Editorial: Questions for Congress
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Editorial: Guessing game
This year’s election will be harder to figure in advance than most of its predecessors.
Of course, the dopesters often have been wrong in trying to foretell elections in normal times.
But this one ought to make their hair curl. And that will apply to the candidates, as well.
This is the first presidential election since the draft. Some 10 million men are in the Armed Forces. How many of them are voters is problematical, but undoubtedly an overwhelming majority.
How many will cast ballots will depend on how well the states assume their obligation to provide them with the machinery for voting. It will also depend on the exigencies of war, for the Armed Forces’ personnel constantly is on the move and it will be impossible to get ballots to thousands of men in actual combat.
But there is another factor which will make election guessing a dubious assignment this year.
Thousands of Americans at home have been uprooted by the war. Eleven states are estimated to have gained population since 1940 despite the loss of many thousands to military service. Millions of workers have left their homes to take war jobs in distant spots.
Voting requirements among the states differ, some requiring only six months’ residence, others a year. Many of the war workers who have transferred probably haven’t caught up with the voting requirements.
All this will total up to a lot of confusion.
It is enough to drive an election prognosticator nuts.
Background of news –
MacArthur complications
By Jay G. Hayden
Washington –
The letters exchanged by Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Rep. A. L. Miller of Nebraska and which Gen. MacArthur now says “were never intended for publication,” seem certain to have far-reaching repercussions with regard both to presidential politics and the war situation in the Pacific.
By the indirect process of approving statements made by Mr. Miller, Gen. MacArthur reveals himself as bitterly critical of the New Deal policies of President Roosevelt and at least a receptive candidate for the Presidency.
Further he sustains the inference contained in some of his earlier official communiqués, that he is dissatisfied with the tools of war that have been allotted him by Washington.
Not that Gen. MacArthur’s presidential prospect is advanced by this incident. To the contrary, it is the opinion of most of the neutral-minded political analysts that if anything further was needed to remove him as a serious contender, the letters have accomplished it.
A much more intriguing aspect of the letters is their added aggravation of an already-strained relationships between President Roosevelt and Gen. MacArthur.
It was Mr. Roosevelt’s removal of Gen. MacArthur as Chief of Staff in 1935 that caused him to resign his commission and become Commander-in-Chief of the Philippine Army.
Scope of command in doubt
When war broke, the President had no other recourse than to accept Gen. MacArthur’s tender of service and make him Commander-in-Chief of Philippine Defense, but even then, there were marked signs of White House perturbation over the situation.
When Gen. MacArthur made his dramatic exit to Australia, there was loud public demand that he be made commander-in-chief of all anti-Japanese forces. The President’s first announcement seemed to give him overall command of land, air and sea forces in the Southwest Pacific, but a little later, dispatches from that front pictured the Navy as refusing to accede to this arrangement.
A subsequent clarification gave Gen. MacArthur control of naval as well as land forces in the Australian area, but when the Battle of the Coral Sea came along, it developed that most of the ships and planes engaged were from the Hawaiian Command of Adm. Chester W. Nimitz.
Just now a situation is developing which may necessitate new chances in command. In the recent attack on Palau and other islands in the Western Carolines, the naval forces of Adms. Nimitz and Halsey for the first time were jointly engaged. Plainly the hour for grand assault by the whole American force in the Western Pacific, operating as one unit, is rapidly approaching, and this would seem to call for the designation of a single directing head – presumably either Gen. MacArthur or Adm. Nimitz.
If he’s demoted – look out!
If Mr. Roosevelt pursues his own inclination, there is very little doubt that Adm. Nimitz would be accorded command of at least all naval forces in this area.
But there is no gainsaying the existence of a political complication, now accentuated by the Miller-MacArthur letters. If Gen. MacArthur’s command is diminished, however slightly, the charge will arise that he has been demoted.
There is a historical parallel in the relationship of President Lincoln with Gen. George B. McClellan.
The latter, who reentered the Army from civil life when the war broke out, was a Democrat with powerful political connections. From the earliest stages of his command of the Army of the Potomac, he made it plain that he considered himself too important for the President to dare to fire. And when Mr. Lincoln’s great patience was finally exhausted and he did oust Gen. McClellan, the Democrats made him their presidential candidate in 1864.
Four grounded, so ace field is wide open
Oil City man is high among ‘eligibles’
By the United Press
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Capt. Gentile’s own story –
Ace trained for his war work by stunt flying during youth
By Capt. Don S. Gentile (as told to Ira Wolfert)
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Primer for primaries –
Tickets will be chosen for 6 statewide races in Tuesday’s election
Candidates to be nominated for 33 seats, in Congress, 25 in State Senate, 208 in House
By Kermit McFarland
Pennsylvania this year will elect a U.S. Senator, an Auditor General, a State Treasurer, a justice of the State Supreme Court and two judges of the State Superior Court.
