In Washington –
More civilian goods supplied liberated areas by Lend-Lease
Money spent for everything from bicycles and engines to razorblades and kettles
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In Washington –
Screen scouts in frantic search for new talent
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Ladies Courageous tells story of girl ferry pilots
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Army consolidation plan aims to save men, avoid overlapping
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Man threatens McNutt; is held
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Millett: Salt Lake City wife has little gossip to tell
Sharing husband in polygamy is said ‘to have its advantages’
By Ruth Millett
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
About the most touching thing that has ever happened to me, I think, happened in Casablanca.
One afternoon, there was a knock at my hotel door. When I opened it, in walked six soldiers. Two of them I had known in Italy. They were in a predicament.
They were at a camp outside Casablanca, on their way back to America for specialized training. They were frontliners, men who had been through the mill. Most of them had been overseas for nearly two years. They were specialty selected men and carried in their pockets official orders sending them home.
But they had got so far as Casablanca and then hit one of those famous Army dead-end streets. They had been “frozen.” The details are too involved to explain. But they had become officially lost.
About to give up hope
For weeks they had pleaded, appealed, explored every approach imaginable, to try to get themselves unfrozen and on the way. They just couldn’t find out anything. They had exhausted all their possibilities and were just sitting there without hope. They were truly desperate. Then they heard I was in town, and with a new ray of hope came to see me.
These six had been chosen as representatives of 180 such men out at the camp. As I say, I had known two of them in Italy – Sgt. James Knight of Oklahoma and Pvt. Gerard Stillwell of Minnesota. I knew they were swell boys and true veterans.
Now it happened that in Casablanca I had some old-time friends who were pretty high-ranking officers. So, I picked up the phone and told one of them the story. He was a full colonel, and when he heard the story, he was furious. He asked if I could bring my soldier friends and meet him at the Red Cross Club immediately.
So we met. The big Red Cross lobby was full of soldiers, reading or talking or loafing. Officers aren’t supposed to come into an enlisted men’s club, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to the colonel.
Out of my six boys, I chose the two I had known in Italy to talk to the colonel. The four others sat at a distance.
The colonel is handsome and straight, silver-haired but youngish and a very vital kind of man. He is the kind real soldiers trust and are proud to say “Sir” to.
Sgt. Knight sat on the edge of a deep leather chair facing the colonel, and Pvt. Stillwell knelt on the floor in front of him, and they told their story. Their great sincerity and desperation showed in every word they said.
Colonel promises decision
The colonel took some notes as they talked, and asked some blunt and pointed questions.
For the first time in six weeks, the boys had found somebody who gave a damn. The colonel’s interest was electric. As old soldiers, they could instantly sense that here was an officer who meant business.
They finished, and then he said:
I’ll get a decision on this. I promise that by tomorrow night you will know one way or the other. Don’t get up too much hope. You might be sent back to your outfits instead of going home. But at least you’ll know right away.
That was all the boys wanted. They had got to the point where they didn’t much care whether they got home or not. All they wanted was for somebody to recognize that they existed.
I left Africa that night, so I don’t know what the decision was. But I have enough faith in my friend to feel positive that some immediate decision was obtained.
The colonel was busy, and as he started to rush out, he said to me, “Come jump in my car and I’ll take you back to your hotel.” But as we had risen from our chairs, I could sense that soldiers all over the lobby were getting up and starting to move tentatively toward us. I told the colonel I’d stay at the club awhile.
The moment he left I was surrounded by soldiers. There were more than 100 of them, mostly from this gang of lost men out at the transient camp. I didn’t know them, but they knew me, from Tunisia and Sicily and Italy.
Were frantic to get unlost
They surged around and talked and tried to tell me how desperate they had become. They tried to say they didn’t just selfishly want to go home, but were frantic to get unlost and get to doing something in the war again, even if it meant going back to the front at once.
Then they pulled out notebooks and franc notes, lira and postcards and snapshots of wives, sweethearts, and shoved them at me to sign. One boy even ruined a fresh $10 bill with my signature. I sat and wrote my name for 20 minutes without stopping.
Then they asked if they could take some snapshots on the sidewalk out front. So we moved out in a great body and held up sidewalk traffic while soldier after soldier snapped his camera.
Finally, we were through and I said goodbye and asked the way back to my hotel. And at that, a white-helmeted MP stepped out of the crowd and said, “We’ll take you back, sir.”
And so, in the splendor of a weapons carrier with an MP on either side of me, I rode back to the hotel. And that is the end of the story. I tell it because a man cannot help but feel proud to be thought well of by frontline soldiers.
