Mary Beard: Diagnosis is always important
Combination of symptoms is necessary to doctor’s decision
By Mary Beard, Director, Nursing Service, American Red Cross
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Tunisian Victory picture is ready for public to see
For first time in history a film will bear seals of Great Britain and the U.S.
By Lawrence Perry, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Pompeii, Italy –
Maj. Ed Bland got fed up with flying for a living and I got fed up with writing for a living and Cpl. Harry Cowe got fed up with being a corporal for a living, so the three of us said “To hell with it,” and we got into Maj. Bland’s jeep and came touring out to Pompeii.
The only thing in all Italy I have really wanted to see is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but that’s up north and I will probably leave Italy before we get that far. So, Pompeii is the first and probably the last real sightseeing I will get to do in Italy.
Someone had told me he was disappointed in Pompeii because so little of the ruins had been uncovered, but I think he must have got on the wrong side of the mountain, for there’s certainly plenty uncovered.
The buried city originally had 25,000 people, and two-thirds of the whole city has been dug out. The preserved part surely must be almost a mile square. Pompeii, as you may know, was buried by a rain of ashes and dust and cinders that covered the city 20 to 24 feet deep and smothered everybody to death.
The eruption didn’t come from Vesuvius, as most people think, but from Vesuvius’ sister volcano, named Somma, now extinct. The burying took place in 79 AD and the ruins weren’t discovered until the 18th century.
‘Watch your jeep, mister?’
When we stopped the jeep in the little barren square in front of the main gate to Pompeii, we were assaulted by a swarm of Italian urchins so grabby and insistent that we had to pick one out and appoint him to watch our jeep.
Then we bought tickets for 10¢ apiece and went through the turnstiles. A few Italian men in civilian clothes tagged along as we started to walk, asking if we wanted a guide.
We picked one out. Many of the guides spoke fruit-stand English, such as “Dissa ees da bedaroom.” But ours spoke with quite a cultured accent. He said he once lived in New York but had been a Pompeii guide since long before the war.
His name was Ugo Prosperi. He was tall and thin and looked American. He wore a fedora hat and a long dark overcoat with fur collar and gray trousers and gray spats. He smoked a thin cigar and addressed us constantly as “sir.”
There’s no use in my trying to describe Pompeii in a wartime column. Thousands of you back home have already seen it and the rest of you could hardly visualize it anyhow, so I will merely try to give you Pompeii’s wartime aspect.
Around 100 bombs have fallen within the old Pompeii since the war. The ruins, of course, have never been deliberately bombed by either side. The bombs that fell inside the walls were strays. Actually, not much damage has been done. But our guide, spotting Maj. Bland as an Air Force man, made four or five deadpan but subtle digs about the bombings.
All we could do was wink at each other. Maj. Bland has dive-bombed a lot of Italy, but never around Pompeii.
Dozens of small parties were wandering around the ruins, each with a guide and all composed of military people on leave.
Pompeii has risqué side
Down the street came a British brigadier smoking a pipe and a Scot officer wearing kilts. We turned a corner and met a group of naval ensigns in from the sea, all carrying canes just as if they were on the college campus back in England.
There were gay young American fliers in leather jackets and groups of crumpled-looking doughboys on leave from the frontlines, eating peanuts.
War hasn’t made much difference in the scribbling habits of the Americans and British. On the walls of Pompeii, you will see hundreds of names written in pencil – Pvt. Joe Doakes from Kansas City, Sgt. Jock McLean from Glasgow.
Pompeii is noted for the dirty pictures on the walls of certain houses. In peacetime, the guides had to be discreet with mixed groups of tourists, but they don’t have to pull their punches now except when a bunch of nurses or WACs happens along.
As in peacetime, they will sell you obscene little good-luck emblems in silver or bronze and books of “feelthy” photographs. Whether or not we bought any is a military secret.
Maj. Bland from Oklahoma and Cpl. Cowe from Seattle and I from Indiana and New Mexico spent three hours in the ruins of old Pompeii and decided we enjoyed it, but the next time we go sightseeing, we hope it can be through the less ancient ruins of Berlin.
Annapolis at war!
Relics from famous ships are kept in Naval Academy Museum
By Jess Stearn, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Yanks chase Jap vessels, send them to the bottom
Reporter watches battle off Truk, sees U.S. troops hoist taunting victory flag
By George E. Jones, United Press staff writer
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Lack of steel hits Japs, U.S, Congressman asserts
Statistics quoted to show industrial plight of Nipponese in face of big losses
By Marshall McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Big increase in corporate profits seen
Paul denies taxes reduce industry’s ability to build up reserves
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Ohio industrialist defends his methods, high pay rates
Jim Lincoln claims his 1,000 men turn out as much work as 3,500 at rival plant; hits Treasury charge
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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In Washington –
OWI will give ‘known facts’ on candidates
Alleged slight to Bricker brings new policy for campaign
Washington (UP) –
War Information Director Elmer Davis has issued a new policy directive for propaganda handling of 1944 campaign news, instructing OWI employees to “get as close to the facts as the facts are known” in identifying candidates for the presidential nominations, it was learned today.
