Force to back peace urged by Churchill
Restates Allied peace terms as full surrender
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Three groomed for Twomey’s seat in Senate
Assemblymen Rudd, Smolenski, Gittleson considered by party
By Joseph H. Schmalacker
Three Democratic legislators were being considered today for their party’s nomination to succeed Senator Jeremiah F. Twomey of Greenpoint, who has announced that, after nearly 30 years of service at Albany, he does not intend to run for another term. The three are Assemblymen John Smolenski, who now represents Greenpoint in the lower branch of the Legislature; Roy H. Rudd of the Bushwick section and Harry Gittleson of Williamsburg.
According to word from Leader Frank V. Kelly’s office at Democratic headquarters, no immediate decision on the choice is expected. It may be deferred until a number of other pending Democratic designations are ironed out.
The chief one in the latter group is the designation for the $22,500 judgeship in the County Court. The judicial office must be filled at the November election lor a 14-year term because of the death of Judge Peter Brancato. Judge Nicholas Pinto, a Republican, is the temporary incumbent by virtue of appointment by Governor Dewey.
McGuinness for Smolenski
Assemblyman Smolenski’s name has been advanced for the Senatorship with the backing of Greenpoint leader Peter J. McGuinness. Greenpointers have also talked of booming Walter Carley, chairman of the Greenpoint district committee, but Carley has eliminated himself. He has been aide to Twomey for 14 years and is minority secretary of the Senate Finance Committee at Albany, of which Twomey was formerly chairman.
Democratic insiders said the seniority factor would be an important, though not necessarily controlling one, in deciding the race. From this standpoint Rudd, Smolenski and Gittleson are closely bunched. Rudd entered the Assembly in 1937. He was followed in 1938 by Smolenski. Gittleson served his first term in 1938 and, after an interruption of service, returned in 1941.
Greenpointers said Smolenski rates high consideration because he ranks as one of New York State’s outstanding Polish-Americans, whom the Democrats are anxious to keep in line for President Roosevelt. Estimates place the Polish-American vote in Greenpoint at 5,000.
Rudd strong in 20th
On the other hand, Rudd carries the 20th AD for the Democrats in his Assembly campaigns, although the Bushwick district is inclined to go Republican in presidential and gubernatorial election years. He has a strong following among taxpayer groups.
Gittleson, however, is rated as one of the Democratic Party’s most skillful debaters against the Republican majority in Albany. Republican majority members, although they follow the strict party line when votes are cast on the roll call, applaud Gittleson when he has finished a full-dress debate on civil rights issues.
Twomey’s old senatorial district has been revised under the state Reapportionment Act so that it now extends from the East River and Newtown Creek as far as the upper Bushwick section. The Democratic leader in Bushwick is the veteran James W. Tuomey. Gittleson’s leader is Dr. Joshua H. Friedman, whose district, according to pre-presidential straw polls, is one of the strongest New Deal areas in Brooklyn.
4th term splits Democrats in Texas session
Austin, Texas (UP) –
A split over the fourth term issue divided Texas Democrats into rival camps today and provided the party with what appeared to be its first convention fight.
The break occurred at the party’s state convention yesterday when the pro-Roosevelt faction, headed by A. J. Wirtz, former Under Secretary of the Interior, bolted from the meeting and held a rump session, naming a separate group of delegates to the national convention.
Under the usual convention procedure in disputes of this kind, the Credentials Committee will have to decide in advance of the balloting for nominations which delegation to seat. Texas has 48 votes at the convention.
Split over pledge
The split resulted from the question of pledging electors to support the Democratic national ticket, regardless of its composition.
A resolution which favored a return to the old party plan of nominating the candidates for President and Vice President by a two-thirds majority rule and declaring that states and parties had a right to fix their own election rules precipitated the break.
According to the terms of the resolution, if the national convention did not approve the proposals, the delegates would be free to cast the state’s 48 votes for any Democrats “holding views in accord with those here expressed.”