Most men ‘stuck’ at Casablanca ‘frozen’ March 17 by Army
Washington –
War Department officials, shown the above Ernie Pyle dispatch, said today that they believed most of the men “stuck” at Casablanca were caught by the Army order of March 17 “freezing” – pending further instructions – all prospective Air Force trainees overseas who had not yet left for the States.Two weeks later, the Department ordered the “frozen” men reassigned in the theaters from which they had been scheduled to depart for air training.
Gen. H. H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, in announcing that the Air Forces training program had been cut back – because air casualties were lighter than anticipated, and the demands of the ground forces were increasing – spoke of his “full knowledge of the disappointment” this would bring to personnel of the ground and service forces volunteering for air training, and expressed his “heartfelt appreciation for their proffered services.”
Sgt. Knight and Pvt. Stillwell, mentioned by Mr. Pyle, have now been restored to their original units, the War Department said. It added that Stillwell arrived in Casablanca March 4, just missing the ship home, and Knight arrived March 20. The men were never “lost,” it was said, but were under orders at all times pending War Department action.
What’s going on behind the German defenses?
Nazis furiously strengthen forts along highly-touted ‘Atlantic Wall’
Denmark also improved in bitter race against time
By Nat A. Barrows
How tough an opposition will our invading forces encounter when they land in Western Europe? What is really going on behind Hitler’s Atlantic Wall? From his observation post in neighboring Sweden, Nat Barrows has been collecting closely guarded information about Germany’s ability and willingness to cope with the titanic forces assembled in England for Allied victory. In a most important series of articles, of which the following is the first, Mr. Barrows will reveal many hitherto unknown facts about the men directing the German war effort, Germany’s heavy industry, and other hitherto undisclosed information about the German war machine.
Stockholm, Sweden –
In their machine-gun nests overtopping the fjords of Norway, behind their tank traps and minefields, along the shallow coast of Denmark, amid their “sandwich system” fortifications in Holland and their 20-mile-deep defenses in France, a million Germans await the Allied invasion.
What does D-Day mean for them?
What will happen behind that 2,000-mile stretch of the Atlantic Wall when the Nazis’ anti-invasion commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, tries to outguess Allied Commander-in-Chief Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower?
How have five Nazi leaders, wielding vast power, been able to reorganize Germany’s heavy industry and keep these Atlantic Wall fighting men superbly equipped and confident of victory in face of slashing Eastern Front defeats and relentless air bombardments?
What, then, is going on today inside the Atlantic Wall?
Only from Stockholm can such details be told. Here are men – and women too – newly arrived from inside the Atlantic Wall. They have heard and seen what our Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen must find out for themselves.
Would face torture
In this series, telling what the Germans are doing and thinking in the shadow of the greatest battles in history, are many details which have not hitherto been printed. Long weeks of careful checking and rechecking lie behind this assembly of facts, culled from travelers, refugees and deserters as well as German publications.
Some of these men and women are still in Sweden; some are now back home in Germany, France and other Nazi-occupied countries. I protect their true identities as I guard my American passport; torture or death would overwhelm them and their families if the Nazis learned that they had talked.
First, let us take the Atlantic Wall itself. One million Germans sit there, from the North Cape of Norway to the Pyrenees, waiting, waiting, waiting, only because Rommel forced the German High Command to make the greatest military dice-throw the Nazis have ever undertaken and transfer 50 crack divisions from the Eastern Front. The consequences of this sacrifice, leaving about 1,750,000 men facing the Russian Army, may soon become apparent.
Troop quality varies
The quality of these Atlantic Wall troops varies country by country; trainees and older men are the nucleus in Norway; absolutely first-class fighting men, the flower of all Germany, in France. They have good morale, thanks to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ insidious program and they have splendid equipment, thanks to the way five Germans have been able to implement the ideas of a man long dead – Fritz Todt.
This Atlantic Wall stretch of 2,000 miles is divided into definite coastal defense zones, which the Germans call Küstenverteidigung Zone, two each in Norway and France, one each for Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Northwest Germany.
Denmark strengthened
The Germans today think that they will get at least one diversionary attack somewhere along the shallow coast of Denmark – perhaps Jutland. They took Prime Minister Churchill’s speech seriously when he encouraged the Danes with such a hint.
Accordingly, they have been working feverishly in the past month, trying to strengthen defenses already heavily fortified, especially against paratroopers seeking to utilize the flat Danish terrain. They have sown vast minefields in every channel approach to the key Jutland harbors of Esbjerg, Hirtshals and Hansted and they have dug a triple line of tank traps 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep, strongly protected with pillboxes, casemates and artillery.
