America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

[NormanStewart]

Kirkpatrick: Cherbourg begins return to semblance of Normandy

Shops reopen, increasing number of civilians return to liberated port
By Helen Kirkpatrick

Cherbourg, France –
Cherbourg has been liberated for three weeks and two days now and the city is beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy, with more and more shops opening and an increasing number of evacuees returning.

In most respects, the people say, they are far better off than they were under the Germans. In one or two ways, there are little differences but they are ones the French don’t mind since the Germans are gone.

The curfew remains but it is now enforced by the French police and detained citizens do not risk being shot out of hand because they have been found on the streets after 10:00 p.m. CET.

The food situation is not too bad and will improve as the battlefront moves forward and transportation to the rich Norman countryside is gradually restored. Food prices are lower than they were under the Germans and vast quantities of food are available which, for four years, found their way into Germany instead of here.

Rations vary

Some items of food have disappeared that were to be found formerly; others have turned up. Here and there, rations have been decreased, but now the people can obtain their full rations whereas during the German regime, they were seldom able to secure them. The greatest shortages are sugar, tea, flour, shoes and clothes.

Shops are selling some inferior coffee as during the past four years – 10 percent coffee and 90 percent ersatz – acorns and oats – a brew that is unrecognizable. Rations for three persons amount to 140 grams (50 ounces) a month – a package which would last three Americans two days if they were careful. Under the Germans, there was a pound of sugar a month per person. Today, only children receive sugar. The Germans rationed meat at 90 grams (over 3 ounces) daily per person but there was seldom any to be found in their rich cattle country as it was all shipped to Germany. Now there is an unlimited amount available and its price is controlled. Formerly, meat could be obtained at 300 francs a pound - $6.

Milk supply rises

Although this is France’s greatest dairy province, the French had no milk under the German regime, even for children. Now it is plentiful. The Germans forced the farmers to sell to creameries, which made butter and cheese for shipment to Germany.

Butter was rationed at 200 grams (about 7 ounces) a month but never could be found except in the black market. Now there is ample. The Germans ration of bread was 150 grams (5½ ounces) daily, which has now decreased to 100 grams (3½ ounces) but will improve as the city becomes better organized and flour can be brought in from the outside. Flour is not obtainable.

Traffic light

The only traffic on the streets is military, with an occasional car belonging to a French official. All city utilities are operating except streetcars and buses, and outside of the port and arsenal areas, there is little damage.

All organization and feeding of civilian life is being run by the French administration, and local officials are under Provincial Commissioner François Coulet. American and British civil affairs officials are here to help and they say that the French organization is good.

The time will come when imports of clothing, soap and some food – flour and sugar notably – will be required. How this will be accomplished depends on what agreements are reached in Washington and London.

[NormanStewart]

Guam attacked second day by battleships

Island most heavily battered in Pacific

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Tokyo explains removal of Tōjō

By the United Press

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[NormanStewart]

Taylor: ‘Referee’ Roosevelt ‘takes it on lam’ not one day too soon

President avoids making decision in factional fight over Vice President
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
When President Roosevelt went “away from Washington for the next few days” he left in the nick of time.

Men to whom Mr. Roosevelt is politically beholden are demanding that he settle the fights here, and there is no way he could do it.

For after 11 years the party now operates only on the presidential nod and without it, deliberations wallow in guesswork and confusion. Yet Mr. Roosevelt’s nod to one leader is a black eye to another. And Mr. Roosevelt now has to keep from distributing black eyes.

For example, Vice President Wallace is crunched in a crusher between four party stalwarts. Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) and Sidney Hillman of the CIO Political Action Committee prop him up while Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City and Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago knock him down.

Mr. Roosevelt does not owe much to Mr. Wallace, but he owes a great deal to all four of these men. And none of them is bashful in requiring Mr. Roosevelt’s support in exchange for 11-year favors they have done.