In addition to these statewide offices, the voters in Pennsylvania will elect 33 Congressmen, 25 State Senators and 208 members of the State House of Representatives.
At the primary next Tuesday, Republican and Democratic candidates for all these offices will be nominated. In addition, the voters at the Tuesday primary will elect delegates to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, members of the state committees of both parties and members of the county committees of both parties.
Five contests
Among the statewide offices, there are actual contests for two Republican nominations and three Democratic nominations.
For the Democratic nomination for Auditor General, the candidates are John F. Breslin, now executive assistant in that office, and State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner. Mr. Wagner has been endorsed by the Democratic State Committee.
Mr. Breslin, 47, comes from Summit Hill, Carbon County, and has been executive assistant in the State Treasury, personnel secretary to Governor George H. Earle and a member of the State Labor Relations Board. He has been in the general contracting, lumber and building and loan business.
Completing term
Mr. Wagner, 43, comes from Dallas, Luzerne County, is completing a four-year term as State Treasurer, is a former burgess and has been in the accounting and publishing business.
The only other primary contests are for the two Democratic and the two Republican nominations for 10-year terms on the State Superior Court.
Entered in the Democratic primary are former Governor Arthur H. James, Judge Chester H. Rhodes and State Treasurer F. Clair Ross.
Entered in the Republican primary are Mr. James, Judge Rhodes and Judge J. Frank Graff of Kittanning.
Mr. James, former lieutenant governor, served on the Superior Court six years until he was elected Governor, and recently was reappointed to this bench by Governor Edward Martin. He is 60 and lives in Plymouth, Luzerne County.
Judge Rhodes, 56, comes from Stroudsburg and is the only Democrat on either Pennsylvania appellate court. He seeks a second 10-year term. He was a district attorney four years and a state legislator 10 years.
Lost to Governor Martin
Mr. Ross has been Auditor General, as well as State Treasurer and is a former deputy attorney general. He ran for Governor in 1942, but lost to Governor Martin. He is 49 and comes from Butler. If elected, he will be required to resign from the Treasurer’s office to be inducted as a Superior Court judge in January. His term as Treasurer will not expire until May 1945.
Judge Graff, like Judge James, has been endorsed by the Republican organization. He has been a judge in Armstrong County 20 years except for three months on the Superior Court by appointment in 1930. He resigned after losing in the Republican primary and was reappointed to his Common Pleas Court position. He is 54.
Davis runs again
For the other statewide nominations, candidates endorsed by the party organizations are unopposed. U.S. Senator James J. Davis of Pittsburgh seeks renomination on the Republican ticket for a third full term. He is 70 and was Secretary of Labor in the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations.
The Democrats have slated Congressman Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia for this nomination. He is 42, a lawyer, and has served three terms in Congress.
Also at stake are nominations for a 21-year term on the State Supreme Court. The only Republican candidate is Justice Howard W. Hughes, now serving by appointment of Governor Martin, and the single Democratic candidate is Charles Alvin Jones, now on the Federal Circuit Court.
Graft trial judge
Justice Hughes, 52, lives in Washington, Pennsylvania, and before his appointment was a Common Pleas judge in Washington County nearly 15 years. He presided over some of the “graft” trials during the Earle administration. Mr. Jones, Democratic nominee for Governor in 1938, is 56 and comes from Edgeworth. He was appointed to the Circuit Court by President Roosevelt in 1939.
The nominations for the two parties for State Treasurer are also uncontested. The single Democratic candidate is Ramsey S. Black, 63, of Harrisburg, now third assistant postmaster general. The only Republican candidate is Edward W. Baird Jr., 46, of Philadelphia, now City Treasurer in the eastern city.
Keys to GOP campaign held by governors
Dewey-Warren parlay favored in betting
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
State governors and state governor psychology are predominant in Republican affairs this election year. They lead among candidates for both the presidential and vice-presidential nomination.
There are 26 of them, executives in more than enough states to win the election. They will dominate the National Convention. Also, they will be effective in shaping one of the major issues of the party, revolving about what Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York calls “personal government.”
The Governor, the leading candidate for the nomination, set the tone for this issue in his latest speech giving an account of his stewardship in New York, a speech undoubtedly directed to the nation.
Cooperation cited
He spoke about the “spirit of teamwork” exhibited in his state “between the legislative and executive branches, working in cooperation with each other, with the people of the state, and with the local units of government which are closest to the people.”
He added:
We are striving to establish and maintain a genuinely competent and progressive government – in sharp contrast with that type of personal government which talks fine phrases of liberalism while seeking to impose its will and its whims upon the people through centralized bureaucracies issuing directives from a distance.
One of the surest bets anyone can make this year is that a governor will fill each end of the Republican ticket.