One of these tank traps extends entirely across Jutland from Jammerbugten in the north to the German border.
Six divisions ready
In all, Denmark has six divisions under the Nazi commander of occupation troops, Gen. Hermann von Hanneken, including one brigade of Gen. Vlasov’s traitorous Cossacks. The fighter plane strength in Denmark is small due to the presence of German bases hardly an hour’s flying time away.
In the past weeks, Todt Organization workers have been improving Danish airfields.
Danish improvements started when Rommel visited Hanneken at his Silkeborg headquarters last December and warned him that his guns were pointing the wrong way.
Rommel scolded:
You’re not fighting tin soldiers now, general. You must be ready to meet attack from all directions.
Problem is different
A different military problem confronts the Germans in Norway. There the terrain aids the defenders and Gen. Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, Nazi occupation troop commander there, has tried to taker every advantage of the overhanging cliffs and deep fjords.
Harbors like Oslo, Narvik, Trondheim and Bergen are guarded with torpedo tubes mounted on cliff platforms, 12-inch howitzers and even 13-inch naval guns on railroad mounts. Every possible sea approach is protected with machine-gun nests and minefields.
Von Falkenhorst plainly built his defenses around the conception that the Allies would find it difficult to maintain proper air cover over the beachheads. His air force is now less than 100 planes on the theory that a powerful striking force could reach Norway within two days by a series of shifts in Luftwaffe power from the Mediterranean to the north.
Second-rate troops
Von Falkenhorst has eight divisions whose second-rate fighting abilities the Germans think to offset by the natural advantages of the terrain, although some members of the Nazi High command are known to have said that von Falkenhorst should not count too much on the impregnability of his section of the Atlantic Wall.
Holland, with eight divisions stationed in what its Nazi commander, Gen. Friedrich Christiansen, calls the “sandwich system of defense” is to be defended, of course, by flooding. Thus, the sandwich system: coastal fortifications, floods and inland fortifications.
But the Nazis have not forgotten how they crossed Holland’s flooded land in 1940 with 20,000 rubber boats and they have laid careful plans to make certain that the Allies do not use the same trick against them.
Antwerp may be hit
Christiansen thinks that the sector around the mouth of the river Scheldt, approaching Antwerp, will be one of the targets on allied D-Day and there he has concentrated his heaviest guns, torpedo batteries and minefields.
Three of his eight divisions guarding Holland are actually stationed across the German border at Wesel, Münster and Krefeld for greater mobility in the third layer of his sandwich system.
Denmark, Norway and Holland are part of this uncensored, detailed picture of what is happened behind the Atlantic Wall – but only one part. There is France… and the Luftwaffe… and the Kriegsmarine… and the five warlords running heavy industry… and the German people themselves. Other articles in this series will discuss them all in detail from the viewpoint of what lies ahead for the Allied boys preparing to fight and bleed and conquer inside the Atlantic Wall.
TOMORROW: Nazis have 200,000 entbehrlich troops on the Western Front. That word means “expendables,” men who will be sacrificed in the first push of the Allies into the continent.
Dewey tightens lead position
Washington (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York has a substantial claim on first or second ballot votes of upward of 480 delegates of those so far elected to the Republican National Convention.
His nomination daily becomes more likely.
Some of Mr. Dewey’s supports insist he will have a comfortable majority of first ballot votes when the delegate-election process is completed and before the convention meets. There will be 1,058 votes in the convention.
530 votes needed
A bare majority of 530 is sufficient to nominate a Republican presidential candidate.
Formally committed Dewey delegates, however, number between 50 and 60. This year has been notable for less formal although persuasive commitments. Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio will about equal Mr. Dewey in committed delegates after tomorrow’s Ohio primaries. Mr. Bricker will get the entire 50-vote Ohio delegation. The 52 Ohio delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be for a fourth term.
Stassen receptive
LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, remains an avowedly receptive candidate and Rep. Everett Dirksen (R-IL) is campaigning but has entered no primaries. There is a long shot scattering of favorite sons.
Mr. Bricker, however, is the principal challenger to a Dewey walkover and his backers concede nothing to the New Yorker. The Ohioan is conducting the only sustained campaign and this week will speak in Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, it was disclosed that a Bricker-for-President headquarters will be opened here Thursday under the direction of Canton publisher Roy D. Moore, assisted by Arthur Leedle, former secretary to Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH).
Other states watched
Meanwhile, political interest this week turns to Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and Wyoming, where presidential preference or state primaries and conventions will afford new slants on the pre-election outlook.
