Johnston urges U.S. assist Russia rebuild
Post-war trade, loans advocated
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Excess reserves rise $100 million
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Editorial: Bastille Day
This is the last Bastille Day that France will be imprisoned by Germany. today – even though only the tiny tip of Normandy has been liberated by Allied arms – the hearts of Frenchmen everywhere are lifted in hope after four years of night.
Americans share France’s prayers. By long tradition the two republics are friends and comrades in democracy, bound together by mutual sacrifices one for the other. But more than sentiment is involved. There is self-interest too – our own. For, without a strong and healthy French democracy, there is little chance of a free Europe or a peaceful Europe rising from this war.
Before victory France still must suffer a great deal. And afterward her burdens will be heavy and her problems hard. The sheer physical problem of rebuilding a country shattered by war and tyrants will be tremendous. But even more difficult will be the task of security, of preventing World War III which a weakened France could not survive.
Of this all Frenchmen are thinking today. Some of their leaders are thinking only in terms of physical force, of better strategic frontiers and buffer states, of keeping the old enemy disarmed and of making France the biggest military power outside of Russia, of European alliances to put teeth in any international organization.
How much force is necessary, and in what form, we do not know. But we doubt that any Maginot Line, even a modern model which blocks the skies, will be sufficient. Indeed, the same old Maginot psychology in newer and subtler form may be her undoing again.
For France’s worst weakness in 1939 was not external, but internal. She was divided. She was sick. She was easy prey for the germs Hitler spread. She fell quickly because she had lost the unity which had once made her strong. The most dangerous enemy was within.
To the old divisions are now added new ones. The most terrible legacy left by the retreating Nazi army and fleeing Gestapo will not be the physical destruction but the spiritual poison which sets Frenchman against Frenchman. The damning of personal enemies or competitors as Vichyites, the feuds between Giraudists and de Gaullists, the suspicions and rivalries within the de Gaulle regime itself, and all the other strains multiplied for victims of military occupation and émigré intrigue, will make unity more difficult. Many will think the cure should be a blood purge instead of patient reconciliation.
The test of Gen. de Gaulle, or of any other Frenchman who aspires to leadership, will be his ability to heal old wounds instead of making new ones, and his reliance on democratic processes instead of the semi-dictator methods of the Algiers regime. France must replenish her strength from within.
Editorial: Teddy Junior
Brig. Gen. Roosevelt, Teddy Jr., the fighting son of fighting Teddy the First, is gone. He died in bed, of battle fatigue. But he was as certainly a war casualty as if a bomb or a bullet had got him, as he led his men, half his age, onto the Normandy beachhead.
For all the days since D-Day he had been building up the exhaustion which finally took him away. That he wasn’t killed in action as, at the head of his doughboys, he directed reconnaissance in force on Cherbourg through enemy territory infested by machine-gun nests and snipers – that is one of the many miracles of a charmed life which finally ended in repose.
But the same miracle had hovered over his many times before – in two world wars. At Cantigny, Soissons, in the Argonne and at Saint-Mihiel in World War I, he was young. Thirty years later, he was 56. But despite his age, in the Mediterranean and in Normandy, he was what one of his men described him – “the toughest little fighting man in this Army.”
Those years, however, finally took their toll; did what bombs and bullets couldn’t. Though wounded twice in the first war and twice again in this, the enemy could never get him. That remained for time and the exhaustion that years and strain bring on – such strain as only a brave heart can hear, to the end.
Few who have been in battles had been honored by more decorations than this soldier son of a solder, and none deserved them more.
“Rough Rider” was painted on the jeep he rode in Normandy and Teddy Jr. carried a .45. They didn’t have jeeps on San Juan Hill but they did have .45s. And who said there’s nothing in heredity?
Poll: Public found skeptical of Russia’s role
College graduates tend to trust Reds more
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Hillman ready to take same criticisms as regular politicians
Labor leaders backing fourth term say they’re prepared ‘for the bricks to fly’
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Stokes: Vice President could move up, so Corcoran wants to pick one
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Normandy, France – (by wireless)
It was about time for me to go – out alone into that empty expanse of 15 feet – as the infantry company I was with began its move into the street that led to what we did not know.