Truman slips off path

Guffey and Hillman say that dropping Wallace would cost Mr. Roosevelt Pennsylvania and “liberal votes throughout the country.” Mayors Hague and Kelly contend that keeping Mr. Wallace would lose New Jersey, New York and Illinois.

Mr. Wallace as a personality disappears in all this and Mr. Roosevelt’s problem becomes how to meet his own political debts to either two of the four without defaulting on the others.

Meanwhile, National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, committed to Senator Truman, his political godfather in their home state of Missouri, is entitled to his own demands.

In theory, the national chairman is neutral in any race within the party, but Hannegan’s foot slipped off the beaten path in Chicago. By going overboard for Senator Truman, he now needs Mr. Roosevelt’s blessing for Truman or he bogs himself down as manager of Mr. Roosevelt’s campaign through the early liquidation of his party prestige.

South on protest limb

The result: Samuel Rosenman of the White House inner-circle, on arrival here is reported by Hannegan’s friends as stating that Truman would be acceptable to Mr. Roosevelt, which means Mr. Roosevelt would have to appease the CIO.

Next, Mississippi, Virginia and other Southern leaders went out on the end of a protest limb by caucusing for Senator Harry F. Byrd for President, hoping lightning might strike Mr. Byrd for second place.

Byrd is approximately the last Democrat that Mr. Roosevelt might wish to endorse, and yet he is committed to appeasing these conservative Southern elements.

Accordingly, Senator Alben W. Barkley and Speaker Sam Rayburn step in to fill the vacuum. Senator Barkley is to nominate Mr. Roosevelt, but beyond that there is not a cheer in the House.

Associate Justice William O. Douglas, second choice of the Guffey-Hillman-CIO group, is a prime favorite of Roosevelt. He really speaks the President’s language. His top sergeant here is Thomas G. “Tommy the Cork” Corcoran, who is still bobbing around in White House waters and serves as advance agent for both Mr. Roosevelt and Justice Felix Frankfurter. Nobody here owes Douglas, Corcoran or Frankfurter anything, but Douglas’ tie-in with the President puts him in the swim.

Easiest to slip in

Similarly, along comes James F. Byrnes, reportedly the President’s choice from the beginning. His present place as “assistant president” makes him, next to Wallace, the easiest to rationalized into the “don’t change horses” theme.

Yet age, the unhappy impact of Byrnes poll-tax record on the sentiments of Negroes in the North and some impressions here in Chicago that Byrnes is short-circuiting other leaders’ candidates are backfiring on Mr. Roosevelt for making Byrnes his “secret” choice – if that is what he did before he went “away from Washington for the next few days.”

The South Carolinian has begun actively campaigning for the Vice Presidency, working down from the top levels. He has a choice layout on the 17th floor of the Stevens, unlisted and well-guarded. He uses the freight elevator to escape the lobby, and then duplicates this performance to reach a similar setup which he maintains as sleeping quarters at the Blackstone across the street. He calls in leaders, chiefly the big four – Guffey, Hillman, Hague and Kelly, along with Hannegan and Ed Flynn. But Byrnes is reported losing ground.

This whole meeting is not sitting well with many of the ballot-box chieftains who have to get out the vote, especially not well with Guffey, Hillman, Hague and Kelly, who are the real sparkplugs of the show and the true pillars of power in the party.

[NormanStewart]

Anti-Roosevelt forces back Byrd

By Brooks Smith, United Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Nearly 100 votes were pledged today to Senator Harry F. Byrd for the Democratic presidential nomination by angry Southern delegates who knew that their protest against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s renomination was futile but who made it anyway, shouting “This is liberty!”

Meeting last night on the eve of the convention, some 300 Southerners jammed a hotel ballroom here and noisily approved a resolution opposing any platform plank which called for social equality between the races and demanding restoration of the two-thirds rule.

Guffey in picture

The resolution, offered by Wright Morrow, a Houston, Texas, delegate, called for “a return to the principles of constitutional government as held by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson,” denounced attempts to enact anti-poll tax legislation and demanded that the federal government leave the states free to fix voting regulations.