Tomorrow, Ohio will nominate candidates for the Senate and 23 seats in the House and chooses delegates to the national conventions. West Virginia will also choose candidates for six House seats. Wyoming will name delegates to the national conventions, and Texas Democratic county conventions select national delegates.
Oil conference results fail to satisfy all
Oil policy group to study proposals
By Marshal McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Mills pressed for shipments of plate steel
Tonnage requests swamp producers
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‘Ike’ swears it’s tough going –
Wildcat blocker shifts to skies and hurls Nips for big losses
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Marines to shift limited reserve men
Will reexamine them for general service
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Wife of No. 1 U.S. ace in Europe works as usual
Mrs. Johnson, 21, reports at 8:00 a.m. at drug store ‘proud as she can be’
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U.S. asked to eat its way out of current meat crisis
176 million pounds of bacon constitute greatest oversupply on list today
By Gaynor Maddox
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Address by DNC Chairman Robert E. Hannegan
May 8, 1944
Delivered at the Democratic Jefferson Day Dinner, New York City
Since accepting the assignment as chairman of the Democratic National Committee last January, I have visited twenty states and talked with hundreds of American citizens in every walk of life.
Tonight, I want to report to the Democrats of New York that it is my firm conviction that the Democratic Party will win the national elections in November and that our standard-bearer will be New York’s greatest son – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Everywhere I have been, I find that there is in the hearts and minds of the American people the resolute determination that our great President must lead us to the conclusion of the relentless war against the enemies of liberty and then utilize his leadership and vision to establish a just and lasting peace.
There is also among our people a firm conviction that the Republican Party, irrespective of the promises and the utterances of its leaders, cannot be given another opportunity to destroy or confuse the hope of mankind that we will have both victory and peace in the great war that is now reaching its climax. Yes, I am certain that the American people have learned the lesson of history. They are determined that the vision and idealism of Woodrow Wilson shall not again be submerged by the cynicism and the opportunism of another Harding.
The people of the United States are determined that Franklin D. Roosevelt shall complete the assignment which destiny has given him, and I can say to his fellow Democrats of New York that, whatever might be the purely personal desires of the President, the Democrats of the United States and millions of other Americans will demand that a great historical process be completed without interruption. And despite the malicious whispers to the contrary, I can assure you that the President is fit and ready for the fight.
I wish to make it clear that I have not discussed with the President the question of his own desires or intentions with respect to these demands of the people that he again become a candidate. I am only reporting to you my personal opinion and the conclusions which I have reached after discussions with hundreds of persons throughout the nation.
It is my personal opinion that the people of America, always the masters of their nation’s destiny, want to finish the job now on hand with the same leadership that has taken them so far towards ultimate victory.
It it my personal opinion that our people have adjudged the life-and-death risks of total war too great to entrust the responsibility of waging it from here on, to a novice or a lesser soldier of freedom.
It is my personal opinion that the mothers and fathers, the wives and sweethearts of the men serving in the Armed Forces, the workers in our factories and shipyards, the owners of farms and the enlightened leaders of our great industries, alike are coming to a single great realization: That the future, not only of their own private interests but of their country, is at stake, and that the stakes are too large, the penalty of inexperience too heavy, to shift the tasks that lie ahead to an unpracticed hand.
And it is my personal opinion, ladies and gentlemen, that we must and shall, over the next four years, retain our great leader who is able to tackle those jobs with the practiced hand – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
I wish I could tell you more. I wish I could have come to you tonight with something more to report than the will of the people, for it is true that any man, no matter how vital his services may be to his country, must himself give the final answer to the call of his party and his country.
I can say to you, and certainly I shall say to him, that both his party and his country are making the demand that there shall be continuity of leadership in this crisis. And for myself, I am convinced that whatever his judgment in the matter may be, the good of his country will come first, the safety of our people will dictate the decision that he makes.
I can go further with you tonight. I can give you an idea of the case that we, the Democratic Party organization, are preparing to lay before the President. I shall be pleased to know whether it convinces you.
We shall state at the outset our candid opinion that, through service rendered, President Roosevelt, more than any other man in America today, has earned the confidence of the American people.
I have the best reason in the world for believing that the people are ready to express that confidence overwhelmingly at the polls next November. I have talked to a considerable and representative sample of them and they have told me so.
It follows, therefore, that our President, better than any other man in America today, stands as the bulwark against opposition views which, if put into practice, would endanger our country both in war and in peace.
What are those views?
First, on the matter of winning the war. Looking back today, every American knows how dangerous were the views, when war threatened us, of certain Republican leaders in the Congress, who opposed preparing the island of Guam for use by our Navy, who were against changing the Neutrality Act, who opposed appropriations for fighting planes, who were against Lend-Lease, and in most cases opposed Selective Service.