One of the soldiers asked if I didn’t have a rifle. Every time you’re really in the battle lines, they’ll ask you that. I said no, correspondents weren’t allowed to; it was against international law. The soldiers thought that didn’t seem right.
Finally, the sergeant motioned – it was my turn. I ran with bent knees, shoulders hunched, out across the culvert and across the open space. Lord, but you felt lonely out there.
I had to stop right in the middle of the open space, to keep my distance behind the man ahead. I got down behind a little bush, as though that would have stopped anything.
Just before starting I had got into a conversation with a group of soldiers who were to go right behind me. I was just starting to put down the boys’ names when my turn came to go. So, it wasn’t till an hour or more later, during one of our long waits as we sat crouching against some buildings, that I worked my way back along the line and took down their names.
Pittsburgh soldier ‘company mate’
It was pouring rain, and as we squatted down for me to write on my knee, each soldier would have to hold my helmet over my notebook to keep it from being soaked. Here are the names of just a few of my “company mates” in that little escapade that afternoon…
Sgt. Joseph Palajsa of Pittsburgh.
Pvt. Arthur Greene of Auburn, Massachusetts. His New England accent was so broad I had to have him spell out “Arthur” and “Auburn” before I could catch what he said.
Pvt. Dick Medici of Detroit.
Lt. James Giles, a platoon leader from Athens, Tennessee. He was so wet, so worn, so soldier-looking that I was startled when he said “lieutenant,” for I thought he was a G.I.
Pvt. Arthur Slageter of Cincinnati.
Pvt. Robert Edie of New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Edie is 30, he is married, and he used to work in a brewery back home. He is a bazooka man, but his bazooka was broken that day so he was just carrying a rifle.
These boys were 9th Division veterans, most of whom had fought in Tunisia and Sicily too.
Gradually we moved on, a few feet at a time. The soldiers hugged the walls on both sides of the street, crouching all the time. The city around us was still full of sound and fury. You couldn’t tell where anything was coming from or going to.
The houses had not been blown down along this street. But now and then, a wall would have a round hole through it, and the windows had all been knocked out by concussion and shattered glass littered the pavements. Gnarled telephone wire was lying everywhere.
It was a poor district. Most of the people had left the city. Shots, incidentally, always sound louder and distorted in the vacuum-like emptiness of a nearly deserted city. Lonely doors and shutters banged noisily back and forth.
All of a sudden, a bunch of dogs came yowling down the street, chasing each other. Apparently their owners had left without them, and they were running wild. They made such a noise that we shooed them on in the erroneous fear that they would attract the Germans’ attention.
Dog trembling with fear
The street was a winding one and we couldn’t see as far ahead as our forward platoon. But soon we could hear rifle shots not far ahead, and the rat-tat-tat of our machine guns, and the quick blirp-blirp of German machine pistols.
For a long time, we didn’t move at all. While we were waiting, the lieutenant decided to go into the house we were in front of. A middle-aged Frenchman and his wife were in the kitchen. They were poor people.
The woman was holding a terrier dog in her arms, belly up, the way you cuddle a baby, and soothing it by rubbing her cheek against its head. The dog was trembling with fear from the noise.
Pretty soon the word was passed back down the line that the street had been cleared as far as a German hospital about a quarter of a mile ahead. There were lots of our own wounded in that hospital and they were now being liberated.
So, Lt. Shockley and Wertenbaker and Capa and myself got up and went up the street, still keeping close to the walls. I lost the others before I had gone far. For as I would pass doorways, soldiers would call out to me and I would duck in and talk for a moment and put down a name or two.
By now the boys along the line were feeling cheerier, for no word of casualties had been passed back. And up here, the city was built up enough so that the waiting riflemen had the protection of doorways. It took me half an hour to work my way up to the hospital – and then the excitement began.