FDR group bolts parley
The pro-Roosevelt faction bolted the meeting and held a rival convention, naming a full slate of delegates.
Governor Coke R. Stevenson was invited to head the main convention’s delegation to Chicago and former Governor Dan Moody was named its chairman.
A resolution adopted by the pro-Roosevelt group declared that the original convention was an “usurpation and manipulation by enemies of the Democratic Party procured by delegates from Texas’ four largest counties, a large part of whom supported the Republican candidate for President in 1940.”
Editorial: What’s in a name?
The American public has been officially informed, to the accompaniment of all the excitement of a party convention plus the usual paraphernalia of a huge Madison Square Garden rally, that the Communist Party is dead! Yes, honest to goodness dead, and Comrade Browder would presumably swear it on a stack of Bibles if he felt that would lend any plausibility to his story. But knowing it wouldn’t, he didn’t.
At any rate, that’s his story and he’s stuck with it. Orders from Moscow, you know. Just as when he changed overnight in 1940 from being anti-Roosevelt and pro-Hitler to pro-Roosevelt and anti-Hitler when he got unexpected orders from Moscow.
If he received orders from the same source tomorrow to start propaganda for a peace settlement with Japan and a movement for the removal of Eisenhower if he didn’t start his invasion by next Tuesday morning, there is little doubt in most American minds as to what Mr. Browder would do.
Anyway, the Communist Party in America is now dead, according to Browder and Stalin, and, we presume, all the fellow travelers are delighted. In its place stands the Communist Political Association – pure as driven snow.
Americans with any memory will remain unimpressed. This new Red outfit will be 100% Russian as its predecessor has always been. It will stand for American policies and ideas only as long as they meet with Stalin’s approval. And it will bear close watching just as the Communist movement always has, regardless of the name it may adopt to suit its own selfish purposes.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 24, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A B-26 base, England –
Sgt. Kermit Pruitt, whom I spoke of the other day, is the tail gunner in “my crew.” He’s an old cowboy from Arizona – looks like one, acts like one, talks like one. But he’s no hillbilly in the head.
Pruitt is the talking kind. He talks and sings on the slightest provocation. He likes old cowboy songs. They say that every once in a while, he will start singing some cowboy song over the interphone while they’re actually in a bomb run, and the pilot will have to yell at him to shut up.
He likes to tell stories about cowpokes in Arizona. He was telling the other day about one old cowboy who went to the city and registered at a hotel for the first time in his life. The clerk asked him if he wanted a room with running water, and the cowboy yelled, “Hell no! What do you think I am, a trout?”
Pruitt drives the rest of the crew crazy by shooting his tail gun at the most unexpected times. In more than 50 missions he has never yet seen an enemy plane to shoot at, so he breaks the monotony by shooting at gun emplacements and flak ships two miles below. These sudden blasts scare the wits out of the rest of the crew, and Pruitt then catches a little brimstone over the interphone from the pilot.
But this doesn’t faze him, or impair his affection for his pilot. Pruitt says he just shopped around in this Army till he found a pilot that suited him. Back in America he “missed” a couple of trains to avoid coming overseas with an outfit he didn’t like. He says his hunch proved right, for his entire old crew in that outfit were killed on their first mission.
Finally, he got a chance to come with the B-26s. Pilot “Chief” Collins was a wild man then, and most everybody was afraid to ride with him. But when Pruitt saw him handle a plane, he said to himself, “There’s my man.” So, he got on Chief’s crew, and he’s still on it. He wouldn’t think of flying with anybody else.
Pruitt is thin, not much bigger than me, and he usually wears coveralls which make him look even thinner. He goes around poking his head out from hunched-up shoulders with a quizzical half grin on his face. He sure does enjoy living.
Pleasant Valley, Arizona, is Pruitt’s home diggins. He is 30. He is married to a beautiful girl who is part French and 1/32 Indian, and last Christmas Day they were blessed with an heir. Pruitt has a pocketbook full of pictures of his wife and offspring, and he shows them to you every few minutes. If you go out of the room and come back five minutes later, he shows you the pictures again.