No one can predict what the world situation would be today if the views of these obstructionists prevailed. The American people not only have the right, but the duty to inquire into their records before political decisions are made. The electorate knows that, instead of marching to ultimate victory, we should be facing the possible humiliation of a shameless deal with the Fascist oppressors if the nation had not had leadership with the courage to prepare swiftly to meet the forces of aggression.
Looking ahead today, nobody knows better than does President Roosevelt how dangerous to the peace are the views of those Republican leaders who run with the hares and bark with the hounds, who cry out between elections against the other great powers that are fighting this war side by side with us, and who smoothly declare, as election time draws near, their newly inflamed passion for the principle of international cooperation.
Nobody knows better than does President Roosevelt how dangerous to the world of tomorrow it would be to entrust the peace of that world to men who learn their lessons late. And such lessons as these Republican leaders have learned, at all they have learned very late indeed.
The Governor of this state, the Hon. Thomas E. Dewey, who copies down the answers on his little slate after the examination is all over, gravely told the people of America on January 20, 1940:
Insofar as the present administration has adhered to the policies of its predecessors, it has met with the general approval of the American people. But it has occasionally strayed from the path. A conspicuous and most unfortunate departure was the recognition by the New Deal of Soviet Russia.
You folks in the audience cannot see the underlining of that last sentence in the notes I have here, but the italics are mine.
It was “most unfortunate,” said the Governor of New York, that our President recognized Soviet Russia. Of course, he said that four years ago. And at that time, unless a person was gifted with a rare insight into the play of great forces in the world, unless he had in him the quality of statesmanship which would enable him to judge accurately of the pull and direction of those forces, he could not have known, could not have realized the great peril in which our country stood in 1940, he could not have recognized the heroic roles which the people of Great Britain, the people of China and the people of Russia were to play, he could not have foreseen how, in fulfilling their own destinies, they were to halt the menace that threatened us.
Our President, by his actions before and since that time, move by move, play by play in this grim game of checkmating a worldwide aggression, has shown that insight, that quality of statesmanship. And those characteristics go far toward explaining today the steady march of the United Nations toward final victory.
By the same contrast between the abilities of men, the minds of men, we may explain many a similar masterpiece of miscalculation which can be credited to the present Governor of New York. They bejewel his utterances in those reckless days when he forgot to wait for the teacher to give out the answers before copying them down on his own little slate.
“At last,” he said, again in 1940, and again I am quoting, “at last I think our administration will stop trying to make deals with Russia. We need no such partnerships.”
A few days ago, speaking his piece this time after the answers had been given out and the examination was all over, Governor Dewey said:
No initial measures against Germany and Japan, however drastic, will have permanent value unless they fall within the setting of a durable cohesion between Great Britain and ourselves, together, I hope, with Russia and China.
Now, perhaps I do not have a proper understanding of what a “durable cohesion” is. Perhaps a “durable cohesion” is not a “deal” or a partnership.
But I do know the historical fact that the government of Russia with which Governor Dewey wanted to have no truck in 1940 is the same government with which he hopes we shall have a durable cohesion in 1944. The only major change pertinent to this question that has taken place inside Russia since that time is the elimination of somewhere around eight million Germans.
To borrow from the Governor’s bright lexicon, I, for one, would be better able to understand these gems of statesmanship that he is scattering among us plain Americans if they fell within the setting of a durable cohesion between one phase of this crisis and the next.
But perhaps this uncohesive record is a part of the Governor’s studied technique. Perhaps he considers it good politics. You know, in modern warfare, the strategists strive to maintain a “fluid front.” Well, the Governor was plenty fluid when he analyzed the question of national defense four years ago. Perhaps some of you will remember his brilliant exposition proving that we could not possibly produce 50,000 airplanes. He had all the figures to show how and why it could not be done and how even the plant to build that many airplanes would take us at least four years to construct.
Then he cinched the argument and boxed it in an ironbound coffin of defeatism by warning us that, “To use airplanes you have to have an air force. To maintain and fly 50,000 planes, an air force of about 750,000 men is necessary.”
These, the Governor continued, “are sobering facts.” Today the present Governor of New York must be very sober indeed. Today, four years after he showed us how 50,000 planes could not be built, how an air force to man them could not be trained, America has produced for the Armed Forces 184,000 planes, and we have an air force of 2,385,000 fighting men.
Again, the difference between men’s abilities, men’s minds. And I suspect, too, a little of the difference between men who have vision and set their sights high and men who lack this quality and keep them low.
