Poll: Dewey to get half Willkie’s ex-supporters
One-sixth to shift to Democrats
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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He talked himself out –
Stokes: Ups and downs of Willkie are amazing political saga
Professionals never quite trusted him, and rank-and-file lost admiration
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Columbus, Ohio –
Consider the case of Wendell L. Willkie, one of the most dramatic, amazing and intriguing in American political history.
Four years ago – resigned from the presidency of a great electric power corporation – nominated for President by the Republicans in the political miracle of the 20th century – recipient of 22 million votes though he had never served in public office nor even run for one.
A new phase is due
Why?
A Willkie phase Has ended, and we may inquire what happened before another begins – and one is sure to begin.
Essentially Mr. Willkie turned out to be the kind of a guy that regular Republican politicians just couldn’t understand or tolerate, and this opinion seems to have percolated down to the rank and file, proving that politicians must have a sure instinct after all.
Suspicious of him
They were suspicious of him from the start, such a free-swinging, free-talking man, but he looked so good to them standing up there with his hair mussed and his arms waving – and they just had to have somebody who could beat That Man in the White House.
They soon found out he was not their kind. He wouldn’t take their advice. He wouldn’t do the political thing. They sent Joe Martin, House Republican floor leader, to Colorado Springs, where Mr. Willkie had retreated to do his heavy thinking, to tell him for the party’s sake not to come out for the draft bill in his acceptance speech.
He listened to Joe. Then he came out for the draft act.
Wendell ‘in step’
Republicans in Congress, for the most part, went the other way. Everybody was in step but Wendell.
They so wanted him to be nice to the politicians. He snubbed the party elders, like Herbert Hoover and Alf M. Landon, and he snubbed the little fellows who handled the precincts and the wards, the counties and the cities. He just didn’t care much for the political breed.
He was defeated. And naturally, they blamed him.
Can’t keep quiet
He might have settled down and kept quiet. But no, look at him. He goes rushing off to England, some sort of an emissary for President Roosevelt. Just a Democrat, they whispered. Then he comes home and proves it to them by coming out for President Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease bill.
That’s not enough. He goes gallivanting around the world then – yep, just an emissary of Franklin D., just a Democrat, and he hobnobs with dictators and prime ministers, away out of range of the lowly politician.
Gradually the professional politicians dropped away from him. He knew it. So, he would go out among the people and talk to them. He’d show the politicians.
Politicians right
But the folks didn’t rally around. The politicians were right. He talked and he talked, he pleaded and he pleaded. The people weren’t moved.
One man on a train looked up from his newspaper and chortled: “The more he talks, the lower he gets.”
For he’s a great human being, generously endowed with what is commonly called guts.
Dewey polls half of Wisconsin GOP
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (UP) –
More than 50% of the 260,468 Republican votes cast in the Wisconsin primary election Tuesday were for Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, unofficial returns from 2,845 of the state’s 3,075 precincts showed today.
The total number of Dewey votes was131,740, the number cast for Wisconsin Secretary of State Fred Zimmerman, the leading candidate for delegate-at-large. Mr. Zimmerman’s total was more than the combined number of votes cast for the leading candidates for delegate-at-large for LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen (former Governor of Minnesota), Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Wendell L. Willkie.
The total Republican vote was 61% of the 426,996 ballots cast by both sides in the precincts reported.
Willkie to close his headquarters
New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, declaring that he felt “fine,” arrived in New York today and announced that his national campaign headquarters would be closed “immediately” as the result of his withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Mr. Willkie, accompanied by his wife, laughed off any specific questions as to his future political moves.
Asked whether he intended to make any political trips or speeches in the near future, Mr. Willkie said:
Not that I know of. I’m going to devote all of my time to running my office and practicing law. This is my home, you know.
Mr. Willkie, for the most part, appeared less jovial than usual and appeared tired.
Asked whether he had any plans to meet with Governor Thomas E. Dewey, now considered the leading Republican candidate, Mr. Willkie laughed and declined to answer.
