate Majority Leader, and in 1940, the President forced the nomination of Henry A. Wallace for Vice President.

Party leaders have also complained that when they have wrung concessions from the President, he does not stay put. In November 1941, the House, bitter at strikes in defense plants, passed by a narrow margin the administration-supported revision of the Neutrality Act only after Speaker Rayburn had read aloud a letter from the President interpreted as promising immediate action against such strikes. The House leaders felt the promise was not kept.

The record also shows that even at the beginning of the New Deal, an overwhelmingly-Democratic Congress refused to follow the new President in all issues, though the President sent Congress in 1933 a letter thanking it for “a more sincere and more wholehearted cooperation” than had existed between the executive and the legislative branches for many years.

Congress in 1933 toned down the administration’s draft of the NRA Act, forced concessions in the administration’s original economy program, and rejected several presidential appointments. In 1934, Congress overrode a presidential veto in order to restore cuts made in government salaries and veterans’ payments.

Wilson’s method recalled

Older members of Congress recall nostalgically that Woodrow Wilson put through his program in his first term largely by working hand-in-glove with the party leaders and caucuses. Yet in 1916, when the party leaders rejected Wilson’s defense program, he went over their heads by appealing to the public in a speaking tour.

Wilson also called upon Democratic voters to purge, in the party primaries, certain outstanding Democratic members of Congress who had been anti-administration.

Most strong Democratic Presidents have had party revolts on their hands in Congress.

In Cleveland’s second term, Democratic leaders in Congress joined with the Republican minority to emasculate the administration’s low-tariff bill. In terms not unlike Roosevelt’s attack on the tax bill of 1944, Cleveland denounced the bill as “party perfidy and party dishonor” and an “abandonment of Democratic principle.” In terms not unlike Barkley’s attack upon Roosevelt in 1944, Senator Gorman of Maryland, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, thereupon delivered on the floor of the Senate a bitter personal attack on the President.

Sermons preached in movies

Brotherhood is promoted in theaters