Army exonerates WAC lieutenant
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Japanese kill cameraman in atoll battle
Yank photographer fatally wounded by mortar on Eniwetok
By Richard W. Johnson, United Press staff writer
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Poll: Dewey, Willkie and MacArthur top Iowa test
Governor leads with 40%, 15 more than nearest rival
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Editorial: So soldiers may vote–
Governor Martin has announced he will call a special session of the Legislature to amend Pennsylvania’s military ballot law so members of the Armed Forces may vote in this year’s election.
The Governor thus is taking rightful notice of the obvious need for a simplification of the election laws in this respect. And he is recognizing the basic justice of giving the Armed Forces a maximum opportunity to cast a ballot.
Mr. Martin also exercised his common sense in deciding to withhold his call for the special session until Congress either enacts a federal soldier-vote law or abandons the project altogether.
Some states have already held special sessions and passed soldier-vote laws of their own.
But it would seem wiser to await Congress’ action, if there is to be any, since it then will be easier to make the state’s law dovetail with the federal statute.
Prompt action is essential, so full preparations may be made for handling the immense job of getting ballots to the Armed Forces overseas, marked and returned in time for tabulation after the November election.
But the Governor believes, with apparent justification, that the Legislature can amend the Pennsylvania law in no more than two weeks.
Mr. Martin is practical and wise in deciding to call the special session, in delaying the call until Congress makes up its mind and in keeping the legislative program restricted to this issue.
When the Governor does call the special session, he plans to have ready for the lawmakers a program of legislation which will meet the needs and coincide with the federal law. This should expedite the session.
In developing amendments to the military ballot law, the Governor, the Attorney General’s office, the State Elections Bureau and the Legislature should keep uppermost in mind one main objective: Making it as easy and simple as possible for the man in the Armed Forces to vote.
The present Pennsylvania law is inadequate even for the use of voters in the military and naval forces in this country. It was written for peacetime mobilization when there was no immediate prospect of more than a relatively small number of voters being called into the services.
But with hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters in training camps, its cumbersome procedure is far too involved, both for the men in the services and for the agencies at home which must handle the job.
As a wartime voting measure, with many thousands of Pennsylvania voters in scattered and distant posts overseas, it is impossible.
The law needs drastic simplification, in accordance with a mandate of the Pennsylvania Constitution which says that electors in the military services shall be provided with the means of exercising their suffrage “as fully as if they were present at their usual places of election.”
Edson: Washington unity at lowest ebb as need is greatest
By Peter Edson
Washington –
Up to the time of Kentucky Senator Not-So-Dear Alben W. Barkley’s histrionic resignation as leader of the Democratic majority in the upper chamber of Congress, the two 1944 pre-election bets most frequently offered around Washington have been (1) the President will be reelected for a fourth term; (2) both Houses of Congress will go Republican.
In capital cocktail it has been difficult to get takers for either of these offers, but since the Barkley incident, maybe the odds will come down.
The political prospect which this Roosevelt-Republican Congress election result would offer is, of course, one of continual strife between the White House and Capitol.
From 1945 to 1949 is admittedly going to be one of those things the editorial writers call “the most critical period in American history.” The pitfalls of this period of reconversion and readjustment after World War II will be broader and deeper than were those after World War I, after any of the great panic years of the 1800s, or in the terrible times of Reconstruction after the Civil War between the states.
Big question raised
Faced by this tough outlook, the need for cooperation between legislative and executive departments would appear to be greater than it ever was before, and it raises the embarrassing pre-election question of whether the country would not be better off with a President and a Congressional majority of the same political party, than it would be with a President and a Congressional majority of opposing parties – even thought that might mean swapping hoses in the middle of the well-known crick by retiring from office a Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief under whose leadership a foreign war is being fought to a victorious end.
Naming a name, would Mr. Roosevelt with a Republican Congress be worse for the country than four years more of Mr. Roosevelt with a Democratic Congress? Following the Barkley affair, it might appear that four years more of Mr. Roosevelt with a Democratic Congress couldn’t be worse than anything.
