Background of news –
Old age insurance
By Burt P. Garnett
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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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Mary Beard: Men make grouchy patients
They resent their own helplessness
By Mary Beard, Director, Nursing Service, American Red Cross
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Radio tenor jungle star –
Lanny Ross builds New Guinea Army shows
Beats off malaria in Jap island zone
By Si Steinhauser
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Army discontinues commissioning dentists
But Navy issues them to men 21-44
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Murray asks WPB to aid small plants
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U.S. Navy Department (March 8, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 299
For Immediate Release
March 8, 1944
Navy search Venturas of Fleet Air Wing Four on the evening of March 5‑6 (West Longitude Date) bombed Paramushiru. Heavy anti-aircraft fire was encountered in some areas. All of our planes returned.
Army Liberator and Mitchell bombers, Dauntless dive bombers and Warhawk fighters of the 7th Army Air Force, and Navy search Venturas and Hellcat fighters of Fleet Air Wing Two on March 6, (West Longitude Date) dropped 31 tons of bombs on four enemy‑held positions in the eastern Marshall Islands. Airfields were hit and fires were started. Several of our planes were damaged by anti-aircraft fire, but all returned to their bases.
Remarks by President Roosevelt to the Advertising War Council Conference
March 8, 1944
I want to say “how do” to you, and tell you how glad I am that you are here. I wish I had been able to make these tours with you; I probably would have learned a great deal. I am rather envious for that reason. I also want to tell you how really appreciative I am of what you have done for the war in the past couple of years. It has been a tremendous help to us in all these war campaigns that you, probably more than anybody else, have put across throughout the country. They will be coming along, probably for a good long time to come – more of them.
And we are counting on you for continued work with us in educating the country. It isn’t propaganda and it isn’t a drive, but it is part of our system of modern education, getting into all the communities, large and small. A good many new ones that will come right along. They are not propaganda, or political in the larger sense.
I hesitate a little bit to ask you to help me on one thing. I think one of the real dangers in the country, on the non-military side, is inflation. I am scared to death of inflation, quite frankly; and I don’t think it is a party matter. There have been quite a number of ads that have been carried in the recent past about the dangers of inflation. And yet, as I see people that come in here from all over the country, the number of people that don’t understand it yet! It is perfectly appalling. So the more education we give them the better it is.
I think probably everybody in this room is afraid of inflation, just as I am. You have seen it happen in other countries. We know the dangers that would occur if we went into an inflationary period. I still think we have got to do an awful lot of educating to prevent it from happening in some manner or form. It isn’t just the same things that have happened to other countries that have got a debased currency, but it is what would happen to the investments of every man, woman, and child in this country.
One thing that I don’t dare say – talk about out loud – is the effect it would have on Government bonds. A good many of us have bought Government bonds, and we want to get paid back in the same kind of dollars, so far as we can, that we put into those bonds. Of course, I can’t talk about it in that way, because it might discourage the future sales of Government bonds. So that kind of advertising and information- education- has got to be written by experts like you people.
Things of that kind I don’t think have anything to do with politics. And yet it’s amazing the number of people who are playing up the inflationary program, who think of it very largely in terms of politics, one way or the other – both parties.
I am just using that as an example of some of the things we still have to do to keep the feet of the country on the ground. And there is always the tendency, in matters like that, for people to lift one foot up, a little like one of my farm-leader friends who admitted to one of the committees in Congress, when he talked about the benefits of this, that, and the other thing. And he was asked whether he was in favor of inflation.
“Oh – Oh no. Oh my, no. Of course not.”
Then he hesitated a minute, and said, “Just a little bit of inflation.”
Well, if you once start a little bit, as you all know, it is pretty hard to stop it. You want to keep the dam from breaking.
So I hope that you have had a good time, also a successful time, in hearing some of the military and naval problems. I think things are going along fairly well. Of course, I am never satisfied. Probably it’s a good attitude of mind to be in- never to be satisfied.
You probably heard some of the senior officers about the background of things, and some of the junior officers who have been out on the firing line, who are much more interesting than the senior officers. Human interest stuff; and they are long on human interest, rightly. And they are grand people.
Then, of course, we have to remember that they wouldn’t have had their human interest if it hadn’t been for the planning by the different staffs. And it is rather an interesting fact, no reason you shouldn’t know, that on all this planning neither Churchill nor I has ever overruled the staffs. Lots of people think so. It isn’t true. We have gone along with the staffs remarkably well, if I do hand myself a bouquet. Then it so happens that the joint staffs and I over here have viewed this picture of the war all over the world in exactly the same way. We haven’t had any basic disagreement, and even haven’t had any minor disagreements. We happen to have been thinking exactly along the same lines.
