Republicans now favored by 34% as compared to 20% in 1936
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Guffey repeats criticism of Senate opponents of measure
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‘Let’s get the men into service first,’ author of national service bill urges
Washington (UP) – (Dec. 11)
A WAC is nothing but a “feminine 4-F,” according to Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT), but wait a minute – she doesn’t mean it disparagingly.
Asked today if she would favor drafting of single women into the Armed Forces to reinforce the shortage of WACs, Mrs. Luce replied:
I’m not opposed to drafting women, but let’s get these men into the service first.
You know what a WAC is. She’s nothing but a feminine 4-F. There’s not a thing my 19- or 20-year-old daughter can do that the boy across the street with bad eyes can’t do. I’m for making use of the 4-Fs first, and then if we need more women in the Armed Forces, we can draft them later.
Mrs. Luce is the author of a national service bill now before the House Military Affairs Committee which would draft 4-Fs and other men in non-essential activities into war work as needed.
Washington (UP) – (Dec. 11)
The Women’s Army Corps will grant temporary “pre-induction furloughs” to recruits enlisting between now and Jan. 1 so they may celebrate the Christmas holidays at home, the War Department announced tonight.
These recruits will be placed in the ranks of the enlisted reserve and called to active duty after Jan. 1.
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Plane production rate on West Coast is 100 a day; commercial, military flying increases
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Analyst says fight left in enemy must not be underestimated
By Carroll Binder
Although the conferences of the past few months – Québec, Moscow, Cairo and Tehran – have expedited as well as assured defeat of both Germany and Japan, it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the fight still left in the enemy and the enormity of the effort and the sacrifice which must yet be made to achieve victory.
The Chicago Daily News Foreign Service correspondents in all of the fighting areas were asked to estimate the duration of the war this week. The earliest that any of them believed Germany could be defeated is the summer of 1944.
Several thought it would take until autumn to defeat Germany, one until a year from now. No one believed Japan could be defeated before 1945 and one correspondent, fresh from the Battle of the Gilberts, thought it might take as long as 1949 to defeat Japan if Russia does not join in the war against Japan after Germany is defeated.
Hardest fighting ahead
Prime Minister Churchill and Prime Minister Smuts of South Africa envisaged the defeat of Germany in 1944, but warned, as did Secretary of War Stimson, that the hardest fighting of the war and the heaviest casualty lists lie ahead.
Every American would like to know the nature of the military operations agreed upon at Tehran and Cairo and no patriotic American would like the enemy to know what to prepare for.
The enemy, however, has his own ideas of what we are up to and freely tells the world what to expect.
Tentative deductions
Having no knowledge of what is actually planned and therefore being free to make deductions from published reports, I set forth some tentative impressions subject to revision in the light of fuller information.
I expect to see a large-scale winter offensive in Russia when the mud hardens and the rivers and marshes freeze in the central and southern battle zones. The Germans, however, are fighting on shortened lines and enjoy undisrupted communications lines over territory systematically damaged by the retreating Germans.
It may be assumed that the air warfare will be continued with maximum force against German industries, communications and key cities.
Rome airfields objective
We will continue to fight our way north in Italy at least until we gain mastery of the airfields beyond Rome which will enable us to bomb those portions of German-occupied Rome not easily accessible from Africa or the United Kingdom. I doubt if Italy will be one of our major military operations.
We will continue our combined air and sea warfare against the U-boat so as to keep the seas free for our ships supplying our Allies and our forces and the use of our steadily expanding naval power wherever it will do most injury to the enemy. Our merchant vessel losses from U-boats in November were lower than for any month since May 1940.
We will continue assisting the guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and wherever else patriots fight the Germans so as to make the turbulent Balkans increasingly difficult for the Germans to contain.
Bulk for Partisans
Inasmuch as the Partisan forces of Yugoslavia headed by Marshal Tito (Josip Broz) and estimated by the British to number 200,000 men are putting the most formidable resistance against the Germans. Great Britain and the United States, it was officially announced this week, will give the bulk of their military assistance to the Partisans.
