Editorial: Last call for Finland
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Background of news –
Roosevelt-Congress test due
By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance
Washington –
President Roosevelt confronts at least two issues calculated to disclose whether he is chastened by the Congressional uprising against his tax veto or infuriated by it to the point of precipitating an all-out conflict with the legislative branch.
These issues are (1) the compromise soldier-vote bill, which likely will be sent to the White House next week, and (2) the Slattery-Daniels affairs, which involves both the President’s right to discharge administrative officials and the validity of a Senate subpoena, directed to one of his close personal assistants.
The soldier-voting bill, accepted by all but one of the Senate and House conferees, varies little in its practical effects from the measure which Mr. Roosevelt branded, in a special message to Congress, “a fraud on the soldiers, sailors and Marines.”
The substance of the President’s contention was that reliance on state ballots would disfranchise “the vast majority of the 11 million members of the Armed Forces.” This condition, he said, could be corrected with nothing short of the Green-Lucas-Worley nameless federal ballot bill, which would permit soldiers:
…to cast their ballots without time-consuming correspondence and without waiting for each separate state to hold its primary, print its ballots, and send them out for voting.
Veto threatened repeatedly
All of the latter principles, which the present compromise bill retains, plus the provision for a federal ballot, is applicable to states which have no absentee voting law and to individual soldiers who swear that they applied for state ballots and failed to receive them before Oct. 1. Even in these contingencies, federal ballots would be good only if state governors certify in advance that they will be counted.
In the course of the Senate and House debates, the President’s spokesmen threatened repeatedly that Mr. Roosevelt would veto any bill that did not provide an effective federal ballot, and there is little doubt that this was his settled intention.
The happening since, which may have changed Mr. Roosevelt’s mind, is the tax bill revolt, led by Senator Alben W. Barkley. This development undoubtedly hastened agreement on the state ballot bill. Convinced that if the President vetoes this bill he will be overridden, Republicans were anxious to out it up to him. and it is a foregone conclusion that such a veto would find Senator Barkley again leading the van of opposition.
Coincidentally, it is certain that unless Jonathan Daniels, one of the President’s secretarial “selfless six,” recants his refusal to testify before a Senate agricultural subcommittee, he will be cited for contempt by overwhelming vote of the whole Senate next week.
Further, the Senate may try Mr. Daniels and sentence him, if convicted, to its own basement lockup – a course which Congressional lawyers say would put him beyond reach of a presidential pardon.
Precedent recalled
A precedent for this course was provided in the case of William McCracken, whose trial and conviction by the Senate itself on a charge of contempt of one of its committees in 1934 was sustained by the Supreme Court.
More often the Senate has preferred to turn its contumacious witnesses over for prosecution by the Attorney General in the regular courts. That procedure was rendered ridiculous in this instance when Ugo Carusi, executive assistant to Attorney General Francis Biddle, appeared as legal counsel for Mr. Daniels, while he defied the senatorial questions.
An even more interesting court clash will eventuate if the President follows through with an attempt to remove Harry Slattery, the rural electrification administrator whose testimony got Mr. Daniels into hot water. Mr. Slattery declared that Mr. Daniels three times tried to persuade him to quit, once offering him a lucrative State Department job abroad as an inducement.
Mountbatten’s inactivity irks Yank leaders
Fighting season in Burma now about over until November
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer
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AFL unions given warning
Green tells them to have nothing to do with CIO
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Mrs. Roosevelt back Pyle’s ‘fight pay’ plan
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Jennifer Jones and Paul Lukas win Motion Picture Academy’s Oscars
Tulsa girl clicks in first starring role; Casablanca best film
By Frederick C. Othman, United Press staff writer
Hollywood, California (UP) –
Jennifer Jones of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has appeared in only one movie in her life – except when she rode in wild Westerns under another name – placed on her mantel today the gilded plaster Oscar symbolic of her reign for a year as the greatest actress in Hollywood.
Miss Jones won the prize last night at the 16th annual awards of the Motion Picture Academy for her work in The Song of Bernadette. She hugged the statuette to her breast while the cameras clicked in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and whispered – in an aside – that she hoped it wouldn’t break.
The dignified Paul Lukas, looking more like a banker in a double-breasted suit than a movie star, was named best male actor for his performance in the memorable Watch on the Rhine.
The voters surprised, but did not disappoint, the movie colony by naming Casablanca, in which Humphrey Bogart took North Africa apart, as the best picture of 1943.
Casablanca was the movie which The Pittsburgh Press Old Newsboys showed for their Children’s Hospital Premiere in December 1942, one month before it was released nationally. This year, the Old Newsboys showed Destination Tokyo, which may also win high rank. Both pictures were made available to the Old Newsboys Drive by Warner Bros. and all proceeds went to Children’s Hospital.
The veteran Charles Coburn received the award as best supporting actor for his role in the comedy of life in Washington, The More the Merrier.
The strikingly-handsome Katina Paxinou, with her hair glistening in the blue-white lights and her deep purple dress making shadows across the stage, made the one poignant speech of the evening as she accepted her prize as best supporting actress in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
She began:
I accept the award on behalf of my colleagues in Athens – alive or dead.
When she had finished, many movie beauties in the audience were dabbling at their eyes with lace handkerchiefs.
