Edson: Sugar is made into political dynamite
By Peter Edson
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Ferguson: Regimentation
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Speaking to the League of Women Voters in New York, Mrs. Roosevelt emphasized the need for political alertness. The First Lady said:
The best plan in the world isn’t going to be worth a hill of beans unless voters choose capable persons to put it into effect.
I think we might follow her line of reasoning further, by reminding ourselves that the best plan isn’t worth a hill of beans either unless the people whom it affects are willing to accept and abide by it.
Maybe it’s the fault of the war, but trends point to regimentation plans which the American people are going to resent the instant the war is over. Their restiveness is everywhere apparent. Only the fact that there is a war to win keeps them submissive under present restraints.
The women of the United States will play a big part in directing its political and economic future. If their contribution is to be valuable, they must accept a basic truth which they have so far generally disregarded: We can’t make people behave by passing laws. Beautiful social ideals are unattainable until a majority of the nation’s citizens really desire them.
Because they refused to take human beings as they found them, women have failed in many past endeavors. Yet, we go merrily on proposing legislation which is supposed to enforce tolerance, justice, and the Golden Rule. The measures are unsuccessful, since we have not yet produced enough men and women who are willing to practice those virtues. Democracy is slowly being throttled to death by a surfeit of laws and regulations.
Army announces furlough plan
Key men overseas to get 21 days home
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Former envoy dies
New York –
Dave H. Morris, former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and Minister to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, died yesterday. Mr. Morris, 72, served as ambassador and minister between 1933 and 1937.
In Washington –
Republican charges meat ration lifting is ‘purely political’
Congressman Andresen sees restrictions made even tighter if Roosevelt wins again
Washington (UP) –
Accusing the administration of playing “politics” with rationing, Rep. August H. Andresen (R-MN) predicted today that almost all rationing will be lifted before the November elections and then be made tighter than ever if the “New Deal elects its fourth-term candidate.”
He charged in a speech prepared for delivery on the House floor that the new OPA order ending rationing of all meat except certain beef cuts were “purely political” and motivated by either of two factors:
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To “remove the odor” of the seizure of Montgomery Ward properties by military force, or
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“Political expediency properly timed to end food rationing a few months before the presidential elections” Nov. 7.
More drastic later
Mr. Andresen said other items he expected to be removed from rationing before the elections were beef steak, sugar, butter, canned fruits, gasoline, fuel oil and auto tires, but added:
I am convinced that should the New Deal elect its fourth term candidate Nov. 7, the Office of Price Administration will shortly thereafter reinstate and make more drastic all rationing policies to further regiment and socialize the economy of our country.
He said that for more than a year, beef and pork producers pleaded with OPA to lift rationing to prevent a glutted market, but the proposals, not being “geared to proper New Deal timing,” fell on “deaf ears.”
Who ordered it?
Mr. Andresen said he was especially interested in knowing who ordered Price Chief Chester Bowles “to virtually discontinue” meat rationing, in view of the fact that a national magazine just five days before circulated an article in which Mr. Bowles, discussing meat rationing, said there would be “some relief in 1945 (with luck) and possibly end when the war is over.”
Meanwhile, Food Administrator Marvin Jones hinted that steaks and beef roasts – the only meats still requiring red points – may be made point-free by fall, but warned that the present abundant supplies of food may be only temporary.
He said there is now an abundance of cattle and that as soon as the movement into processing plants is sufficient, everyone should be able to have a good supply of beef. But again, he warned that the feed shortage, and possibly bad weather, hang over the future food outlook, and pointed out that farmers are faced with labor and machinery shortages.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
Well, here we are again in dear old London town. At least they still call it London, although you can hardly see the city for Americans. But before going into that, I’ll tell you about our trip up here.
The morning I left Italy, I had to get up at dawn to catch the plane. Sgt. Harry Cowe, who was a part of the gang I had been living with, somehow managed to get both himself and me up right on the dot.
It was so early I hadn’t wanted or expected anybody else to get up. But while I was still rubbing my eyes, in came Pvt. Donn Jordan with a beautiful breakfast tray of juice, eggs, bacon, toast and coffee, just as though we weren’t at war at all.
