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Washington –
U.S. airmen on Tuesday blasted widely separated Jap bases in the Central Pacific, including Wake and Nauru Islands, probably sinking a 10,000-ton enemy tanker and a cargo ship, the Navy announced today.
Officials believe death was accidental
Valsa Matthai
New York (UP) –
Valsa Anna Matthai, 22, wealthy, India-born Columbia University student, died within an hour after walking into a driving snowstorm two months ago never to be seen alive again, detectives decided today after the discovery of her body in the Hudson River at Yonkers, New York.
A wristwatch Miss Matthai wore was stopped at 5:15 and investigators pointed out she was last seen at about 4:45 a.m. ET March 20 as she left International House, a hotel for foreign students.
Seven miles away
The point at which her body was found last night is seven miles from the International House.
Acting Capt. John J. Cronin of the Missing Persons Bureau said he would request an autopsy on the chance that additional clues may be found. Dr. Edwin H. Huntington, acting medical examiner of Westchester County, however, listed the case as “possibly accidental” and intimated that Westchester authorities would not direct an autopsy.
He said he found no marks of violence and that the badly-decomposed state of the body indicated that it had been in the water about two months.
Had large allowance
Miss Matthai’s friends could advance no reason as to why she should have gone for a stroll in the storm.
Miss Matthai was the daughter of John Matthai, head of the Tata Chemical Company of Bombay. Investigators learned the dead girl was receiving an allowance of $1,000 a month for spending money, and a bankbook in her room showed deposits of $1,400.
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Motion for mistrial made by defense
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Democrats’ gunsights leveled at Tom Dewey
By Kermit McFarland
Paced by two new stars of the campaign circuit, the Democratic high command last night outlined its fourth term strategy at the fundraising Jefferson Day dinner of the local Democratic organization.
To a crowd of 1,200 which paid $10 a plate for a $3 meal, Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan and U.S. Senator Samuel D. Jackson (D-IN) blueprinted the 1944 battlefront on which President Roosevelt will attempt to stand off Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
Although Mr. Dewey is not an announced candidate, let alone the Republican nominee, the Democratic leaders accepted him as Mr. Roosevelt’s opponent and uncorked the barrage which they hope will send him to join Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon and Wendell Willkie in the ranks of Republican nominees beaten by the President.
Counts against Dewey
Mr. Hannegan, who took over the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee in January, lined up these counts against Mr. Dewey:
Inexperience.
His opposition to Lend-Lease in 1941.
A statement Mr. Hannegan said the New York Governor made in 1940 in which he said it would be “impossible” to produce 50,000 warplanes in a year.
A statement Mr. Hannegan said Mr. Dewey made in the same year in which he said it would be “impossible” to train 75,000 pilots.
His alleged hookup with former President Hoover.
His alleged tie-in with the big financial interests.
To which Senator Jackson added:
On the more positive side, Mr. Hannegan urged the reelection of Mr. Roosevelt as a means of guaranteeing the Four Freedoms. And Senator Jackson warned that a “change of horses in mid-stream” might lead to a change in the grand military strategy, in the military command and in foreign policy generally.
Campaign chest swelled
The dinner must have netted the Democrats more than $20,000 for the campaign chest.
The 1,200 persons Democratic State Chairman David L. Lawrence said were present paid $10 a plate. Expenses were estimated not to exceed $5 per, leaving a net profit of $5 each, or a total of $6,000. This will be split 50% to national headquarters, 25% to state headquarters and the balance to local headquarters.
In addition, the dinner committee distributed a slick-paper “program” consisting of 162 pages of advertising, at $100 a page, and three pages of program. What with half-, quarter-, eighth-, and sixteenth-page ads are intermediate rates and $5 for merely a name, the book should have netted upwards of $16,000.
Notables are present
Democratic notables from over the state were present, including all the candidates in this year’s election – save State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner, nominee for Auditor General, reported ill in Harrisburg – local public officials and party officers.
Aside from the two visiting notables, the only speaker was Mr. Lawrence who warned the Democrats that since 1932 some of them have become “statesmen and fat cats,” that this is the most crucial election since 1864 and they had better get out and plug.
Mr. Hannegan, saying the “identities of the two probable candidates are by this time foreshadowed clearly enough,” waded into Mr. Dewey, whom he termed “the Great Republican Unmentionable.”