Meanwhile, Southern sentiment remained divided on the Vice Presidency.

Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall conferred with Senator Joseph Guffey (D-PA) soon after arriving and announced that Georgia would cast her 26 votes for Henry Wallace as planned. He said “things look brought for the Vice President.”

Tennessee backs Cooper

Tennessee pledged her 26 votes to Governor Prentice Cooper as a favorite son and South Carolina planned to support War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes.

Monroe Redden, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Executive committee, said he was more optimistic than ever before over the chances of Governor J. M. Broughton for second place on the ticket. Numerous delegates, including those from Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Pennsylvania, had expressed interest in Mr. Broughton and several had said they would vote for him, Mr. Redden said.

Several states, such as Texas, postponed action on whom to support for Vice President, waiting to see “how the situation jells.”

The Texas delegation’s action was hailed by John U. Barr, national chairman of the Draft-Byrd-for-President campaign, as “overwhelming proof to the New York communists that the Democratic Party of the South is determined to have no further truck with any alien minority.”

Mr. Barr said:

We Democrats can’t win with Roosevelt and the only hope we have lies in Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia – young, courageous and without the taint of all the sour connections that have put our party in the woeful disrepute it now suffers.

Louisiana’s 22 votes and Mississippi’s 20 were pledged to Mr. Byrd under the unit rule. Mr. Byrd will also get scattered support from Florida and possible South Carolina and Virginia.

The Southern revolt does not threaten the renomination of Mr. Roosevelt but the danger of a bolt in the Electoral College remained. The Texas group has warned that its electors will be free to vote as they please if the National Convention fails to meet its demands. Similar sentiment was found in the Louisiana delegation where Louis Riecke of New Orleans, a Democratic elector, said he would bolt the President if the South fails to get adequate consideration by this convention.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Breach among Democrats manifest in platform fight

Two philosophies are clashing in feud between North, South; something must give
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
As wide as the Mississippi in flood time in the lowlands of Arkansas is the breach in the Democratic Party between the Northern branch and what are coming to be called again “the Confederates” of the south, so noisily do they raise their rebel yells here in Chicago.

The cleavage stood out stark and clear, like the cloudy profile of a coming storm, in the Democratic Convention which opened here today. Two philosophies are clashing, and something must give.

It is manifest in the fight over the platform. The Northern wing, backed by labor and by Negroes in the big cities – at last released for effective political action by the New Deal – is demanding clear-cut pronouncements against racial discriminations, for the right of franchise for Southern Negroes promulgated by the Supreme Court, for abolition of poll taxes which disfranchise poor whites as well as Negroes in eight Southern states.

South wants Byrnes

The South, particularly the bourbon element entrenched in the tight little political machines represented in delegations here, is resisting bitterly, drawing within itself jealously, its temper up.

The cleavage is plainly revealed in the hot contest over the vice-presidential nomination. The New Deal wing which draws its strength from the masses in the big cities of the East and Midwest, white and black, is demanding the renomination of Henry Wallace.

The Southern leaders, and conservatives elsewhere, will have nothing of him. The South wants James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, former Senator, former Supreme Court Justice, now War Mobilization Director. The North is fearful of his selection, saying it might lose the Negro vote in key urban centers of the East and Midwest.

Byrd given support

The cleavage appears even over the presidential nomination itself, which is assured for Roosevelt, in a protest from sections of the South. In rapid succession, delegations of three states voted to support Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia – Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. He may muster as many as a hundred protest votes, for he has scattering support elsewhere in the South, and his Virginia delegation is expected to plump solidly for him.

By political magic which is the envy of other politicians, high and low, President Roosevelt has been able to hold the diverse and conflicting elements of the Democratic Party together through three elections, and, on account of the war, may hold it together again. But it is coming unsewed at the seams. This is plain enough in what is going on here.

[NormanStewart]

At platform hearings –
World setup to keep peace is endorsed

Witnesses testify on foreign plank

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Mrs. J. Borden Harriman told the Democratic National Convention Platform Committee today that it is time to establish the international organization of nations to prevent future wars as promised in the Moscow Declaration and the Connally Resolution approved by Congress.