On international cooperation, we are now working, since the last meeting in Teheran, in really good cooperation with the Russians. And I think the Russians are perfectly friendly; they aren’t trying to gobble up all the rest of Europe or the world. They didn’t know us, that’s the really fundamental difference. They are friendly people. They haven’t got any crazy ideas of conquest, and so forth; and now that they have got to know us, they are much more willing to accept us. And we are working in with them on actual operations and plans much better than we did before, just because we didn’t know each other.
So that was one of the great gains of last fall in Teheran. Things of that kind take quite a while to work out with people who are five or six thousand miles away, who don’t talk our language, English – and we certainly don’t know Russian. And yet we are getting somewhere with them.
And all these fears that have been expressed by a lot of people here – with some reason – that the Russians are going to try to dominate Europe, I personally don’t think there’s anything in it. They have got a large enough “hunk of bread” right in Russia to keep them busy for a great many years to come without taking on any more headaches.
The military operations, therefore, are in a good cooperative position. We have got a long, long road to go. Of course, the more you do to tell the people that “peace is just around the corner,” the better it is, but nobody agrees that peace is around the corner. It just plain isn’t. It’s a long road, and a difficult road. We are going to have big losses. And I am personally confident of victory in the long run. But I am inclined to think that we ought – if we do any complaining at all – to be against the people who are, honorably and honestly, working in just the wrong direction, such as the group that wants to make peace now.
Well, just for example, I got a letter yesterday from a very prominent man who has been retired for some years, a five-page letter, making a plea to me to appoint a “secretary of peace” and send him over to Germany – it’s a beautiful letter, and he meant it; it’s an honest thing, from his heart – to see if we couldn’t work out some means with Germany of ending this terrible slaughter, and the busting up of civilization. Not a word about some of the things we are hoping to get, such as the end of German aggression, and a change in the philosophy of the German government. Oh no, not a word about that! But, appoint a peace secretary to go over there – sort of a roving commission – to bring peace to the world.
Now there are a lot of people in this country that are doing things of that kind honestly. I don’t believe in this “ulterior motive” stuff, but they just don’t know. And therefore they require what I was talking about before, some education from you people.
So go ahead and give it to them, all you possibly can.
We are going to win the war – it is going to take an awfully long time – and we don’t like to be interfered with in the winning of the war.
So on that note I am putting it up to you.
Völkischer Beobachter (March 9, 1944)
Hopkins entlarvt Roosevelt –
Wall-Street-Juden verkünden ihr Weltgeschäftsmonopol
‚Die klarste und wichtigste Formulierung der amerikanischen Kriegsziele‘
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U.S. Navy Department (March 9, 1944)
Communiqué No. 508
Pacific and Far East.
U.S. submarines have reported sinking sixteen vessels in operations against the enemy in these waters, as follows:
- 1 small cargo vessel
- 9 medium cargo vessels
- 2 medium transports
- 2 medium cargo transports
- 1 large tanker
- 1 large cargo transport
These actions have not been announced by any previous Navy Department Communiqué.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 301
For Immediate Release
March 9, 1944
On March 8, 1944 (West Longitude Date), enemy planes raided our positions in Eniwetok Atoll, causing small damage.
Army Liberator and Mitchell bombers, Dauntless dive bombers and Warhawk fighters of the Seventh Army Air Force and Navy search Venturas and Hellcat fighters of Fleet Air Wing Two on March 7, 1944 (West Longitude Date) dropped 37 tons of bombs on five enemy‑held positions in the Marshall Islands. Barracks and runways were hit and fires started. A coastal vessel was bombed and five wooden barges strafed. Several of our planes were damaged by anti-aircraft fire but all returned to their bases.
A Navy search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two shot down a Japanese naval medium bomber between Eniwetok and Truk.
Joint Statement
For Immediate Release
March 9, 1944
Allied ship losses at a record low
The joint Anglo‑American statement, issued under the authority of the President and Prime Minister, follows:
Despite the increasing traffic of United Nations shipping in the Atlantic, February, 1944, was the lowest month as to tonnage of Allied merchant ship losses to enemy U‑boat action since the United States entered the war, and February was the second lowest month of the entire war.
Again there were more U‑boats destroyed than merchant vessels sunk, so the exchange rate remains favorable to the United Nations. In actual numbers a few more U‑boats were sunk in February than in January.