New industries advocated for Latin America
Witherow cites trade possibilities
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Etten’s streak halted –
Yankee ‘Bombers’ rally to defeat Red Sox, 4–3
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Bucky allows four hits –
Reds take first place as Walters blanks Cards
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Völkischer Beobachter (May 8, 1944)
Einschaltung in die Politik Englands und der USA –
Moskaus Vorstoß in den Mittleren Osten
Vor der Aufnahme diplomatischer Beziehungen zu Saudiarabien, Syrien und dem Libanon
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Gegen Englands Seebeherrschung –
Ein Querschuß des toten Knox
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Diktator Roosevelt in Nöten
vb. Wien, 7. Mai –
Aus einem an sich zunächst harmlosen Lohnkonflikt bei der großen Chikagoer Postversandfirma Montgomery Ward hat sich eine hochpolitische Affäre entwickelt, durch die die Diktaturmethoden der Roosevelt-Regierung ins Licht der Öffentlichkeit gezerrt wurden. Dies ist für die Regierung umso peinlicher, als die dem Präsidenten vom Kongreß erteilten besonderen Kriegsvollmachten (Eingreifen in Betriebe im Sinne der Aufrechterhaltung der Kriegs Produktion) am 30. Juni ablaufen und vom Kongreß verlängert werden sollen.
Die Belegschaft der Firma Montgomery Ward war wegen unerfüllter Lohnforderungen in den Streik getreten, woraufhin die Regierung, weil sie der Ansicht war, daß die Betriebsleitung eine Teilschuld an dem Konflikt trug, die Beschlagnahme des Betriebes durch das Handelsministerium anordnete. Der 69jährige Leiter der Firma verweigerte die Herausgabe der Bücher und wurde schließlich, nachdem die Regierung den Betrieb durch Truppen besetzen ließ, förmlich aus seinem Büro herausgezerrt. Dieser peinlichen Szene wohnte der Justizminister Francis Biddle persönlich bei. Die Firma legte nun vor Gericht eine Protesterklärung nieder, in der die Regierung der Überschreitung ihrer Kriegs Vollmachten unter Anwendung ungesetzlicher Methoden beschuldigt wurde. Der Präsident sei durch seine Kriegsvollmachten jederzeit in der Lage, grundlegende Verfassungsrechte zu ignorieren. Besonders unangenehm wirkte die Schlußfolgerung des Protestschreibens, in der es hieß, die logische Folge der Machtbefugnisse der Regierung wäre die Einführung des totalitären Systems.
In Erkenntnis des politischen „Dynamits,“ das in dieser Beschuldigung gegen die Regierung lag, rief die Regierung schleunigst die Truppen ab und forderte die Belegschaft der Firma zu einer geheimen Abstimmung über den Lohnstreit auf.
Im Bundeskongreß entstand durch den Zwischenfall eine derartige Erregung, daß es die Roosevelttreuen Parlamentarier vorzogen, ihren Widerstand gegen eine von der Opposition geforderte parlamentarische Untersuchung der Vorgänge aufzugeben. Die Untersuchung wird also nun wahrscheinlich stattfinden, und zwar unter dem Gesichtspunkt, ob unter solchen Umständen die Kriegsvollmachten des Präsidenten in ihrer jetzigen Form aufrechterhalten oder revidiert werden sollten.
Es ist klar, daß diese Zwischenfälle der Regierung Roosevelt im Hinblick auf die kommenden Kongreß- und Präsidentschafts- Wahlen besonders unangenehm sind. Sie werden Wasser auf die Mühlen der republikanischen Opposition gießen, die ja stets mit dem Argument operierte, daß die demokratische Regierung die freie Wirtschaft in eine totalitäre Zwangsjacke zu stecken drohe und damit den Weg zu einer Diktatur Roosevelts ebne. Wenn nun Roosevelt zum vierten Male gewählt würde, würde diese Gefahr immer größer werden.
U.S. Navy Department (May 8, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 391
For Immediate Release
May 8, 1944
Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four bombed Paramushiru in daylight on May 6 (West Longitude Date). Anti-aircraft fire was light.
A search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two shot down an enemy four‑engine patrol plane near Ulul Island on May 6 (West Longitude Date).
CINCPAC Press Release No. 392
For Immediate Release
May 8, 1944
Liberator search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two and Liberator bombers of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Guam Island during daylight on May 6 (West Longitude Date). Our force was intercepted by approximately 25 enemy fighters. Seven of these were shot down, three probably shot down, and two damaged. Moderate anti-aircraft fire was encountered over the target. All of our planes returned.
Truk Atoll was bombed at night on May 6 by 7th Army Air Force Liberators. Several fires were started. Anti-aircraft fire ranged from light to moderate.
Ponape Island was bombed during daylight on May 6 by 7th Army Air Force Mitchell bombers and on the night of May 6 by 7th Army Air Force Liberators. Airfields and defense installations were hit. No anti-aircraft fire was encountered during either strike.
Remaining enemy positions in the Marshalls received thirty‑three tons of bombs on May 6 from Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and Navy Hellcat fighters. Coastal batteries, fuel storage facilities, and magazines were hit.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 8, 1944)
Two 2,000-plane raids hit Berlin in 24 hours
German fighters ram Fortresses in futile effort to break up assault
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Allied infantry hurls back Nazi attack near Cassino
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Yank ace ties fighter record
Capt. Robert Johnson downs 27th Nazi
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Deshon man gets Medal of Honor
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Roosevelt ends his vacation in Southland
Ready to defend seizure of Ward’s
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
Washington –
President Roosevelt, rested and eager for government tasks after four weeks in South Carolina, waded into his White House deskwork today ready to defend his seizure of Montgomery Ward & Co.