Mrs. Harriman, former Minister to Norway, was among witnesses appearing before the committee as it turned to the vital foreign policy issue, with the broad outlines of the party’s foreign plank apparently already agreed upon.

She added a warning that a national movement has been started by citizens who are willing to “slug it out with all and sundry who are sowing the dragon seed of World War III.”

Isolationists assailed

She said:

I refer to the isolationists, the so-called nationalists… to the cynics and defeatists, to the business-as-usual bunch, and to any little group of willful men that may crop up.

Mrs. Harriman recommended that the international organization:

• Guarantee relief from war to all nations with the “peace-loving nations” pledged to advance together against an aggressor.

• Establish means for peaceful settlement of disputes and for advancement of human rights.

• Create agencies for international cooperation in such fields as trade, labor, currency stabilization, agriculture and aviation, to promote an expanding world economy.

Ely Culbertson, bridge expert, representing a group called Fight for Total Peace, Inc., told the committee a federal alliance between the United States, Great Britain and “a collection of small nations” would not cost this nation its sovereignty because the only sovereign right any of the countries would give up is the right to wage war of aggression.

Police force urged

Mr. Culbertson also called for an international police force.

Frederick J. Libby, executive secretary of the National Council for Prevention of War, urged the party to support a “peace offensive,” a statement of peace aims based on the Atlantic Charter.

Other proposed planks calling for U.S. participation in an international organization with power to prevent aggression were submitted by the National Peace Conference, representing 16 organizations; the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Action Committee for Victory and a Lasting Peace.

Connally will testify

But the man whose recommendation is expected to carry the greatest weight will not be heard until the committee adjourns its open hearings late today and meets in executive session to begin drafting the platform. He is Senator Tom Connally (D-TX), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, author of the Senate-approved Connally Resolution and a special adviser to the Platform Committee.

Mr. Connally has drafted a proposed plank of less than 300 words which was reported to beat the approval of President Roosevelt. It is expected to call for a post-war association of sovereign nations to maintain peace. It was understood that Senator Connally favored language advocating specific authorization of military force to prevent aggression, to contrast with the Republican platform pledge to support “peace forces” against aggression.

Platform Committee Chairman John W. McCormack (D-MA), House Majority Leader, said the committee expected to begin whipping the platform into shape for submission to the convention tomorrow.

Domestic issues

The committee completed hearings on domestic issues yesterday, receiving lengthy statements from AFL President William Green and CIO President Philip Murray. They submitted recommendations for labor, reconversion, foreign policy and other planks.

Both urged U.S. participation in a post-war association of nations, reconversion programs to assure full employment after the war and immediate repeal of the Smith-Connally anti-strike law. Mr. Murray read the text of the program adopted at a CIO Political Action Conference at Washington last month.

Racial issue paramount

Mr. Murray also added to the flood of testimony on the racial issue – an explosive one for the Democrats – by urging the committee to draft a strong plank condemning racial discrimination.

The party’s declaration on the race issue promised to rival the foreign plank in importance.

[NormanStewart]

Nominees picked in three states

By the United Press

A “decisive victory” for Governor Sidney P. Osborn, who won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Arizona by a 2-to-1 margin, and a substantial lead piled up by Senator Carl Hayden (D-AZ), running for renomination, highlighted light primary election returns from three states – Arizona, Montana and Wyoming – today.

In Montana, where a three-way battle for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination was the principal feature of an otherwise dull primary, Lief Erickson, 38-year-old justice of the State Supreme Court, was leading Austin B. Middleton and former Governor Roy E. Ayers.

In the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Governor Sam C. Ford was far out in front of his only opponent, former Congressman Dr. J. Thorkelson of Butte.

Governor Osborn was conceded the Democratic nomination in Arizona by William Coxon, who extended congratulations for winning “a decisive victory.”

