In Washington –
Early decision on subsidy bill backed by Jones
Food administrator denies he desires delay, asserts farmers must know program before planting
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In Washington –
Independence delay scored by Koreans
Chungking, China (UP) – (Dec. 4, delayed)
Denouncing the Cairo Declaration’s pledge that Korea would be freed “in due course” as absurd, Kim Ku, President of the Provisional Government of Korea here, today warned that Koreans would continue their historic fight, unless they get “independence the moment the Japs collapse.”
It was the first official expression of any of the interested parties here against the Cairo Declaration signed by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Ku said that more than 1,000 free Koreans in free China are furious about the expression “in due course.”
He declared:
If the Allies fail to give Korea unconditional freedom and independence right after World War II, we are determined to continue our historical fighting against any aggressor or group of aggressors, regardless who they are.
Cross-Channel assault hinted by Big Three pledge
Gen. Marshall may direct invasion of Europe this winter
By Reuel S. Moore, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Military observers today interpreted the Tehran “victory conference” pledge to smash Germany from east, west and south as an omen of early land invasion of Western Europe.
Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, is expected to lead that attack to be launched this winter or in early spring.
The Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin declaration seemed to remove almost all doubts that may have existed as to whether the Allies would venture the attack from the west for which they have steadily been assembling powerful forces.
The announced decision of the American, British and Russian leaders, is to undertake a three-way attack on Germany by air, sea and land – from the east, west and south.
The unofficial Army and Navy Register suggested Saturday that decisions in Tehran might make an invasion of Western Europe unnecessary. But most military circles discounted that view. In the light of the Tehran Declaration, they believed the “Big Three” have even decided the time when the squeeze will be applied.
May attack in winter
The winter months or late spring would be the logical time to undertake the difficult western phase of the grand assault on Germany’s so-called Fortress Europe.
The advantages of a winter campaign include frozen highways which could support heavy equipment; fog or low-visibility conditions in the English Channel and North sea which could help protect invasion forces; and long nights which would permit more sustained aerial blows on vital German targets.
Has disadvantages
But winter would also have its disadvantages – rough seas that would increase difficulties of amphibious operations and the vagaries of the weather. In late spring, the roads would be sufficiently dried out and weather conditions would be more stable.
Military experts here believe that when the invasion comes, Allied forces will strike at numerous points along a front extending from northern Norway to northwestern France.
At the same time, observers here said, new invasions may be attempted from the south. For instance, the reborn French Army of Liberation could provide the Allies with a great psychological advantage if it landed in southern France. A drive across the Adriatic into the Balkans and an invasion of Greece from the Eastern Mediterranean are other possibilities.
Meanwhile, the Russians are expected to contribute a powerful new offensive in the east.
Writers score early release
Hit scoops on conferences by Reuters, TASS
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
Seventy Allied newspaper correspondents, in a resolution to Brendan Bracken, head of the British Ministry of Information, and Elmer Davis, head of the OWI, today protested against press arrangements and breaking of releases dates on conferences of Allied leaders in the Middle East.
The resolution said:
Correspondents twice have been let down in the matter of safeguarding releases. The responsible government department so underestimated the importance of the occasion as to entrust its handling to an official with only the slightest experience in press or public relations.
The resolution added:
Many assurances given to the correspondents were not honored.
The correspondents – who watched the initial break on the Cairo Conference come from Reuters in a Lisbon dispatch and the news of the Tehran Conference released by the Russian news agency TASS via the Moscow radio – felt that the fault lay not with British or OWI officials who handled the press relations, but with Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt.
Correspondents were not allowed any access to Mr. Churchill, Mr. Roosevelt or Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, and repeated requests for a press conference were turned down. After Gen. Chiang left Cairo, it was learned that he would have been glad to see the newspapermen.
Many details unrevealed by Tehran parley
Congress believed sure to ask for full explanation
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
The brief and general nature of the Tehran Declaration published today left unrevealed all details regarding the “problems of the future” surveyed by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin in their historic Tehran Conference.
Congressional requests for fuller explanation of conference discussions, agreements and commitments – if any – are inevitable. On the face of the declaration, it would appear that the conferees were more concerned with immediate military than future political questions. But from the standpoint of post-wat politics, observers found most significance in the formal commitment of the three conferees to world democracy.
Find common ground
Although the declaration proved to be wholly general, its cordial tenor indicated the three men had found common ground for their joint enterprises.