While thousands outside the theater on Hollywood Boulevard tried in vain to find seats in bleachers on both sides of the street, and a battery of searchlights cast their beams in the skies, the great and the near-great of Hollywood sat inside, at $11 per seat, watching the three-hour program unreel.
There were dozens of technical awards, climaxed by the directorial prize going to one of Hollywood’s leading dialecticians, Michael Curtiz.
The theater was hushed when the black-clad Greer Garson strode to the microphone to announce the best actress of the year. She uttered no more than the word “Jennifer;” the cheers drowned out whatever else she had to say.
Miss Jones, mother of two children and separated from her husband, Robert Walker, strode through the glare of the spotlight, looking almost as thought she were a high school girl in her first party dress. Her frock was a modest one of dark blue.
She bit her lip, as if to hold back the tears, hugged the statuette to her breast, produced a big smile and said she was the world’s happiest girl.
She said:
I am thrilled. And I am grateful.
Plans new one
Hollywood, California –
With his new picture, I Love a Soldier, being edited, producer-director Mark Sandrich is now preparing the script for his next, a musical about the WAVES, starring Bing Crosby, Betty Hutton and Sonny Tufts.
Simms: Big-Three unity hit by wide gap
London, Moscow in disagreement with Washington regarding handling of small countries
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Yanks bolster Admiralty Isle invasion force
Control of South Pacific region is clinched by reinforcements
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
The Mediterranean Allied Air Force, under the command of Lt. Gen. Ira Baker, covers everything in this whole Mediterranean theater from Casablanca on the Atlantic almost to the Cairo at the edge of Asia.
It is a gigantic force. Although there are many British planes and pilots in it, and even a few squadrons of Frenchmen, still it is predominantly an American air theater.
The main geographical objective of our push into Italy was to get heavy-bomber bases
Our heavy-bomber force is still being built up, and has not yet really begun on its program of blasting Germany proper, but planes have been flowing across the South Atlantic all winter.
Soon good weather will be here, and then woe upon Germany from south as well as west.
Right now, I’m living with a light-bomber group – the 47th – which flies the fast twin-engined Douglas-built plane known as the A-20 Boston.
Some on second tour of combat duty
The 47th is a veteran outfit. It fought through Tunisia. It helped beat the Germans back at Kasserine a year ago. it flew from Souk-el-Arba and Cape Bon and Malta and Sicily, and now it is on the front in Italy.
Like most air groups of long service, it has almost no flying personnel left who came overseas with it. Its casualty rate has been low, but the crewmen have all reached or passed their allotted number of missions and gone home.
In fact, some of its members went home so long ago that they are now back overseas on their second tour of combat duty, fighting out of England or in the South Pacific. The ground-crew men get letters from them sometimes.
I’ve been living with a certain squadron of the 47th. It has changed commanders while I’ve been with it. The previous commander was Maj. Cy Stafford, a brilliant young pilot-engineer from Oak Park, Illinois.
Maj. Stafford has been promoted to the group staff, and his place as squadron commander has been taken by Maj. Reginald Clizbe of Centralia, Washington.
Maj. Clizbe is a veteran in combat, but for several months has been on staff duty. He is pleased to get back to the small and intimate familiarity of a squadron. As he says:
Squadron commander is the best job in the Air Corps.
On his first day, Maj. Clizbe got a plane and went out and practiced while the rest went on their mission. I was staying in the same tent with him, and although at that time I didn’t know him very well I could tell he was worried and preoccupied.
He wasn’t afraid. Everybody knew that. But he was rusty, everybody’s eyes were on him, and he was scared to death he would foul up on his first mission.
He flew the morning mission on his second day in command. He flew a wing position, and he did all right. He was in good spirits when they came back before lunch.
There was another mission that afternoon. Instead of resting, Maj. Clizbe put himself on the board for that one too, this time leading a flight of three. It was at his revetment when the planes came back just before dusk. When they got out, Maj. Clizbe was a changed man. He was just like a football player after winning a game.
Forgets it’s his birthday
It had been a perfect mission. The bomb pattern had smothered the target. They’d started fires. Their breakout from the bomb run was just right, and the planes got only a little flak. The new man had his teeth into the game again, and he was over the hump. He was all elation and enthusiasm.
He said:
We’ll give ‘em hell from now on.
All evening he kept smiling to himself, and he was like somebody released from a great oppression. That night he went to bed around 9 o’clock, for he was tired, and he had assigned himself to lead the mission early next morning. Just before he went to sleep, he happened to think of something. He raised up and said:
Say, this is my birthday! I’d forgotten about it. Boy, I couldn’t have had a better birthday present than those two missions today.
And he really meant it.
The major was back in the war. He was doing a job again in person, with his own hands and brain, and he went to sleep with a fine satisfaction.
Annapolis at war!
Annapolis graduates have humor, courage to take with them
By Jess Stearn, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Inside the jack plant –
Bill’s workers happy though day is long
Owner cheered by ‘associates’ on return from Washington; workers show no signs of fatigue
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Individual audit advocated –
Baruch war contract cancellation plan hit
Comptroller General contends it would unjustly enrich arms makers by millions of dollars
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Keen post-war competition in textiles seen
Fight between natural, synthetic fibers looms
By Edward J. Dever Jr., Scripps-Howard staff writer
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