Cooperation between President and Congress perhaps has never been at a lower ebb. On every important domestic issue today – taxes, the soldier vote, food subsidies, taking the excess profits out of war through renegotiation of contracts, the stabilization program – Congress seems determined not to give the President what he recommends and the President seems unwilling to accept what Congress gives him.
Even where they do see eye-to-eye, they look daggers.
And while the American system of government is based on the principle of free speech and full argument on every controversial question of public interest, it is hard for a sideline rooter in Washington to see how this present capital turmoil helps win the war or solve the perplexities of peace.
Recommendations
In the Baruch report on war and post-war adjustment policies there are three short sentences that today might well be postered on the walls of every executive office, printed in headletter type on the cover of the Congressional Record every day, billboarded in boxcar letters along the malls and on the lawns at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, where public servants might look out of their broad windows to read:
We recommend unifying the government forces dealing with the human problems of demobilization on two fronts – the Executive and Congress.
Everything being done by the executive branch of the government should be brought together under a single, unforgetful mind; the Congress to merge the activities of its many committees into a single committee in the Senate and in the House, or, if it can be effected, into a joint committee of both Houses.
The unified executive and Congressional groups should then work together on a combined program of legislation and operation that will carry out the objectives that all of us share.
Sure. Why not?
Background of news –
Costs of soldier voting
By Burt P. Garnett
In connection with the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, Congress appropriated $1,200,000 to assist the states in meeting the cost of handling the large number of absentee ballots expected from servicemen and women in the Congressional and state elections of that year. The final enactment of the soldier voting bill, however, was held up until September and relatively few votes were cast by servicepeople in the November election.
The President said in his recent message to Congress, in which he urged provision of a federal ballot for the election of 1944, that “out of 5,700,000 men in our Armed Forces at the time of the general election of 1942, only 28,000 servicemen’s votes were counted under the federal statute.” The President’s figure was off about one thousand; records of the War and Navy Departments show that the actual number of servicepeople who voted under the federal law in 1942 was only 27,074.
Total payments to the states out of the $1,200,000 provided by Congress to meet extra expenses under the 1942 Soldier Voting Act came to $71,907.99 – or about $2.65 per service vote. States were reimbursed for printing of special instructions and payment of extra clerical help; they were required to meet the cost of printing extra ballots for servicepeople out of their own funds. Three states – Louisiana, South Dakota and Wisconsin – paid their own expenses in full. Of the $1,200,000 appropriated by Congress, $1,128,092 remained unexpended after all expenses chargeable to the federal government had been met.
State cost to be low
No estimate can yet be made of the cost of polling the very much larger number of servicepeople expected to participate in the presidential election of 1944. The total cost will depend not only upon the number of votes cast by members of the Armed Forces, but also upon the nature of the ballot to be provided under the revised Soldier Voting Act now awaiting final action by Congress. If it turns out to be a federal ballot, as desired by the administration, permitting a vote only for candidates for federal office, the state share of the cost of soldier voting will be negligible.
If a combination scheme using both state and federal ballots is finally adopted (as now seems more likely), the cost will be higher, but still far from prohibitive. Assuming that Congress follows the precedent established in 1942., the direct cost to the states will be confined in the main to the expense of printing extra absentee ballots.
Indirect costs will include the expenses incident to holding special sessions of state legislatures to ensure new soldier voting legislation. Here the chief cost will be payment of mileage to legislators for an extra trip to the state capital. Total direct and indirect costs of soldier voting to the states should not exceed 10% for each man and woman from the state serving in the Armed Forces.
O’Daniel voted down
A proposal advanced by Senator O’Daniel (D-TX) while the tax bill was before the Senate, would have made soldier voting a source of revenue to the eight Southern poll tax states. Senator O’Daniel pointed out that the poll tax as a voting requirement had been written into the Texas Constitution and could not be waived by the legislature. If Congress was going to exempt servicepeople from payment of poll taxes, he said, it should provide for payment of such taxes on their behalf out of the Treasury. He offered an amendment to the tax bill for this purpose, but it was quickly rejected by the Senate.