There was no reference in the declaration to post-war territorial boundaries, notably those of the Soviet Union, and well-informed observers here had not expected that such questions would be dealt with in any major way at the conference. But the declaration did explain that there had been a survey of the future.
There was some surprise here that the declaration did not in some way indicate what political and geographic future a defeated Germany might expect at the hands of the victors. A semi-official Soviet Union proposal of last summer invited the German people to repudiate their masters.
Pledge to oust Nazis
But the President, Prime Minister and Premier all are on record for the annihilation of Nazism and the elimination of its leaders from the life of Europe. There was in the Tehran Declaration no appeal to the German masses to shorten their torment by chucking their leaders.
General satisfaction here with the declaration’s military commitments seemed assured. Congress and the people evidently are reconciled that the opening of a land front in Western Europe is part of that hard bargain. It will be costly in lives but the consensus here is that it will shorten the war.
There was some indication, after the recent Moscow foreign ministers conference, of political and other dissatisfaction with the Soviet Union’s territorial plans in the west. The states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, a part of Finland obtained in the treaty of March 1940, eastern Poland and the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina have been absorbed into the Soviet Union by amendment of the Soviet Constitution.
Landon warning cited
Former Governor Alf M. Landon of Kansas was here last week warning the Republications against endorsing the Moscow Conference agreements without more information, and especially regarding Russian territorial plans in the west.
It is believed, however, that such criticism will be answered by the argument that the United States has no enforceable interests on the continent of Europe at all. The realistic military reaction to questions of Russian boundaries is that there is no way by which the United States could prevent Russia from establishing any boundaries she might desire.
Talks resume in Cairo after Iran sessions
Both Roosevelt, Churchill described as ‘elated’ by Stalin meeting
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer
Cairo, Egypt –
President Roosevelt, described as elated and confident that the Tehran Conference with Premier Joseph Stalin had shortened the war, began a series of new conferences with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other leaders immediately upon their return from Iran.
There appeared little doubt that they were following up the Tehran decisions with specific action. The range of discussions among the Allied leaders was as broad as the world.
While the communiqués have failed to mention any specific areas such as Finland, {Poland, the Balkans or the Dardanelles, there was no question that the talks, which are continuing, dealt with such specific areas.
Speculation regarding the nature of possible action centered on the military phase, particularly the statement in the Tehran communiqué about attacks upon Germany from the east, south, and west.
Both the President and Prime Minister were described as “elated” by the Tehran meeting with Marshal Stalin. The President had said months ago that it was his “fondest desire” for a meeting with the Russian leader and now that he had had it he was said to regard it as “very successful.” He was also reported as saying that great progress toward the end of the war had been achieved.
Stokes: Dewey’s favor as candidate is phenomenon
His backers say Willkie’s boom ‘collapsed,’ plan draft
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Allied planes sink 6 U-boats in two battles
U.S., British and Canadian fliers help convoys below Iceland
By James McGlincy, United Press staff writer
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Invasion of the Balkans was hinted today as one of the possible Allied blows mapped at the Tehran Conference. Berlin, evidently fearing that Turkey might be drawn into the war, was reported massing troops on the Bulgarian-Turkish border (1). Allied planes bombed Salonika, Greece (2). Meanwhile, in Italy (3) Yanks seized three more heights dominating the main road to Rome.
Hotel close to Pyramids emptied for Allied talks
Pacific conference site converted into spy-proof, enemy-proof and reporter-proof perimeter
By Richard Mowrer
Cairo, Egypt –
One bright morning, in the second week of November, an indignant British major stomped into the office of the manager of the swank Mena House hotel, famous tourist establishment within an easy walk or camel ride of the Sphinx and the Pyramids and, since the war, the favorite residence of GHQ officers.
“What’s the meaning of this?” the irate major demanded, thrusting a piece of paper at the manager.
“This,” was a short notice of request to the client to leave Mena House and find residence elsewhere.
Sixth to protest
The hotel manager barely bothered to look up from his desk.
Glancing at the crowns on the major’s shoulder, he said:
I am very sorry, sir. You are the sixth client to have protested this morning and four of them were brigadiers. Sorry.
This, according to the story, was the first intimation of the impending Mena conference. The following day, Cairo newspapers carried an item stating that Mena House was being closed down for repairs and cleaning, probably preparatory to the arrival of important personages.