Let us remember that difference. To the people of this country, it is something more than a casual observation on the human species. To our children and our children’s children, that difference will mean something more than a paragraph or a chapter in their history books. If we, the electorate of 1944, are not sufficiently aware of this difference, the history that will interest our children could be tragically different.
What new dangers are there going to be, what pitfalls shall we be threading our way through, after the last shot is fired on the battlefield of World War II? And in dealing with the delicate problems that will arise among nations, the dangers that may threaten our own and all other free peoples, in anticipating the world of 1948, will the Governor of New York show the same great lack of comprehension that he has exhibited for the four-year stretch since 1940?
In calling on President Roosevelt once again to lead his party and his country, we shall continue to review this record of defeatism of the opposition.
We shall point out to him the distaste of the people for campaign tactics which, even at this early stage, the Republican opposition has already adopted. We shall point out to him the recklessness, the desperation, of a political party so utterly bereft of an issue that it must comb through the newspapers from day to day and catch as catch can their issues out of the emergencies of this war.
We shall call attention to the character of a so-called “loyal opposition” which lashes out blindly at its Commander-in-Chief in time of war and prejudges any measure he may take to save the home front from weakness or from chaos.
In only one respect have I been able to observe any improvement in the intemperate character of recent utterances of the various elements opposed to the President and his policies.
We have recently been provided with certain very vital statistics, politically speaking, from the states of Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Florida and Alabama. And since that time, I have not heard repeated the prediction that the Republican Party could win with anybody.
The victories of our two valiant warriors, Senators Claude Pepper and Lister Hill, appear to have silenced the Republican talk of a “trend.” They had been talking for a long time about a “trend.”
I think the publishers of Webster might well point out, under the definitions of that word, that a “trend” is something the Republicans see only when the Democrats don’t get out and vote.
If there is any trend running through the months and years that lie ahead of us, it will be the trend to victory, and may that trend reach upward, sharp and high.
It will be the trend to a peace that will prevail over a world of free peoples.
It will be a trend to a better life for our people, a trend to those freedoms for which one man, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has worked so long and fought so wisely and so well.
Address by Senator Alben Barkley (D-KY)
May 8, 1944
Delivered at the Democratic Jefferson Day Dinner, New York City
Mr. Toastmaster: It is fortunate that in these tragic days of struggle and sacrifice we can meet in the name and under the continuing inspiration of Thomas Jefferson.
The struggle of which I speak is one that is being waged not only for the preservation of the human rights which Jefferson did so much to establish, but also the right to assemble as we are assembled here, to discuss and debate them.
No such right exists now anywhere in that part of the world controlled by our enemies; and no such right will exist here if our enemies should triumph in this war. We meet, therefore, with a background of a century and a half of political, economic and social development for which Jefferson’s philosophy prepared the way.
Faced as we are with the most stupendous and world-embracing battle to preserve a world in which the mind and soul of man may flourish and be free, poised for the impending stroke which may determine its length and final issue, we confront three problems, none of which can be separated from the others.
First, we must win this war so crushingly and overwhelmingly that no class or clique in any part of the Axis nations may again delude their people with the claim that they had not been defeated.
Second, we must work for and help to secure a peace which will be just; a peace that may be durable because it is just.
Third, we must organize the world for peace, so that the peace which we shall earn and set up may be preserved by the united and cooperative activities of those who have brought the enemies of peace to their knees and ushered in some form of world order in which the arts of peace and the will for peace may flourish.
Regarding the first of these three tasks, there is no important or substantial disagreement among the American people.
And there is no substantial disagreement that in the two and a half years since Pearl Harbor the United States, as a government and as a people, have gone farther and faster in getting ready to fight than any nation ever went in the whole history of nations.
That we were not wholly prepared for this war when the Japanese treachery of December 7, 1941 broke upon us, there is no point in denying.
That we were as well prepared as we were is due to the foresight, the warnings, and the insistence of the Democratic Party and the Democratic administration presided over by President Franklin Roosevelt.
I do not like to become partisan in the midst of war, even at a Democratic gathering like this. But a few days ago, I read a speech by a prominent candidate for a presidential nomination on the other side of the political fence in which he claimed that our military and naval weakness were due to the negligence of the present administration.
It is necessary to refute this only by recalling that from 1921 to 1933, twelve years, during which the Democratic Party was not in power, not a single battleship was laid down for construction in the American Navy.
It might be well for some of these ambitious governors to do a little cramming on American history between now and next November.