What military operations will be undertaken in the Balkans by British or American armies in the near future may in part be contingent on Germany’s reaction to Turkey’s public rapprochement to Great Britain and the United States this week.
On Nov. 20, I suggested that the Moscow Conference could hardly have succeeded without American and British assurances of an early attack on Germany in Western Europe. Last week, overimpressed by the possible deterrent influence upon Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill of the risks and losses inherent in an attack upon Germany in Western Europe while German morale remains strong and German capacity to resist is so great, I ventured the opinion that such an attack might not be made for “many months.”
In the light of what I have read since then, I think the Nov. 20 viewpoint was the sounder one. The invasion is likely to take place a few months hence rather than many months hence.
They’re charming, but judgment is bad – minds, undisciplined
By Florence Fisher Parry
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Company ‘hopes’ to fill orders at end of war; car seen replacing horse on farms
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Another faithful servant is lost to the public service in the death of Marvin McIntyre. Despite the handicap of frail health in recent years which would have defeated a less valiant spirit he could not be persuaded by any consideration of self-interest to relax his devotion to the heavy and important duties and responsibilities which fell to him to discharge.
To me personally his death means the severing of a close friendship of a quarter of a century. We at the White House shall miss him. We shall remember him as a public servant whose whole career emphasized fidelity and integrity in the performance of the many tasks which made up his busy day. We shall remember also his never-failing humor, his cheerful spirit, and his ever-ready helpfulness throughout these years…
The Pittsburgh Press (December 13, 1943)
British drive Nazis from another height near Adriatic coast
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Medium bombers hit Nazi field at Amsterdam
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt has visited Sicily, reviewed veterans of the Sicilian campaign, and personally pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark and five other officers of the U.S. 5th Army, ranging down to first lieutenants, for heroism in Italy.
This trip last week apparently took the President within about 225 miles of the actual front in Italy.
Among those who were at the airfield at Castelvetrano when the President’s big transport plane arrived was Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, commander of the 7th Army, who has been the center of a controversy created by revelation that he slapped a shell-shocked soldier in a Sicilian hospital.
Patton greets Roosevelt
These latest disclosures about Mr. Roosevelt’s travels on his way back from Tehran and Cairo were contained in a dispatch released by the White House.
The dispatch did not refer to the Patton slapping incident, but it said that Gen. Patton greeted the President and, after the ceremonies, rode with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. Clark in the presidential jeep to an officers’ club. It confirmed that Gen. Patton is still in command of the 7th Army, which has not been reported in action since the conquest of Sicily.
Heroism cited
Gen. Clark, commander of the 5th Army, was decorated for “extraordinary heroism” when his men repelled a German counterattack on the Salerno bridgehead. The citation revealed that Gen. Clark “spread an infectious spirit of determination and courage” among his men by going to the frontline “in utter disregard of personal safety.”
Discovering 18 German tanks approaching within striking distance, the citation said:
He [Gen. Clark] took charge of the situation, located an anti-tank unit and issued orders which resulted in the destruction of six tanks and the repulse of the attack.
Others decorated
The other five officers decorated by the President were Col. Reuben H. Tucker of Ansonia, Connecticut; Lt. Col. Joseph B. Crawford of Humboldt, Kansas; 1st Lt. William W. Kellogg of Highlands, Texas, 1st Lt. Thomas F. Berteau of Chicago, and 1st Lt. Edwin F. Gould of Orange, California.
The White House dispatch said the President’s trip to Sicily was “one leg of his return from the victory conferences at Cairo and Tehran.” In addition to members of his personal staff, Mr. Roosevelt was accompanied by Gen. Eisenhower and Lt. Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, commander of the Northwest African Air Forces.
Stockholm, Sweden (UP) –
The Stockholm newspaper Tidningen printed a roundabout report today that President Roosevelt met Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain and Premier Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal at Gibraltar yesterday.
The dispatch, datelined Budapest and quoting an Ankara report, said the three officials discussed Spain’s and Portugal’s positions in the war.
A United Press dispatch from Cairo following the Roosevelt-Churchill-İnönü conference said the possibility of a Roosevelt-Franco meeting was subject of speculation.