Labor trains for resumption of domestic front warfare
Large-scale post-war clash with employers envisioned by auto workers; urge steps now to strengthen unions
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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In Washington –
Proposal to make ‘good neighbors’ of world studied
U.S. nearing showdown on Argentina as British agree new upheaval calls for serious study
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Roosevelt returns to the White House
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, back in the White House after a week’s rest away from Washington, scheduled conferences with his staff chiefs today to catch up with details of the latest war developments.
Security provisions of the censorship code prevent disclosure of where Mr. Roosevelt spent his time out of town. The only official announcement of his absence was contained in his letter last week requesting Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) to remain as Senate Majority Leader.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
In my usual role of running other people’s business, I’ve been thrashing around with an idea – honest. It’s to give the combat soldier some little form of recognition more than he is getting now.
Everybody who serves overseas, no matter where or what he’s doing, gets extra pay. Enlisted men get 20% additional and officers 10%.
Airmen get an extra 50%above this for flight pay. As a result, officer-fliers get 60% above their normal base pay and enlisted fliers such as gunners and radio operators get 70%.
All that is fine and as it should be, but the idea I was toying with is why not give your genuine combat ground soldier something corresponding to flight pay? Maybe a good phrase for it would be “fight pay.”
Of any one million men overseas, probably no more than 100,000 are in actual combat with the enemy. But as it is now, there is no official distinction between the dogface lying for days and nights under constant mortar fire on an Italian hill, and the headquarters clerk living comfortably in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro.
Their two worlds are so far apart the human mind can barely grasp the magnitude of the difference. One lives like a beast and his kind die in great numbers. The other is merely working away from home. Both are doing necessary jobs, but it seems to me the actual warrior deserves something to set him apart. And medals are not enough.
Recognition of miserable job
When I was at the front the last time several infantry officers brought up this same suggestion. They say combat pay would mean a lot to the fighting man. It would put him into a proud category and make him feel that somebody appreciates what he endures.
Obviously, no soldier would ever go into combat just to get extra “fight pay.” That isn’t the point. There is not enough money in the world to pay
But it would put a mark of distinction on him, any single individual his due for battle suffering.
One of the meanest stunts I’ve heard of was a Christmas envelope full of clippings that a practical joker back home sent a soldier over here.
The clippings consisted of colored ads cut out of magazines – and they showed every luscious American thing from huge platters of ham and eggs on up to vacationists lolling in bright bathing robes on the sand, surrounded by beautiful babes. There ought to be a law.
An even meaner trick
On second thought, I know even a meaner trick than that one. In fact, this one would take first prize in an orneriness contest at any season, Christmas or otherwise. The worst is that it happened to a frontline infantryman.
Some of his friends back home sent him three bottles of whisky for Christmas. They came separately, were wonderfully packed, and the bottles came through without a break.
The first bottle tasted fine to the cold kids at the front, but when the second and third ones came the boys found they had been opened and drained along the way, then carefully resealed and continued on their journey.
Of course, mailing them in the first place was illegal, but that’s beside the point. The point is that somewhere in the world there is a louse of a man with two quarts of whisky inside him who should have his neck wrung off.
At one of our airdromes recently a German plane sneaked over and dropped five-pronged steel spikes over the field. Our fliers called it a “jacks raid,” since the spikes resembled the “jacks” that kids used to play with in school, only much bigger. These vicious spikes would puncture the tires when our planes taxied out.
So, the field engineers got a huge magnet, attached it to the front of a truck, and swept the field free of the spikes. Then they were loaded into our planes and dropped on German airfields. There haven’t been any “jacks raids” since.
Annapolis at war!
Guadalcanal, Midway veterans are plebes at Naval Academy!
By Jess Stearn, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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