But while we were not prepared for all-out war when war was forced upon us, the same can be said of every war in which we ever engaged, beginning with the Revolutionary War itself.
The same can be said of every democracy in the world, including those which lay all around Germany and could look over the back fence and see what was going on under Hitler.
Democracies are never prepared for war at the drop of a hat. If they were, they would not be democracies, but would be the kind of autocracy against which we are fighting to protect ourselves and the world.
Under these circumstances, we, as well as our friends among the United Nations, have been compelled to fight the enemy back and hold him off with one hand, while preparing with feverish intensity with the other to forge the instruments with which to drive him back and crush him utterly and fatally.
In this process, we have transformed our nation from a peace to a war economy. We had done some things before we were drawn into the war. But in the war effort itself we have exceeded in many respects what we hoped to accomplish in the training and equipment of the largest army and navy that ever fought under a single banner. And the quality of this army and navy is in every way commensurate with their numbers.
Now in the performance of this task, and in the incredible progress we have made toward victory, there has been no distinction of politics, religion, race or color. Industry, labor, agriculture and finance have put on the uniform and shouldered a gun, and turned out the instruments with which men must fight.
This program required organization and concentration of energy. It required the delegation of power to somebody who could use it. For democracies cannot fight against aggression with a sprawling, disjointed, heterogeneous outfit without form and void.
I presume that even our opponents, those who are most critical and most partisan, will concede that this organization, this concentration, this transformation and the magnificent results which have flowed from them took place under the guidance of a Democratic administration, headed by a Democratic President, chosen for the task by the people in a free election.
Again let me say that I prefer not to speak in a partisan vein even at a partisan assembly. But I do not propose that those whose chief business at present is the fomentation of partisan hatred shall fill our backyard with political hand grenades, even though none of them explodes. I shall at least contend for the right to call attention to their presence and their intent.
Some of these things have made it necessary to put into effect restrictions and regulations which have been irksome and irritating. Politicians bent on office and disunity, will undertake to magnify and capitalize these disarrangements.
But the American people know what is involved in this war. They are not children. But even if they were, as some loquacious and mendacious persons seem to think, they would still know that the inconveniences and hardships being experienced by those of us who still live in comparative comfort are not to be mentioned in the same breath with those being endured by the fighting men and women who are honoring the name of America all over the world.
Through all these energies and these efforts, we shall win this war. We shall win it so completely along with our friends of Great Britain, Russia, China, and other peoples who are fighting by our side, that the world will not be bothered by another debate as to who won the war.
We cannot afford to allow the controversies and disunity growing out of a nationwide election to retard by a single item or moment the momentum which we are gathering and shall soon display.
There are some among us who deplore the fact that in the midst of war we must undergo a campaign and an election.
I am not one of them. The people have a right to pass judgment on their government, in war as in peace. We welcome the people’s judgment upon our record, in peace and war alike. We entertain no fears upon that score.
The only thing we ask is that the American people search and assess that record for themselves, without prejudice, without malice, without heat, but with all the light they need to enable them to see, keeping in their memories the conditions we inherited, what we have done to alleviate those conditions, and keeping in mind our present task and its final and glorious consummation.
When the war shall end, our task will not be over. In some respects, it will have just begun.
We shall reconvert our war economy hack to a peace economy. We shall re-transform our factories, our farms, our financial institutions, our manpower, back to the pursuits of peace.
We shall undertake to do this with speed and care.
We are already beginning this process so far as possible without impeding the war effort.
We shall bring back to their homes and families eleven or twelve million men and women. We shall be confronted with the duty of seeing that these men and women obtain work at fair wages. We shall see to it that they are reintegrated into the social and economic life from which they departed to serve their country. We must make sure that they do not return to an economic situation which requires them to sell apples and lead pencils on the streets in order to eat and sleep and support their families in a land that they have saved.
This great cause cannot be served by a resort to political heroics. It cannot be solved by appeals to ignorance or prejudice.
The kind of life to which our nation and the world will return will be determined by the degree of cooperation, tolerance, patience and understanding that may be brought about between government and business, agriculture, finance, labor, and all other elements of our wonderful people.
None of these can do the job alone. All of them, working together with the same unity and determination which has characterized the war effort, can and will accomplish it.
Along with these national and economic readjustments, the peace itself poses a question of major consideration. Indeed, the kind of peace which will follow this war may determine not only the real outcome and effectiveness of this war, but whether another is to follow soon upon its heels.
Already the groundwork is being laid in a most nonpartisan atmosphere, for our return to economic stability and for our return to peace.