General spoke harshly to third; Eisenhower reiterates status as leader is unimpaired
Washington (UP) –
A report from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower sent to the Senate today confirmed that Lt. Gen. George S. Patton slapped two soldiers and spoke “threateningly and with undue harshness” to another. But it reiterated Gen. Eisenhower’s conviction that Gen. Patton’s efficiency as a battle leader had not been impaired by the incidents.
The latest information from Gen. Eisenhower was sent by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, which is considering Gen. Patton’s nomination to be a major general on the Army’s permanent list.
It coincided with a White House dispatch which revealed that Gen. Patton, still commander of the U.S. 7th Army, was among the officers who greeted President Roosevelt when the President visited Sicily last week. Gen. Patton was invited to ride in the presidential jeep.
Mr. Stimson said Gen. Eisenhower felt “the serious aspect” of the case was the danger that the Army might lose the services of a battle-tested commander and that it might afford aid and comfort to the enemy. The inference was that Gen. Eisenhower feared the publicity from the case at home might force the removal of Gen. Patton from his command.
Today’s supplementary report cleared up the confusion as to whether Gen. Patton had physically mistreated one or two soldiers. The report late last month told of Gen. Patton slapping one shell-shocked soldier and of severely upbraiding another in a hospital on Aug. 10. Their names have never been officially revealed, but the soldier slapped was from Carolina.
Today’s report revealed that on Aug. 3 in the 15th Evacuation Hospital in Sicily, Gen. Patton slapped Pvt. Charles L. Kuhl of Mishawaka, Indiana, whose family at the time of the first report made public a letter from Pvt. Kuhl asserting that Gen. Patton “slapped my face and kicked me in the pants.”
Gen. Eisenhower also reported that Gen. Patton had “spoken threateningly and with undue harshness” to a soldier for failing to wear leggings because his ankles were swollen, but who, nevertheless, was doing full combat duty.
In sending Gen. Eisenhower’s data to the Senate, Mr. Stimson said that a thorough investigation by an inspector in Gen. Patton’s theater of war on the general subject of Gen. Patton’s treatment of enlisted men revealed only the four incidents altogether – two slappings and two upbraidings.
Mr. Stimson said:
These two incidents and those already reported to you were taken in consideration and covered by Gen. Eisenhower in his corrective action.
This corrective action included a dressing down of Gen. Patton by Gen. Eisenhower and a requirement that Gen. Patton apologize to the men concerned and to his entire command.
Defends announcement
Mr. Stimson defended the “misleading announcement” issued by Gen. Eisenhower’s headquarters on Nov. 22 in which the first report of a slapping incident was for all practical purposes denied.
Mr. Stimson said:
I am informed that the reason for the nature of this reply was a military one… It was considered necessary to immediately and categorically deny the false implications that a change had or would take place in the command of the 7th Army, or that its morale was impaired. This may have been an error in judgment from a public relations viewpoint, but it was eminently sound from a military standpoint.
Drew Pearson, newspaper columnist, first revealed the slapping incident and said that the reason nothing had been heard about Gen. Patton since the conquest of Sicily was because the incident might result in him losing his command.
Mr. Stimson said there was no reason to deny the incident itself since most war correspondents in the Sicilian theater knew all the facts.
Mr. Stimson said:
The intention was simply to correct, for important military reasons, the untrue and damaging inferences from that incident which Drew Pearson had made in his original broadcast…
The military reasons referred to above are still important to Allied operations in the Mediterranean Theater and consequently must remain secret for the present, but I assure that they will eventually be disclosed.
He added that when the secret can be revealed, it would be evident why a general discussion of the details of the incident was considered contrary to Allied military interests.
There were the rats and plague in China, and thousands waiting for starvation in India
By Karl Eskelund, United Press staff writer
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Recurrence of old illness proves fatal to one of President’s closest friends
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Four Army enemy engineers land and take off by plane on dangerous South Pacific mission
By Reuel S. Moore, United Press staff writer
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Australian troops make fresh advance on New Guinea
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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