The new policy was an outgrowth of a recent incident in which an OWI news dispatch aboard, concerning Ohio Governor John W. Bricker failed to mention that he was a candidate for the Republican nomination.
Not made public
Under the new directive, the full text of which OWI refuses to make public, only those who have officially announced their presidential aspirations will be designated flatly as candidates. In the case of those being “mentioned” for the nominations of either party, that fact and no more will be stated.
The OWI will have little difficulty in interpreting the policy so far as the Democratic Party is concerned. The only formal Democratic candidate is anti-fourth-termer Governor Joseph B. Ely of Massachusetts, although President Roosevelt is receiving more than “mention” as an aspirant for a fourth term.
Dewey description
As a result of the new directive, foreigners who have OWI news available either by radio or newspapers have learned that Thomas E. Dewey is:
The Republican Governor of New York State whose candidacy for the Republican nomination for President is being pushed by many supporters…
Wendell Willkie has been referred to in the past week as:
A Republican presidential candidate in 1940 and candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 1944 election…
In the same story, OWI described Governor Bricker as:
Governor of Ohio and candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination…
Vote visibility low
Washington (UP) –
The now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t federal war ballot for servicemen was a little less visible today as Senate and House conferees moved into the final stages of work on a controversial soldier vote bill.
House conferees, dominated by advocates of state ballots, won another concession yesterday which curtailed even further the use of the short-form federal ballot backed by the Senate group.
The conferees agreed to write into the measure a provision under which the federal ballot will go only to overseas servicemen who ask for a state absentee ballot but fail to receive it by Oct. 1.
Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI), a Senate conferee, said work would probably be completed today so that the House and Senate could act on it early next week.
Stokes: Who is Roosevelt’s ‘ghost’?
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Who writes President Roosevelt’s messages to Congress has become an apparently important side issue in the bigger issue between himself and Congress because of the tart, stinging phrases sprinkled through recent communications.
Both Democrats and Republicans would like to blame the much-belabored corps of assistants who are lumped together by the opposition as “the palace guard.”
Some Democrats, in self-defense, would like to place responsibility on the President’s numerous aides, for whom they have little more love than the Republicans.
Degrees, no sense
Republicans would like to create the fiction that a bunch of smart young fellows, dripping with college degrees, but bereft of common sense, are running the government. This is all good politics and good fun, with some grains of truth, for we have those young fellows about and some of them are about as described.
But the real truth is that the author of President Roosevelt’s messages to Congress, in the usually accepted sense, is a fellow named Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Asks for drafts
He gets help, of course. He calls for suggestions, asked for memoranda from various officials and departments and even asks for sample drafts of portions of his messages. All Presidents do that in drafting messages.
Mr. Roosevelt takes all this and then dictates his own version, so that it has, in the end, what is known as “the Roosevelt touch,” and it is a Roosevelt product, branded and stamped.
Sometimes he may lift a sentence or a paragraph or more from something prepared for him, and, occasionally you may run into the author, bragging about his contribution at some cocktail bar.
‘Fraud’ is his own
It took only a cursory examination of President Roosevelt’s message on the soldier vote bill to see that someone else had prepared the technical passages, but that the short, ugly word “fraud” was his own.
What is happening is that President Roosevelt is injecting into his messages to Congress those pungent and biting phrases that can be found all through his political speeches. For he obviously is running for reelection, and he overlooks no opportunity.
U.S. Navy Department (March 3, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 292
For Immediate Release
March 3, 1944
A small force of Ventura bombers of Fleet Air Wing Four attacked Paramushiru and Shimushu in the Kurile Islands on the morning of March 2 (West Longitude Date). Five tons of bombs were dropped. There was no interception, and no damage was suffered from the sporadic anti-aircraft fire encountered. All planes returned to their bases.
Mitchell bombers, Dauntless dive bombers and Warhawk fighters of the 7th Army Air Force and Ventura bombers of Fleet Air Wing Two attacked three enemy‑held bases in the Eastern Marshall Islands on March 1 (West Longitude Date), dropping a total of 28 tons of bombs. On the same day, Navy search planes attacked Ponape with bombs and machine‑gun fire. Our planes returned safely from all of these operations.