But that wasn’t all. Our Italian boy, Reif (pronounced “Rafe”), who ordinarily didn’t come to work till 8 o’clock, showed up just as it was starting to get daylight.
Reif was a grand kid, smart and agreeable and full of good humor, and I’m sure he had never been so happy in his life as when working in our little madhouse. He had come voluntarily to help rassle my luggage out to the airport.
And last but not least, in another minute here came prancing in my tiny little friend, Lt. Maxine Budeman, the nurse-dietitian from the nearby Army hospital. She is from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and everybody calls her Goldilocks. She is just shoulder-high and weighs approximately 90 pounds.
A couple of months ago, when I was wasting away with anemia, Goldilocks kept sneaking me eggs and steak from the hospital. We had a lot of fun joking with the nurses about my meager hemoglobin and my one corpuscle, and it was Goldilocks who undoubtedly saved my life with her surreptitious calories.
A goodbye kiss for Goldilocks
At the airport, Rief lugged in my bedroll and bags for me and I got all set for the plane. Then we started to say goodbye. We four were standing beside a command car. A group of officers and soldiers stood nearby, idly watching us, while they waited for their planes. Our little goodbye sequence must have given them a chuckle or two.
First, I shook hands with Harry. And then, since pretty nurses don’t come into one’s life every day, I managed to inflict upon Goldilocks a goodbye kiss that must have shaken Rome. And then I turned to shake hands with Reif.
But Reif, instead, grabbed me by both shoulders and in true continental fashion implanted a large Italian smack, first on my right cheek and then on my left. Our audience was astonished, and so was I. And though slightly embarrassed, I must admit I was also sort of pleased. There are swell people in any nation, and I know that in our crazy little group there was a genuine fondness for many of our Italian friends.
Thus buoyed and puffed up by this international osculation, I floated onto the plane and we were off. On the way out, we flew right past the magnificence of Vesuvius, but I was feeling badly about leaving and didn’t even want to look out, or look back, so I didn’t.
Dusk over the Atlas Mountains
We flew most of the day and far into the night. Crossing the Mediterranean, I knotted myself up on top of a pile of mailsacks and slept half the trip away.
And then, in a different plane, over western Algeria and Morocco, I got myself a blanket, stretched out on the floor and slept for hours. The sun was just setting when I woke up.
I’ve written many times that war isn’t romantic to the people in it. Seldom have I ever felt any drama about the war or about myself in two years overseas. But here in that plane, all of a sudden, things did see romantic.
A heavy darkness had come inside the cabin. Passengers were indistinct shapes, kneeling at the windows to absorb the spell of the hour. The remnants of the sun streaked the cloud-banked horizon ahead, making it vividly red and savagely beautiful.
We were high, and the motors throbbed in a timeless rhythm. Below us were the green peaks of the Atlas Mountains, lovely in the softening shroud of the dusk. Villages with red roofs nestled on the peak tops. Down there lived sheep men – obscure mountain men who had never heard of a Nebelwerfer or a bazooka. Men at home at the end of the day in the poor, narrow, beautiful security of their own walls.
And there high in the sky above, and yet part of it all, were plain Americans incongruously away from home. For a moment, it seemed terribly dramatic that we should be there at all amid that darkening beauty so far away and so foreign and so old.
It was one of those moments impossible to transmit to another mind. A moment of overpowering beauty, of the surge of a marching world, of the relentlessness of our own fate. It made you want to cry.
Pegler: On the election
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
Some of us seem to think that our British and Russian friends, as a matter of politeness, tact and good sense, ought to put out of their minds entirely the subject of the presidential election in the USA this year or, if that is impossible, to say nothing about it.
This is asking too much, because this decision of the American people is very important to them as well as to us.
Naturally, they favor President Roosevelt, because he has been extremely cooperative since the fall of France and before, and they know him well and are pretty sure what he will do.
Tom Dewey they know only by reputation, and he might have some new ideas which would trim some of Mr. Roosevelt’s open-handed generosity to the rest of the world and might want to get positive commitments from our allies as to what we are to get back for what we give.