Things move fast
At Mena, things began to move fast. Twenty British and American officers, assisted by 200-300 enlisted men, started the job of converting Mena House and 43 private villas near there into a strongly-protected, spy-proof, enemy-proof, reporter-proof perimeter.
Residents of Mena House having been dismissed, all the hotel staff was fired. Each servant was checked by security officers and in most cases rehired. The inside of Mena House, meanwhile, was revamped, bedrooms on the first, second and third floors being converted into 80 officers, while halls and salons on the ground floor became conference rooms.
Delegates were to live outside the hotel in villas.
One gets 1,500 pounds
Acquiring the needed villas was not easy. Owners were offered monetary compensation in return for immediate evacuation for a one-month period, from Nov. 18 to Dec. 18. One villa owner declared that he was damned if he would move out of his own home for anybody. The officers mentioned compensation. The obdurate subject remarked jokingly, “make it 1,500 pounds, Egyptian.”
One of the officers pulled out a checkbook and wrote out a check for that sum. They got the villa.
On the other hand, some villa owners were most gracious about the business. An Egyptian woman, when told the reason why her house was wanted, refused any compensation, declaring she was glad thus to contribute to the cause of the United Nations.
In the area enclosed by the Mena conference perimeter lived Egyptian peasants. There were checked by security officers and permitted to remain.
Trenches dug
Not since the gloomy days of El Alamein, when the enemy was still heading for Alexandria and Cairo felt directly threatened, has there been so much barbed wire in Mena and the Pyramids area. Each villa was surrounded by barbed-wire entanglements. Air-raid shelters and slit trenches were dug.
Mena House swimming pool was fitted with two pumps and kept filled with water in case of fire. Numerous anti-aircraft batteries were set up; searchlight emplacements were prepared. There were several British Army camps within the perimeter. An American camp to house 1,080 American drivers, MPs, guards and other personnel was also built.
On Sunday night, Nov. 21, after the arrival of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and the Generalissimo and before the arrival of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, the perimeter’s searchlights swept the skies for half an hour while a place droned overhead. Everything was all set for the conference.
Son’s command sees President pass in review
‘A grand looking outfit,’ Roosevelt tells Elliott
By Robert Vermillion, United Press staff writer
Allied air base, North Africa – (Dec. 4, delayed)
The man in the gray fedora rode slowly in a jeep past a mile-long array of soldiers, swung back and stopped in front of the colonel commanding.
The colonel stepped forward two paces and saluted. The man in the fedora returned the salute and stuck out his hand.
The President of the United States said to his son:
It’s a grand looking outfit; you’ve done a good job, Elliott.
“Thank you, sir,” the colonel replied.
Marshall in party
The presidential review of Col. Elliott Roosevelt’s photo reconnaissance wing took place on a North African airfield where Mr. Roosevelt and his party, including Gens. George C. Marshall and Dwight d. Eisenhower, paused on their way east for the conferences at Cairo and Tehran with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Marshal Joseph Stalin.
The President’s plane descended at a specially-guarded airdrome near his son’s base early in the morning. The review was delayed for security reasons and it was sunset when the jeep rolled onto the field and started down the double line of Americans, British and French. The long shadows flickered across the President’s jeep as it moved down the field.
‘Chees, it’s the President’
Pvt. James M. Bettersby, 19, of Kewanee, Illinois, who was in the front rank, described the amazement of the troops this way:
We all figured it was somebody big but I was looking straight ahead. Then up the line I heard another guy kind of whisper “Chees, it’s the President.” I felt like I had stepped on a live wire.
Then he drove by. You couldn’t miss him, sitting up there in front with that same old hat turned up at the brim and that black Navy cape. I swear he must have looked every man in the eye. It left me kind of limp.
Arnold trails
Lt. Col. Charles Marburg of Baltimore said Gen. Eisenhower and Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz sat in the back seat of the President’s jeep and Gen. H. H. Arnold trailed – a four-star general in a jeep with a brigadier general’s single star.
Maj. Philip Kennedy of San Rafael, California, said of the President:
He didn’t move a muscle of his face. His white hair moved in the breeze. I never felt so darned proud in all my life.
Pittsburgher in line
Cpl. Thomas Mackey, 25, of Vallejo, California, said all the men turned a little to watch the President go by. Pvt. Thomas Coll of Pittsburgh vowed he saw the President’s Scottie, Fala, on the front seat of a command car. Sgt. Robert Lowry, 24, of Cincinnati, Ohio, said the presence of Mr. Roosevelt in Africa loosened a mass of rumors.