List named
Almost as sure a wager is that both the candidate for President and Vice President will come from this group of governors: Dewey, Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Bricker of Ohio, Baldwin of Connecticut, Griswold of Nebraska, Warren of California, and one not so long out of the governor’s chair, thrice elected, Stassen of Minnesota, now in the Navy.
Favored in betting odds is a Dewey-Warren parlay.
The Governors bring to the party vigor and practical experience in government. For the most part, they are more forward-looking in their thinking, both on domestic and international affairs.
Stress state rights
For the last two years, the Governors have concentrated on recovery by the states of some of the powers and functions they had yielded up to the federal government in the Depression years.
To their credit, the Governors did not content themselves with merely shooting about “state’s rights” as an abstraction as is so fashionable in some quarters. They recognized that if the states are to recapture some of the functions they previously had exercised, they must accept responsibility and take the initiative and see that the states meet the needs of the people in matters of social and economic welfare.
They saw the immediate need in planning for the post-war period. Many states have detailed plans for providing work for veterans, for retraining programs to fit former soldiers into industry, and have laid aside surpluses for this purpose.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
The real drama of this Anzio beachhead campaign is the supply system. I’d almost like to write that sentence twice – to make sure you get it. The supplying of this 5th Army beachhead has been one of the superlative chapters of our Mediterranean war.
The beachhead is really like a little island. Everything has to come by water. Without a steady flow of food and ammunition, the beachhead would perish.
All this concentration of shelling and bombing against the Anzio-Nettuno area is for the purpose of hindering out movement of supplies. They have hindered it some. I can’t give you the percentage, but you’d be surprised how low it really is. They certainly haven’t hindered us enough. For the supplies keep coming, and the stockpiles have now grown so great and so numerous that we’ve almost run out of room for establishing new dumps.
Many branches of the service deserve credit for the supply miracle – the Navy, the Merchant Marine, the Combat Engineers, the Quartermaster Corps.
And again, let me remind you that the British are always there, too. You don’t hear much about them from me, because my job is to write about the Americans. But in all our Allied work down here the British do their part too (and in case of shipping to Anzio, the Greeks and Poles as well).
American Army Engineers are in command of all port facilities at the beachhead.
Much wreckage at Anzio
The city of Anzio is a mess today. Just off the waterfront, there is absolutely nothing but wreckage. And the wreckage grows day by day under German shelling and bombing. We call Anzio a “potential Bizerte,” for soon it may be in as complete a state of wreckage as was that thoroughly wrecked city in Tunisia.
Yet our soldiers and sailors continue to live and work in Anzio. There isn’t a man in town who hasn’t had dozens of “experiences.” If you try to tell a bomb story, anybody in Anzio can top it. Casualties occur daily. But the men go on and on.
The American soldier’s irrepressible sense of humor still displays itself in Anzio. Down on the dock is a big, boxlike cart in which they pick up slop buckets and trash that gets in the way on the dock front.
The cart is freshly painted snow-white, and printed in neat blue letters on each side is “Anzio Harbor Department of Sanitation.” You’d have to see the bedlam of wreckage to get the full irony of the “Sanitation” part.
At a corner in Anzio some soldiers have set up a broken statue of a woman (the place is lousy with statues), and put a sign under it saying, “Anzio Annie.” If somebody would write a poem about her, she might become as famous as “Dirty Gertie.”
I noticed another sign – this one not funny – along the waterfront. This sign said, “No Parking – For Ambulances Only.”
‘Anzio anxiety’ abounds
Everybody jokes about the perilous life in the Anzio-Nettuno area. I’ve been with it long enough myself to appreciate the humor of nervousness. Some people have had to leave because of nerves, and those who stay like to make fun of their own shakes.
The jitters are known as “Anzio anxiety” and “Nettuno neurosis.” A lieutenant will hold out his hand and purposely make it tremble, and say, “See, I’m not nervous.”
Then there is “Anzio foot,” where your feet are pointing in one direction and your face in another – the position sometimes momentarily assumed when you’re going somewhere and the scream of a shell suddenly turns you on another cruise.
Also, we have the “Anzio walk,” a new dance in which the performer jumps, jerks, cowers, cringes and twitches his head this way and that, something halfway between the process of dodging shells and just going plain nuts.
You wouldn’t imagine people could joke about the proximity of death; but you sometimes have to joke about it – or else.
And through all this, men keep working and supplies keep coming in. I can’t, of course, tell you in figures the total of this magnificent job they’ve done.
But I can say that today this beachhead is receiving nine times as much supplies daily as they figured in the beginning was possible. It has been a thrilling privilege to be here and see them do it.
Group backing ad subsidies would make $1 million yearly
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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GM starts production of new fighter plane
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3 groups back U.S. oil project in Saudi Arabia
Navy heads among leading proponents
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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AT&T denies rumors of stock split-up
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