He returned to Washington by train yesterday from Hobcaw Barony, Bernard M. Baruch’s 23,000-acre seacoast plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina.
His vacation was one of sunbathing, much sleep and poor fishing. White House physician VAdm. Ross T. McIntire was enthusiastic over his patient’s recuperation.
Confers with leaders
The first major White House business today was a conference with Democratic Congressional leaders – the Big Four.
Speaker Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader John W. McCormack (D-MA), Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY), and Vice President Henry A. Wallace attended the conference and Mr. Barkley later said that the President “recommended no new legislation.”
Adm. McIntire said Mr. Roosevelt was in “perfectly fine” health and, in his opinion, had thrown off all traces of the bronchial and sinus irritations which plagued him through the winter and early spring.
Hull meets him
Hardly had the special presidential train stopped rolling yesterday morning than Secretary of State Cordell Hull went abroad Mr. Roosevelt’s car to welcome him home. Mr. Hull rode with the President to the White House. They had an opportunity to canvass some of the more pressing international problems.
The President came home to a turbulent labor situation and before the week is out, he will probably have something to say on the complicated situation arising from government seizure of Montgomery Ward, an action already under Congressional investigation.
In the field of foreign affairs, he scheduled early conferences with Under Secretary of State E. R. Stettinius Jr., just back from London, and Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, who was a surprise arrival last week from his post in Moscow.
Health ‘perfectly fine’
Adm. McIntire declined to answer when asked whether, should the President decide to run for reelection, he is physically ready for a political campaign.
The doctor did say Mr. Roosevelt’s health was “perfectly fine” and that he was going to check his personal observations against medical science by giving the President a thorough physical examination within a few days. That probably will be at the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland.
This was the longest actual vacation the President has taken since entering the White House. Mr. Roosevelt left Washington April 8.
In the draft –
Men over 26 get reprieve until Oct. 1
Army to delay call of older men
By John Troan
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I DARE SAY —
Prophecy
By Florence Fisher Parry
There are great men, granite men, today. There must be, else how could the great miracle of our war production and invasion preparation astound the world and provide history its most miraculous page?
Yet when we look around us to single out the giants, we find that they are hard to find. Their single stature does not tower above the others; rather are we struck by the aggregate strength, the aggregate stature.
We look at our Supreme Court and we find there, not the great jurists of the past, but rather a duplication of any average group of 12 men that could be assembled from any town’s or city’s leading citizens. We look at the men in the President’s Cabinet, and their faces no not strike us as being marked by an unusual statesmanship; nor is the composite face of our Congress much different than that of any man who is rated a factor in his community.
Today I read an editorial that was written by one of the giants of 40 years ago. He was called “the Horace Greeley of the West.” He was indeed the West’s pioneer editor. He founded and built The Portland Oregonian, and during the years of his custodianship, more great truths, prophecies and warnings were to be found in the editorials he wrote than in any that have been penned since by one man.
I want you to read this editorial written March 16, 1901 (43 years ago), by Harvey W. Scott. It is called “Industry’s Immortal Foe.”
The threat
Here it is, in part:
What is the goal toward which the unions are tending with their strenuous effort to destroy competition? The only way to answer this question is to consider what competition has done for the world; and what competition has done for the world is simply everything.
All that has been done came through struggle, has been built up through struggle, which alone gives strength. In the fight is developed valor, in the battle of 10 for the subsistence that suffice for only five, are the weak and inefficient eliminated. Do we want ease? The only path thither lies over the rough rocks of acquisition and denial.
What gave New England its leadership in American achievement but its fierce winters and stony soil and enforced vigilance against king and savage? What made England great at sea but the hostile fleets that menaced her isolated island’s very existence? What has given us modern electrical appliances of power and light but the pressure of competing interests upon inventors? What but the fierce rivalry of opposing camps has perfected telegraphy, and steel manufacture, and coal production, and goldmining processes, the texture of our fabrics, the attractiveness of our newspapers, the appointment of trains and steamships, the convenience and endurance of our buildings, the excellence of the very clothes we wear and the food we eat?
Oracle
Is one man more expert than another? Then shall he join the union, do no more work than his lazy mate, and earn no more pay? Is one factory better equipped than another? Then shall it run fewer hours or close up altogether? Has one railroad a shorter line than its rival? Then shall it run on slower schedule? Is one superintendent more deft than another in dealing with his men? Then shall he deliver his authority over to an employer’s association, that all may share alike?
Socialism is in the air. It has conquered the ranks of labor and permeated the schools of learning, and now it marches on the erstwhile citadel of individualism, the captains of industry. They may not succeed, but if they succeed, they will fail, and in the crash of that failure will go down the most colossal ruin of human history. In the day that the competitive system is thrown away, our doom is sealed.
Without incentive, ambition will die away. Without rivalry, exertion loses its point. We shall fall to a dead level of mediocrity, the props will be withdrawn. The great machine will revolve a whole of its own accumulated momentum, and then it will stop.
And upon the ruins of what is left the survivors will erect another system, still imperfect, no doubt, but purged of this insidious error of socialism. Through some such dread experience as this we may have to pass, for Nature will make her lessons understood, at whatever cost is necessary, to those who would set her at defiance.
The process of creation is not to be reversed because some of the participants are tired of the struggle!
Thus spoke a prophet 43 years ago. What eloquence would have been his today!
New strikes develop as 3 are ended
Detroit, San Francisco areas hardest hit
By the United Press
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Ward workers vote on union tomorrow
Injunction petition ruling due Wednesday
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