2nd Lt. E. C. Curry of Joplin, Missouri, told of a South African flight lieutenant of Norwegian birth who got so excited telling about how the MPs stopped him and the President shook hands with him on the road to the field that he lapsed into excited Norwegian. The pilot said he was so excited he didn’t see the President’s bestarred companions.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (Dec. 6, by wireless)
We flew two nights and three days and then we were here. It was my fourth flight across the Atlantic. I’ve got to the point where I imagine I can see tracks in the sky from my previous crossings.
My good luck held out for the whole trip and we never had a single air bump worth mentioning in 8,000 miles. We came in Army planes all the way – some of them big, comfortable stratoliners, some of them workhorse planes with tin bucket seats. Only three of us who left the original airports in the States came clear through together.
At various times during our trip, we had as fellow passengers an American general, a Chinese major, some French fliers, a Yugoslavian and a half-dozen American girls going to far-scattered places to work as government secretaries.
Everybody thought the girls were a show troupe, and at one stop the commanding colonel was going to take them off the plane and make them give a show for his troops.
Initiated by Chinese major
The girls were good travelers and didn’t seem to mind the discomforts of flying all day and all night without rest. As soon as the plane would get off the ground, they would take off their shoes. On one of the big planes, the pilots took them up one by one and gave them the thrill of sitting in the pilot’s seat.
When we crossed the equator, the Chinese major, who was quite a cutup, got a tumbler of water and sprinkled the heads of everybody who never crossed before. Also, first-timers got themselves initiated into the Shortsnorters and started collecting bills from every country.
There were some fantastic collections of Shortsnorter bills along the ferry route. I even saw one with both Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s names on it. People paste their bills together with Scotch tape and as the string gets longer and longer, they make a roll out of it. Last spring, I saw a role in Cairo 35 feet long, but they say Adolph Menjou on a recent African trip build up one to 52 feet. Being a non-hobbyist, I hardly ever ask anybody to sign mine, but on the way over I’m sure I must have signed 500 for other people.
The man from Nebraska
In the five-day trip, we spent three nights on the ground and flew all night on two nights. At one midnight stop, American Army hostesses met us, took us to their quarters for a 15-minute refresher and some Cuba libres. At another stop in the hot tropics we were given breakfast by Maj. Bill Marsh, who asked me to put in the paper that at last I’d met somebody in the Army from Nebraska, and not only from Nebraska but Tekamah, Nebraska.
Believe it or not, Maj. Marsh couldn’t produce any proof there really is such a place, but he did have an honest face.
At another field, the starter on one of our motors broke down so they just wrapped a rope tightly around the propeller hub, tied the loose end of the rope to a jeep and then started the jeep driving away at right angles to the plane thus spinning the motor. Just the old spool-and-string principle on a larger scale. Worked beautifully every time, too.
A day’s quota of bombers
The Army’s vast ferry route to Africa is now beautifully organized. It runs with almost the precision of commercial airlines. Much of the scheduled flying is actually done by airlines on contract to the government while flying along side by side is a great flow of combat planes being taken to the front by their youthful Air Corps crews.
For security reasons, I can’t tell you the route we took or name any of the places along the way although it is already fairly well known to the public. You’d be impressed if you could see the hordes of bombers along the way. At one tropical airdrome, the field was covered by big planes and I asked the commandant why they needed so many bombers stationed there.
He said:
Oh, they’re not stationed here. They just came in this morning and are about ready to leave. That’s just our daily quota going through the front.
He sleeps to Africa
Of my four ocean crossings, this last one was the simplest and quickest. We made the actual overwater hop in a converted bomber and in only 10 hours, crossing against headwinds.
We passengers sat in old-fashioned hard seats like the first airlines used to have. The plane was cold and draughty so we all wrapped up in blankets. The front cabin was stacked full of cargo. There was a small toilet in the tail, right out in the open. Since there were two girls aboard, nobody ever went to the toilet.
It was nighttime when we took off. The dispatcher gave us a lecture on what to do in case we crashed at sea and made us put on Mae West lifejackets which we had to wear for 10 minutes after the takeoff. As soon as the 10 minutes were up, I took off mine and went sound asleep. When I awakened, we were only half an hour from Africa. That’s the way to cross the ocean.