Aussies closing on Guinea base
Yanks hit Paramushiru in North Pacific
By the United Press
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Adm. King: Jap fleet refuses to join in sea battle
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Yanks hit Paramushiru in North Pacific
By the United Press
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Eisenhower gets unprecedented authority over Europe in allied armistice plan
By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer
London, England –
Allied Advisory Commission plans for governing Germany under the post-war armistice were understood today to call for U.S. occupation of Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Saxony, comprising most of the Southwest Reich.
The framework of a strict Anglo-American-Russian military government for Germany after the defeat of the Nazis were understood to be almost complete after each of the Big Three had submitted proposals calculated to give Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower unprecedented authority over Europe.
Under the proposed plans, it was understood, Russia would occupy Germany up to the Oder, running through Silesia and to the North Sea at Stettin, while Britain would take over Northwest Germany.
All three Allied powers would participate in the occupation of Berlin, reliable reports of the planning by the Advisory Commission said.
The Rhineland would be under joint occupation by the United States and Britain.
The British proposals were understood to have suggested that the Americans occupy Austria, but Russia was said to have favored a three-way occupation.
The first suggestions to the Advisory Committee from Russia, Britain and the United States were submitted a month ago.
The first drafts of the British and Russian suggestions were understood to have been made, followed within a few days by those from the United States.
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‘Unrest’ reported in coal fields
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By the United Press
Units of Gen. Draža Mihailović’s Royal Yugoslav troops have rescued the crews of two U.S. planes in Serbia, according to dispatches broadcast yesterday to the United Press in New York by Democratic Yugoslavia, agency of Gen. Mihailović.
A plane piloted by a Lt. John Lendstra was reported to have been forced down April 6 at the village of Venchani, 29 miles south of Belgrade. Under the pilot’s directions, the plane was dismantled and “hidden in a secure place,” a communiqué said.
The crew of eight of a U.S. bomber, reported to have been shot down by the Germans over Serbia on its return April 4 from a raid on the Ploești oil fields in Romania, was said to have been rescued and given first aid after landing by parachute.
Objection is ignored by WPB chief; labor, industry, farm leaders to serve
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Publisher favors army of occupation
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Solidarity now cited as example
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Governor attacks Roosevelt ‘liberalism’
Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, making his second report to the people, said last night that the “cobwebs” of past Democratic regimes in New York State had been wiped out, and that the present state government is “infused with new blood and new energy, filled with a spirit of teamwork between the legislative and executive branches.”
While devoting most of his address to a review of accomplishments by his administration during the last year, Governor Dewey indirectly attacked the Roosevelt administration.
Roosevelt ‘liberalism’ attacked
He criticized:
…that type of personal government which talks fine phrases of liberalism while seeking to impose its will and whims upon the people through centralized bureaucracies issuing from directives from a distance.
Governor Dewey, the leading possibility for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination, said his state administration was attempting to “establish and maintain a genuinely competent and progressive government.”
He continued:
Three immediate and fundamental purposes have guided our work to strength the state government. First, to win the war; second, to prepare for a rapid and smooth readjustment to peaceful pursuits, once complete victory is won; third, to preserve and develop that freedom at home for which your men are fighting abroad.
Workable soldier ballot
Anti-discrimination legislation, drastic revision of the Workmen’s Compensation Administration, new health bills, streamlining of various departments and bureaus, veterans’ legislation and greater aid to the New York farmer were other accomplishments cited by Governor Dewey.
He continued:
Your state administration also took the lead in proposing a simple, workable formula for soldier voting. This soldier ballot will… give every man and woman in the armed services by the simple act of signing his name once, a valid note for every candidate from President to the local officers in his hometown.
Formula for freedom
Governor Dewey said the day would come:
…when free men everywhere, regardless of race, color or creed, can live in freedom, can work at occupations of their own choosing, can raise their children in the traditions of their parents, can worship God in the manner of their own choosing.
He said:
We can, and we must, keep out own society clean of those within who would lead us into paths of narrow or bigoted selfishness.
Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
The Farmer-Labor Party, once spoken of as the “core of revolution in the Midwest,” met in state convention today to vote itself out of existence so its remnants can merge with Minnesota Democrats to reelect President Roosevelt.
Both the Farmer-Labor Party and the state Democratic Party opened simultaneous conventions in different hotels for the purpose of joining forces under a new hyphenated organization to be known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Permanent convention officers were named and the nearly 400 delegates began caucusing for district committeemen. The Democrats expect to complete merger arrangements today.
Elmer Benson of Appleton, former U.S. Senator and last Farmer-Labor governor, pleaded for fusion of the two groups and attacked former Governor Harold E. Stassen and Senator Joseph H. Ball as “plain American Fascists.”
He said:
The Stassen-Ball crowd was largely responsible for the defeat of Wendell Willkie in Wisconsin. That means they are tied up with the Hoover-McCormick crowd, that they are agents of the capitalistic group that wants to destroy our present national administration. These people are plain American Fascists.
New York (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) reiterated his support of LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination last night and asserted that President Roosevelt and Congress “are not longer working as a team to solve the serious problems facing our country.”
Before the New York Young Republican Club, Senator Ball criticized the asserted lack of teamwork and said:
There is controversy, and often deadlock, on almost every major issue outside the actual prosecution of the war, on which there is unity.
