Yanks develop secret base in Marshalls
Majuro Atoll taken early in campaign
By Richard W. Johnston, United Press staff writer
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U.S. flier gives life to save English children
Mustang pilot refuses to bail out and let plane crash in town
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Chinese force closes noose on Burma Japs
Stilwell’s troops reach U.S. units
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Gunner bails out with injured Yank
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Suggestion by Ernie Pyle written into ‘fight pay’ bill
Weiss to offer measure in House providing additional pay for men in actual combat
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Soldier vote is headed for new battles
States’ rights bloc wins in compromise
Washington (UP) –
Prospects of a renewed Senate fight and a possible presidential veto threatened today to prolong the soldier vote controversy.
House and Senate conferees reached final agreement yesterday after 25 days of struggle between states’ rights and federal ballot proponents. The states’ rights forces emerged largely triumphant.
The conference report, accepted by an 8–2 vote, permits restricted use of a federal ballot for troops overseas. However, servicemen within the United States whose home states do not provide for absentee voting – at present Kentucky and New Mexico – will also be eligible for a federal ballot.
Federal ballot restricted
Use of the federal ballot for overseas troops is restricted to men who apply for a state ballot by Sept. 1 and certify that they have not received it by Oct. 1. In addition, in order to be counted the federal ballots must be legalized by state governors on the authorization of their legislatures by July 15.
The House conferees accepted the report unanimously, and Rep. John E. Rankin (D-MS), leader of the states’ rights faction, hailed it as a victory.
Senate fight certain
He said:
The House is going to take it because we’ve got what we wanted.
But a sharp contest on the conference report in the Senate is certain. Four Senators, two of them the conferees who voted against the compromise, have already announced that they will oppose it on the floor.
If the compromise does pass both House and Senate, there is a possibility of a veto that would reopen the whole issue and delay final solution.
Soldier vote session cost cited by Governor Martin
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Governor Edward Martin said today the state would save about $360,000 if ways can be found to simplify the Pennsylvania soldier voting law without convening a special session of the Legislature.
Governor Martin said he believed all of the Commonwealth’s servicemen, even those stationed in remote sections of the globe, would be guaranteed their right of franchise “if we could just lift the time element and party registration requirements from the present law.”
Biggest ad drive – free – puts over bond sales
Statements of newspaper-subsidy proponents proved to be inaccurate
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Poll: West Virginia, Connecticut back Dewey
Governor far ahead of Willkie
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York is first choice at this time for the Republican presidential nomination among GOP voters in Connecticut and West Virginia.
In each of the two states, field reporters for the Institute asked a cross-section of those who stated a preference for the Republican Party which of the following men frequently mentioned as GOP nominee possibilities they would prefer.
In Connecticut, the results of the survey are as follows:
| Dewey | 50% |
| Willkie | 26% |
| MacArthur | 17% |
| Bricker | 4% |
| Stassen | 3% |
In West Virginia, these are the results:
| Dewey | 48% |
| Willkie | 23% |
| MacArthur | 15% |
| Bricker | 13% |
| Stassen | 1% |
Next door to New York, Connecticut Republicans are more heavily in favor of Governor Dewey than are GOP voters in the New England area as a whole.
The most recent poll measuring Republican candidates’ strength in New England shows Governor Dewey and Wendell Willkie virtually running neck and neck, Governor Dewey winning 40% of the vote, Mr. Willkie 38%.
In the West Virginia poll, both Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Ohio Governor John W. Bricker show more strength than they do either in the Mid-Atlantic section or in the country as a whole.
Latest polls in the Mid-Atlantic area show Gen. MacArthur winning 17% of the vote and Governor Bricker 5%.c
Throughout the country, Gen. MacArthur is named by 19% of the Republican voters as their choice for the nomination. Governor Bricker is named by 7%.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Sgt. Steve Major is 6½ feet and weighs 222 pounds stripped. Despite that weight, he looks slim, because he is so tall.
Steve is an armorer in the 47th Bombardment Group. He is 23, and comes from Monessen, Pennsylvania. He is good-looking and good-natured, and always has something to say.
As he rides along in a truck, he’ll shake his fist at some tough-looking crew chief and yell at him, “You ugly so-and-so.” Nobody could possibly get mad at him.
Steve has been in the Army nearly six years, and is an excellent soldier. He quit high school and enlisted when he was 17, and served one shift in Panama. When his first three years were up, he stayed out just six days and then reenlisted on the condition they send him to California. They did. Steve likes to see the world.
I asked him if he would stay in the Army after the war. He said:
No, the Army’s all right, but I’ve had enough of it. I’ve got 3,000 coconuts in the bank, and I’m going to get some education after the war and be a salesman.
Another soldier said:
Yeah, I’ll get. You look like a 30-year man to me.
‘Living good’
Steve has a good, calm philosophy about everything. He is even philosophical about his part in the war.
He says:
I tried to be a pilot – too big. Tried to be a gunner – too big. So, I’m an armorer. Okay, I’m happy. What the hell.
He says further:
This job is easy. We work hard for a little while every day, and then the rest of the day we don’t do much. Any civilian could do this work after a little training. It’s just like a regular job, only we’re away from home.