He is definite where Mr. Roosevelt is vague and would want to put something down in writing in place of the emotional, political generalities exchanged hitherto by men whose word is not necessarily binding on their peoples after they die or lose office, such as Mr. Churchill’s gaudy promises of everlasting cooperation given at an hour when things were going very badly for Britain and he had to do a job of salesmanship.
Communist intrusion
This interest is not an intrusion in our domestic politics, except in the case of the Communists. Naturally, they will raise a fuss for the President because he is so good to them on the home front, permitting them to dirty up our labor relations, and they can be sure that if and when Governor Dewey should take over, he would give the entire government a thorough delousing of the fellow travelers.
Nor do I accept as a fact the pretense that the international Communist organization has been dissolved or that Stalin has abandoned the old custom, admitted in our treaty of recognition, of maintaining agents among us to promote his interests. It is just that this is a normal condition among us, encouraged by the New Deal for all these years, and not a special impudence in this election year.
The Communists are gluttons for humiliation. Stalin boots them around, slams doors on them and leaves them out on a limb every few weeks, but they love the guy with the suffering submission of a drunkard’s dog and whimper for more of the same.
So far, we have always handled this Communist interference like an easy infield out, and their noisy support of Mr. Roosevelt’s more outrageous moves, such as the Montgomery Ward case, probably makes more votes for Governor Dewey than for their man.
Churchill’s experience
Churchill is one who really knows what foreign interference is. He was a victim of it himself back in the ‘30s when his anti-Nazi potboilers pecked out in the role of journalist had earned him a high priority on Hitler’s blacklist and he couldn’t get anything to do in the government lest this be taken by the Führer as a deliberately unfriendly act. He is in no position to try anything like that on us in this campaign, but there is no reason why an Englishman shouldn’t say he hopes President Roosevelt will be reelected.
That we should be sensitive about such expressions will seem inconsistent to other peoples who see us now in Italy fumbling around trying to invent some new form of government for the lower part of the boot and hear our pundits muttering about the re-education of the Germans toward democracy and freedom which they hate. We are even going to try the miracle of unifying France, whether with a club or through bribery we haven’t yet made up our minds.
Just so they say what they have to say in their own countries, our gallant allies should have our permission to sound off at will. And Republicans should be the last to complain, because such expressions are sure to favor Mr. Roosevelt and the more emphatic they are, the more sales-resistance they arouse to the detriment of their own purpose.
Ernie Pyle combat pay bill favored by House group
Weiss pushes measure for 50% bonuses, citing Gallup poll and Army papers
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Poll: Businessmen closing gap on Roosevelt
Foreign policy approval indicated
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Private Hargrove at hit at the Penn
By Ed McKay
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Mark Twain laugh picture at Warner
Humor with delicious flavor dished up in life story of American humorist
By Lenore Brundige
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Victory over Cardinals peps Pirates
First game with Chicago is postponed
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Only signature needed –
Grimm choice of Cubs as new manager
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Steel industry earnings touch wartime low
1943 profits reflect 20% rise in payrolls
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Cash in public hands exceeds gold reserves
Currency circulation hits record high
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Draft to cost 6 million tons, coal men say
Maize urges Ickes to ease Army demand
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Völkischer Beobachter (May 6, 1944)
US-Gangster deckt das alliierte Kriegsziel auf:
Morden, zerstückeln, versklaven…
Wir werden diesen Vansittarts die Antwort nicht schuldig bleiben!
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Heldentod des Admirals Koga
an Bord eines Flugzeuges
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Im indischen Grenzgebiet –
Neue japanische Erfolge
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Amerikanisches Fliergerlatein
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U.S. Navy Department (May 6, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 388
For Immediate Release
May 6, 1944
Eighty‑seven tons of bombs were dropped on Ponape Island by Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force on May 4 (West Longitude Date). Ponape Town and dock areas were thoroughly covered, and large fires and explosions were caused.
Truk Atoll was bombed by 7th Army Air Force Liberators before dawn on May 5. Anti-aircraft fire was light.
Forty‑seven tons of bombs were dropped in attacks on remaining enemy positions in the Marshalls during May 4 by Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and Navy Hellcat lighters. Coastal batteries, anti-aircraft batteries, and magazine areas were hit.