Mr. Ball also criticized the administration for “the present jungle of overlapping bureaus and agencies.”
He said:
I have been on the Truman Investigating Committee for three years and it is a continual miracle to mw how American industry and labor continue to produce the huge volume of war materiel they are producing in the face of bureaucratic red tape and confusing and contradictory regulations emanating from Washington.
Urging the nation to ace speedily in “working out a just peace and the machinery to maintain it,” Senator Ball said:
Let our Republican Party and our nominee for President stand unequivocally for an international organization with the authority and the power to shape the peace now and to maintain it in the future.
With each passing week those fourth-termers who hope to make a campaign issue of an imaginary isolationism look sillier and sillier.
Last week, the Wisconsin primary exploded the myth that Midwest Republicans oppose world cooperation. For the international collaborationist Thomas E. Dewey won without running, and the superstater Harold E. Stassen placed second over Gen. MacArthur and Wendell L. Willkie. Now the Nebraska primary – with Mr. Stassen winning easily and an unexpectedly large write-in vote for Mfr. Dewey – underlines the obvious.
This week, the American Federation of Labor urged American participation in world organization for peace and security. The AFL post-war reconstruction committee reported:
The conflicts of today have proved that we can no longer rely on our favored geographical position to maintain our national safety.
It approved an international police force or any necessary means to prevent war, and modification of trade barriers to facilitate exchange of good and services between all nations. It opposed expansionism and imperialism, as well as isolationism, and rejected attempts by any nation to force unilateral solutions to territorial and other problems affecting peace. It stressed the need for international organization to handle health and welfare problems, and to control epidemics and drug traffic.
Of course, the fourth-termers have had no chance of fooling the people with a fake crusade against GOP isolationism since the Mackinac Declaration, and the Republican votes for the Fulbright and Connally resolutions.
All but an insignificant number of Democrats and Republicans support the bipartisan Congressional commitment to a democratic international; organization. The real issue is whether President Roosevelt can deliver on the American mandate and the Allied pledges, or whether European powers will put another league front on the old balance-of-power system.
About the only bright part of this picture is that there is no party division here on the need for effective and democratic world organization. This American unity in foreign policy is a source of great national strength and of world hope in this crisis. For fourth-termers, or any other group, to insist on seeing disunity where unity exists is exceedingly shortsighted partisanship.
By Jay G. Harden
Washington –
Rarely have home politics and the war abroad been so tangled up as they are in speculations relating to the trip of vice President Henry A. Wallace to China, cryptically announced to occur “sometime in the late spring or early summer.”
The political implication, which diligent inquiry in Democratic Party circles so far has failed either to remove or amplify, is self-evident. It arises from the circumstance that the vice-presidential nomination has been boiling up as the chief point of contention in the Democratic National Convention July 19, and Mr. Wallace’s prospective tour would seem to synchronize exactly with the time when he should be making his bid for delegate support.
Proceeding from the assumption that Mr. Wallace must be going abroad at President Roosevelt’s request, two diametrically opposite theories as to the latter’s political purpose are advanced.
One of these is that Mr. Roosevelt, desiring to be rid of Mr. Wallace as a 1944 running mate, is providing him with a graceful exit. The counter-conjecture holds that the President, having decided in favor of Mr. Wallace’s renomination, is seeking to build him up as a second horse that, in interest of winning the war, it is imperative not to change in midstream.
Chinese attitude important
A serious feature of this political speculation is the foreign skepticism as to Mr. Wallace’s official standing which it has aroused. For example, a leading spokesman for the Chungking government commented that:
If Mr. Wallace is being sent to China merely to shunt him off, it is an insult to the Chinese people.
From the standpoint of foreign opinion alone, it would seem necessary that Mr. Wallace’s political status be clarified before he embarks on his mission.
There is plenty of reason, entirely unrelated to Democratic politics, why an outstanding American envoy just now should be sent to China. Due to rapidly mounting currency inflation, coupled with severe shortage of food, the domestic economy of that country has been reported very near the point of total breakdown.
Coincidentally, it is said, Soviet Russian encouragement of rebel elements has placed the Kuomintang government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in serious danger of disruption and that there have long been serious differences between Allied military authorities in the Chinese-Indian theater is well known.
At a meeting of the Kuomintang Central Committee last September Generalissimo Chiang publicly recognized an existing state of armed revolution by calling on the “Chinese Communist Party” to:
…abandon its policy of forcefully occupying our national territory and give up their past tactics of assaulting national government troops in various sectors.
Prestige feared slipping
The subsequent meeting of Generalissimo Chiang with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at Cairo, coupled with the naming of Chinese at Moscow as one of the “Big Four,” helped the Chungking government greatly, but latterly its prestige again has been slipping away.
One cause for this decline, State Department authorities say, was the seeming Soviet support of the Chinese Communists, contained in the issuance from Moscow of a blast against the Chiang-sponsored government of the Chinese-Russian border province of Sinkiang.
The report that, after Chungking, Mr. Wallace may go to Moscow suggests that he is being sent to mediate between the Chinese and Russians.
The main American military dissatisfaction arises from the distaste which both British and Chinese have shown for fighting in Burma.