It’s not like last winter in Tunisia when we lived on British rations and damned near froze to death and got raided every day. Everything’s different now. We’re living good here. Why, this is better than it was back home in camp.
Steve doesn’t go on missions. He’s so big he’d be in the way. The plane of which he was armorer was lost several weeks ago, so now he helps out the other boys. He sleeps in a tent right out on the line, in order to be near his job.
Steve is cool in the punches. They tell about one thing he did over here. His plane came back one day with its full load of bombs.
When they dropped the unexploded bombs down to the ground, he discovered one of the fuses was on.
A few of the fuses that day had been set for 45 seconds’ delay, but he didn’t know how much of the 45 seconds had been used up before he made his discovery. The natural impulse would have been to run as fast and as far as he could before the bomb went off.
But Steve just sat there on the ground and unscrewed the fuse with his hands and then tossed it aside just as it went off – harmlessly.
Likes to travel
Sgt. Major loves to travel. And I believe he gets more out of it than any soldier I’ve met. You can drop him down at a new field in any old country, and within a week he’ll know half the natives in the adjoining village.
Steve’s parents were Austrian and Yugoslavian, and he speaks four Slav dialects. In Panama, he learned Spanish, and over here he writes down 20 new Italian words every night and memorizes them. He gets along fine in Italian.
On his afternoons off, he gets a train or bus and goes out by himself seeing the country. Invariably he gets into conversations with the people.
Half the time he winds up going to somebody’s home for a meal. He says:
I’ve been in rich homes and poor homes over here. There are pretty good people, but they’re so damned emotional. They get into the wildest arguments with each other over the most trivial things. But they’re good-hearted.
Steve isn’t obsessed like the average soldier about getting home. He takes the war as it comes, and doesn’t fuss. He’d like to see home again, but he doesn’t want to stay even when he gets here.
His big worry is that he’ll meet some woman who’ll have him married to her before he knows what’s happened. He doesn’t want to be tied down. He wants to travel and be free and roam around the world, talking to people, as soon as this little bombing job of his is finished.
Stokes: Hatch Act
By Thomas L. Stokes
Washington –
New reform bills to amend the Hatch Act are cropping up in Congress to make politics more pure, both as to expenditure of money and expenditure of venom, vitriol and plain dirt.
They presage an expected hard-fought campaign, with purse strings likely to be relaxed and pen and ink and oratory flowing freely, perhaps bitterly, from an excess of zeal.
Senate Gillette (D-IA) went today before the Privileges and Elections Committee to discuss three proposed amendments to the Hatch and Corrupt Practices Acts, relating both to a tighter curb on expenditures and possible prevention of scurrilous campaign documents, especially of the anonymous, poison-pen variety.
He speaks with authority. He learned a lot about campaign tricks as chairman of the Senate Campaign Investigating Committee which operated in the 1940 presidential election. His main objective is to limit contributions and expenditures, from all sources, to $2 million for a presidential candidate, and $1 million for a vice-presidential candidate, with a limit of $10,000 on individual contributions.
Would plug loopholes
He would plug loopholes in the Hatch Act. That act, sponsored by Senator Hatch (D-NM), forbids contributions to, and expenditures by, a political committee of more than $3 million and limits individual contributions to $5,000.
Senator Hatch’s aim was to limit total expenditures by a political party altogether to $3 million for the presidential campaign. As for individual contributions, he specified that the $5,000 limit did not include contributions made to a state or local committee.
The loophole there was as big as the entrance to Mammoth Cave. Henry P. Fletcher, counsel of the Republican National Committee, bounced gaily through it. He drafted an opinion in 1940 which he took to Wendell Willkie.
He held that the National Committee could spend $3 million and other national groups could spend as much. He also held that individuals could give $5,000 to the national campaign ands as much more to state and local committees. There was practically no limit under his interpretation.
Mr. Willkie blew up over this proposed evasion. He announced that he expected all expenditures to be held within $3 million. They weren’t. It was estimated that total expenditures of both parties closely approached $20 million.
Mr. Fletcher apparently was sound legally.
Raises individual ante
In his proposed amendment, Senator Gillette would limit contributions and expenditures to an overall $2 million for President and $1 million for Vice President. He raised the ante on individual contributions to $10,000, but with a limit of $5,000 to any one committee.
The Senate acknowledged that his attempt to squelch scurrilous campaign material might infringe upon free speech and free press, and said he is offering two bills merely to raise the question for discussion.
They would forbid publication or distribution of matter about candidates for President, Vice President or Congress “tending to incite arson, murder, assassination or riot” or “of a fraudulent or scurrilous character tending to incite hatred against any religious sect or creed or against any race.”
They would also require that any printed matter circulated about candidates must carry the name of the writer and by whom published.
An office of minority relations would be created in the Interior Department to police scurrilous campaign literature affecting minorities.
U.S. bright lights, luxury goods thrill visitor after life in London
Bewilderment mixed with relief; you can buy a meal after midnight
By Rosette Hargrove, special to the Pittsburgh Press
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