I was sleeping near Pruitt one night when the crews were awakened at 2:00 a.m. for an early mission. It was funny to see them come out of bed. Not a soul moved a muscle for about five minutes, and then they all suddenly came out as though shot from a gun.
Pruitt always starts talking as soon as he is awake. On this particular morning, he said:
When the war’s over, I’m gonna get me an Apache Indian to work for me. I’m gonna tell him to get me up at 2 o’clock in the morning, and when he comes in, I’m gonna take my .45 and kill the SOB.
The three sergeants in my crew sort of took me under their wing and we ran around together for two or three days. One night they slicked all up, put on their dress uniforms with all their sergeants’ stripes and their silver wings and all their ribbons, and we went to a nearby town to a singing concert. Then we went into the backroom of the local pub and sat around a big round table with two very old and ugly British women, who were drinking beer and who were very grinny and pleasant. They giggled when Pruitt told stories of his escapades as a cowboy and of his trips to London on leave.
There are about 20 flying sergeants in the same barracks with my crew. They live about the same as the officers, except that they are more crowded and they don’t have settees around their stove, or shelves for their stuff. But they have the same pinup girls, the same flying talk, the same poker game, and the same guys in bed getting some daytime shuteye while bedlam goes on around them.
I got to know all these flying sergeants and I couldn’t help but be struck by what a swell bunch they were. All of them are sort of difficult at first, but they open up when you have known them for a little whole and treat you like a king. They tell you their troubles and their fears and their ambitions, and they want so much for you to have a good time while you’re with them.
With these boys, as with most all the specialized groups of soldiers I have been with, their deep sincerity and their concern about their future are apparent. They can’t put into words what they’re fighting for, but they know it has to be done and almost invariably they consider themselves fortunate to be living well and fighting the enemy from the air instead of on the ground. But home, and what will be their fate in the post-war world, is always in the back of their minds, and every one of them has some kind of plan laid.
Völkischer Beobachter (May 25, 1944)
Sowjets sollen Kriegsmaterial abgeben –
Tschungkings Notschreie setzten Wallace in Bewegung
Ein neues Geschäft für die Yankees, aber keine Hilfe für ihre Verbündeten
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U.S. Navy Department (May 25, 1944)
Communiqué No. 521
Pacific and Far East.
U.S. submarines have reported the sinking of fifteen vessels, including one combatant ship, as a result of operations against the enemy in these waters, as follows:
- 1 destroyer
- 1 large cargo transport
- 1 large tanker
- 2 medium cargo transports
- 7 medium cargo vessels
- 1 small transport
- 1 medium tanker
- 1 small tanker
These actions have not been announced in any previous Navy Department communiqué.
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 45
Carrier‑based aircraft of a Pacific Fleet Task Force commanded by RAdm. A. E. Montgomery, USN, attacked Marcus Island on May 19 and 20 (West Longitude Date) and Wake Island on May 23.
At Marcus, our aircraft in 373 sorties dropped 148 tons of bombs on airdrome installations. Ammunition and supply dumps were destroyed and gun positions and buildings damaged. Only two enemy aircraft were seen in the area: one of these a medium bomber was shot down near the target and the other, also a twin‑engine plane, was strafed on the ground. A small cargo ship was set afire north of Marcus. Our losses were four planes and three men.
One hundred and fifty tons of bombs were dropped on Wake in 354 sorties. No enemy aircraft were sighted in the Wake area. Twenty buildings were destroyed and others damaged; storage areas and other airdrome installations were heavily hit. Several small craft were sunk or damaged. None of our planes was shot down.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 415
For Immediate Release
May 25, 1944
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Ponape Island on May 23 (West Longitude Date).
Enemy positions in the Marshall Islands were attacked on May 23 by Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two, Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and Navy Hellcat fighters. Defense installations were bombed and severely strafed.