‘Defeatism’ charged
Mr. Hannegan said:
Read him three years ago, and two years ago, and up to the time when the dream of becoming President of our country began to put a new cast in his thinking and a new color in his public utterances.
Read those speeches – speeches of defeatism, of helplessness, of narrow jealousies and suspicions – and then ask yourself, had we followed the pattern traced out then, where would our country be today?
He said the Republicans were trying to make his references to Mr. Dewey’s earlier statements appear as a “smear” and asserted:
We are being asked by the minority party to trust to luck, to the chance that an inexperienced, unpracticed leader will guess right. We are being asked to make him President and then hope that among the wavering, varying and contradictory policies to which he has already subscribed at one time or another, he will pull out the long straw.
Hoover ‘issue’ enters in
He said Mr. Hoover is Mr. Dewey’s “political guardian.” He said:
As far as the people of America are concerned, the Great Engineer and the Great Republican Unmentionable are interchangeable.
Senator Jackson – serving in the Senate by appointment, but the current Democratic nominee for Governor of Indiana – answered his self-propelled question as to how long the Democrats would stay in Washington:
Until the escutcheons of this government shall have been cleansed of the debauchery of the administration of Warren G. Harding. Until the economic and financial structure of this Republic shall have been healed of the rampant and unchecked pirating during the do-nothing administration of Calvin Coolidge. Until the last farmer, businessman and worker shall have been made whole of the devastation wrought by the unfortunate and unsung administration of Herbert Hoover. Until that permanent peace promised to the heroes of World War I shall have been kept in spirit and in truth.
He said there is not a “mustard seed” of hope in Mr. Dewey.
Act covers them, is curbstone opinion
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Strong offensive south of Rome will weaken German reserves held in north
By John Lardner, North American Newspaper Alliance*
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Yank undersea craft slips in under eyes of Japs to save men downed in Truk raid
By Lisle Shoemaker, United Press staff writer
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By Jay G. Hayden
Washington –
The part foreign events may play in the approaching American presidential election is strikingly exemplified in the storm now going on among Polish-Americans over the visit to Moscow of Rev. Stanislaus Orlemanski and Prof. Oscar Lange.
The vital political circumstance is that news of this pilgrimage arrived just when Catholic and Polish-American Democrats had joined in a warning to President Roosevelt that the worst mistake he could make was to give countenance to these and other pro-Soviet Poles in the United States.
It is doubtful if the discontent of anti-Russian Poles or Catholics was much assuaged by the recent letter of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, which explained that Father Orlemanski and Prof. Lange “are making this trip as private American citizens… They have no official status, and, therefore, are not, in any sense, representatives or spokesmen of the United States government.”
Mr. Hull said the Soviet government furnished their transportation to Moscow.
Big vote in nine states
The Polish-American vote is large concentrated in nine states, all extremely close in 1940. If these states all had gone for Wendell L. Willkie, he would have had 259 electoral votes, just seven short of a winning majority.
As shown by the census, the largest Polish-American population is in New York, which Mr. Roosevelt carried in 1940 by the slim margin of 1.8%.
The other states in order of Polish-American population, each with its percentage margin of victory at the 1940 polls, are as follows:
| Illinois | Roosevelt | 1.2% |
| Pennsylvania | Roosevelt | 3.5% |
| Michigan | Willkie | 0.1% |
| New Jersey | Roosevelt | 1.8% |
| Massachusetts | Roosevelt | 2.4% |
| Ohio | Roosevelt | 2.2% |
| Connecticut | Roosevelt | 3.7% |
| Wisconsin | Roosevelt | 0.9% |
Now strongly Democratic
Of all Congressional districts the one with the largest preponderance of Polish-American voters is the 1st Michigan. This district elected Republicans from 1924 to 1930. In 1932, it went Democratic, 51,620 to 21,764, and it has remained so by even greater margins since that time. In 1942, its present Democratic Representative, George G. Sadowski, received 48,620 votes, as against 13,691 for his Republican opponent.
The change in Polish vote undoubtedly accounted for the fact that Michigan had Democratic governors for six of the 10 years between 1932 and 1942.
Alignment of Polish-American voters on the Democratic side was similarly responsible in large degree for the huge majorities candidates of that party rolled up in the same decade in such previously-Republican cities as Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Hartford, all vital to Democratic victory in their states.