In both houses of the Congress men of all political parties are serving upon Committees to look in advance at the postwar probabilities, and be prepared to meet them. We have made much progress in preparing for peace. In the international field, conferences have been and are being constantly held, that much of the underbrush in the thickets and jungles and forests of international relationships may be cleared away.
In this undertaking the heads of our government are utilizing the ability, experience and patriotism of men of all political persuasions.
Under our Constitution our President is charged with the conduct of our foreign relations. This is true no matter who is President or to what party he belongs.
President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull have worked together in not only conducting our relations with other nations, but in the formation of the consistent policy of our government.
Sometimes they have conferred separately with the representatives of other governments, as at Moscow, Québec, Casablanca, Tehran, and in the Atlantic, as well as in London and Washington.
To say that they have worked at cross purposes, or that their right hands are ignorant of what their left hands are doing is a preposterous and fantastic misrepresentation.
It was disappointing, and somewhat disillusioning to hear such a claim come from one who became dry behind the ears on any kind of foreign policy after he had perceptibly slowed down his own synthetic flight from a presidential nomination.
Out of this war must come a peace that is just and honorable. A peace to which all fair-minded men and men of good will can subscribe.
In order that such a peace may be ordained, the economic problems of impoverished and overrun nations cannot be Ignored. Chaos and disorder cannot be the breeding ground of a durable peace. Hunger, starvation and disease cannot constitute the fertilizer for a healthy growth of peaceful restoration.
It will not be necessary to set up an international WPA as some prominent political candidates now pretend to fear. Nor is it necessary for our own salvation, nor will it shorten the war or hasten the peace, nor make a better peace, for such candidates to seek to destroy the confidence of our people in our allies for some local and temporary purpose.
When peace comes it must come as the result of confidence among the peoples who must win this war.
No blueprint of a peace treaty can now be exhibited. But we are looking and preparing for the day when the peoples of the earth may throw from their backs the burdens of war, stand erect again, and demand that all peoples and all nations that now assert their desire and intention to pursue the arts of peace shall do so in good faith.
When that peace shall come, it must be preserved.
Whether any discussed or projected organization to preserve world peace shall be launched before any treaty of peace is concluded, or shall become a part of it, or shall come afterwards and separately, is a question of details and mechanics. Many nations will have to be consulted and will have to agree.
But the substance is what will count ultimately in determining the value of any organized effort to preserve world peace.
We have learned now that when storm clouds gather over the world, threatening our own and the security of all peace-loving nations, we cannot rush into a storm cellar thinking that when the storm subsides and passes, we may emerge to find our homes and institutions and our traditions untouched.
There is no such thing as individual freedom from flames when the world is on fire. We know that now, and only folly could dictate that we seek to shirk our share of responsibility for the peace of mankind.
I do not wish to disinter the bones of the Versailles Treaty or the League of Nations.
But a coy, demure, unannounced, but palpitating candidate for President a few days ago startled the world by revealing that the defects of the Treaty of Versailles grew out of the fact it was written by a group of tired old men who had enough life left in them to win a war but were too feeble to write a treaty of peace.
The petty implications in this observation are too obvious to need photographic exhibition or blueprint delineation.
That the Treaty of Versailles had defects no one will deny. So have all treaties contained defects and many of them contained the seeds of future wars.
The Treaty of Versailles failed not because it was written by tired old men who had won a war, but it failed because a group of men, some of them malicious, some of them old, and some of them young, destroyed it before it had a fair chance to work or to have its defects cured.
In our own country it became the football of partisan politics and as a result we got nothing but a separate peace with Germany.
It does not serve our present generation, nor compensate for the enormous sacrifice which we are suffering in this war to reflect either upon those who wrote that treaty or those who opposed it. Our task now is to avoid such mistakes as were then made, if we can detect them.
It is our duty to protect future generations from the necessity of going through another slaughterhouse in order to preserve a decent civilization, elevate the ideals of the world in general, develop the resources with which God has endowed the earth, give remunerative labor to all who are able and desire to work, provide an opportunity for profitable investment by those who are able and willing to invest, lay the groundwork for a higher and more universal education, and cultivate the moral and spiritual values which exalt a nation in its own eyes and in the eyes of the world.
In behalf of such a concept of life the Democratic Party has fought for a hundred and fifty years. In behalf of such a concept it calls now for the earnest and devoted aid and cooperation of men and women of all ages, religions, colors, conditions and political persuasions.
A few local or temporary political victories or defeats may inflate or depress minds which look upon them as the supreme object of all life.
But–
Truth crushed to earth
Shall rise again.
The eternal years of
God are hers.
But error, wounded,
Writhes in pain
And dies amid its worshipers.