Editorial: No circus
Republican Chairman Harrison Spangler has urged political convention fans to stay away from the party’s Chicago meeting in June. With travel and hotel accommodations what they are, the request will probably be heeded. With no cheering, booing, whistling bedlam in the packed galleries this year, the distinction between the elephant as the symbol of the GOP and the elephant as the symbol of the circus is going to be painfully apparent.
Doubt is cast in shortage of manpower
Unemployment pay shows increase
By Phelps Adams, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Unions gain courage from official report on spendable wages
War bond purchases added to living costs as labor bureau takes a second look
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Practically everybody on the Anzio beachhead who is back of the outer defense line has his home underground. We correspondents don’t have, but that’s merely because we haven’t got any sense. Also, it could possibly be because we’re lazy.
At any rate, this beachhead is so dug up that an underground cross-section of it would look like a honeycomb. Even tanks and jeeps are two-thirds buried for protection.
The soldiers’ dugouts are made by digging a square or rectangular hole about shoulder deep, then roofing it with boards and logs, piling earth on top of that, and digging a trench out from it with steps leading up.
Digging is extremely easy here, for the soil is almost pure sand. Two men can dig a hole big enough for their home in an hour. Two or three hours more, if they have the timbers ready, is enough to finish the simpler type of dugout.
It’s pleasant to dig in sand, but it has its disadvantages. The sides cave in easily. Now and then a man is buried in his dugout. Even the concussion from our own big guns will start the walls of a dugout to sliding in.
Dig in near tanks
The average dugout houses two men. It’s just big enough for their blanket rolls, and you have to stoop when you get into it.
A tank crew always digs in just a few feet from the tank, for which they also dig a hole. The boys then run wires from their tank battery into their dugout, for electric lights. They have straw on the floor, and shelter halves hung at the entrance.
Most of the men sleep on the ground, while most of the officers have cots. But it’s not bad sleeping on the ground in a dugout, for you keep both warm and dry.
Some dugouts have board walls to keep the sand from caving in. others use the more primitive method of log supports in each corner with shelter halves stretched between them to hold back the sand.
It takes a lot of lumber to shore up all those thousands of dugouts. They boys rustle up anything they can find out of old buildings. The two most coveted pieces odd equipment from deserted houses are wooden doors and wall mirrors. The doors are used for dugout ceilings, and it’s a poor dugout indeed that hasn’t got a fancy mirror on the wall.
Some are elaborate
From the basic two-man dugout, which is usually bare except for a shelf, a mirror and some pinup girls, these underground homes run on up to the fantastic in elaborateness.
One of the best I’ve seen was built by Lt. Edward Jacques of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and his driver, Pvt. Russell Lusher of Marion, Indiana. They have a wooden floor, shelves and nails on the wall for every item, a writing desk with table lamp, a washstand with big mirror, porcelain lampshades with little Dutch girls pained on them – and best of all, hidden on a shelf I noticed two fresh eggs.
But the finest dugout I’ve seen belongs to four officers of a tank company. This dugout is as big as the average living room back home. You can stand up in it, and it has a rough wooden floor. It has a drawing table in the center, and numerous chairs. The four officers sleep on cots around the walls.
Books and magazines and pipes and pictures are scattered on tables all over the place, just like home. They have a radio, and on the table is a sign listing the bets of various people on when the invasion of Western Europe will come.
Brew tea, chocolate
The officers brew hot tea or chocolate every afternoon and evening.
The dugout is heated to the baling point by one of these funny Italian stoves, which for some reason are always painted pink. The officers chop their own wood for the stove.
To go with the pink stove, the boys dug up from somewhere a huge overstuffed chair covered in old-rose upholstery. They have named their dugout “The Rose Room.”
They have several electric lights, and the crowning luxury of this palatial establishment is a Rube Goldberg arrangement of ropes and pulleys, whereby one of the lieutenants can switch off the light after he gets in bed. They even have a big white dog, slightly shell-shocked, to lie on the hearth.
From all this you might draw the deduction thar war isn’t hell after all. Well, these men can and do go into battle 20 minutes away, and every day and every night shells and bombs fall around them, and it’s an unusual day when somebody isn’t killed within their own little village of dugouts.