Senator Hayden, and Reps. John Murdock was Richard Harless were leading their opponents for renomination on the Democratic ticket.

In Wyoming, where the only contest was for the Democratic nomination for Congress, Charles E. Norris of Laramie was leading Clyde C. Winters.

[NormanStewart]

Allies advance near Burma base

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Introducing Skipper Homeier, ‘nice little nasty brat’

12-year-old youngster plays Nazi juvenile in new movie

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[NormanStewart]

Editorial: ‘I do not wish to appear…’

Two things stand out at the Democratic National Convention. It is dominated by the indispensable man who isn’t there. And he is operating as usual through party machines headed primarily by the notorious Mayor Kelly of Chicago, Boss Flynn of New York and Mayor Hague of Jersey City.

There is a great show of fighting over the Vice Presidency. But when the final gavel falls on the perspiring delegates who sit in the convention hall while the managers elsewhere rig the plays, it will be clear that Mr. Roosevelt got what he wanted. Not only the fourth term candidacy for himself, which he in effect has already accepted in advance, and the platform he has already outlined, but also the running mate.

We don’t know Mr. Roosevelt’s choice for second place. Even some who think they are close to him, including Henry Wallace, apparently cannot be sure – yet. That is not surprising. It happened in 1940. Remember? Several vice-presidential aspirants, who had talked with Mr. Roosevelt, had been told it was an open race and that any one of them was acceptable of not his favorite. But, when he finally showed his fist, Mr. Wallace was in it – along with an ultimatum to nominate Mr. Wallace or else. Kelly, Flynn, Hague and Company delivered.

We can’t guess the meaning of the President’s letter to the convention chairman regarding Mr. Wallace, because it is deliberate double-talk. Its purpose may be to damn Mr. Wallace with faint praise, as his friends fear and his opponents hope, and to clear the way for the real FDR selection. Or it may be canny encouragement for several other aspirants to kill each other off, so that Mr. Wallace can be named in the end without the appearance of White House dictation.

On one point, however, the President’s letter is clear. He has grown sensitive about his party dictatorship and is terribly anxious to remove the “appearances” of it before they become a worse campaign liability. To quote: “At the same time, I do not wish to appear in any way as dictating to the convention.”

Well, that is Mr. Roosevelt’s only important wish in connection with the convention which cannot come true. Because it is not within the power of the convention – not even of Kelly, Flynn, Hague and Company – to give him that on top of everything else. The “appearances” in the end will be unable to cover up the fact that the absent indispensable man made all the final decisions. With all of his skill as a political manipulator in absentia, not even Mr. Roosevelt can control a national convention and keep that a secret.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Montgomery’s offensive

Allied forces in Normandy have scored successes on both ends of the line in the fiercest fighting since D-Day. In the west, the Americans have taken Saint-Lô, and in the east, the British have broken through the Caen line.

Whether the victory around Caen is assuming the “gigantic proportion” claimed by initial dispatches probably cannot be determined for several days. The British were in Caen on June 9 only to be pushed back, and several offensives there in recent weeks have been abortive. It is not enough to break through, the gap must be widened and exploited and the new positions rendered safe from counterattack. That cannot be done in the first day of the battle.

The chief factor during the coming week, as during the first day, probably will be the weather. The breakthrough followed an 8,000-ton air bombardment. If Gen. Montgomery can continue to use his great air superiority, which bad weather denied him so often during the past six weeks, obviously the chance of pushing along the Paris road will be much better.

If the enemy’s communications for an estimated 250,000 troops can be cut, as hoped, then he can no longer keep us bottled up in the Normandy tip with his tactical forces alone. He will be forced into a general retreat, or to commit his strategic reserves which have hitherto been held against a possible Allied landing elsewhere. In either event, Gen. Eisenhower would have ended the dangerous temporary stalemate that has consumed more than a month of the precious summer season.

An enemy retreat would allow Gen. Montgomery’s larger armored forces to spill over into open country beyond Caen, and to do the job they have been prevented from doing in their tight pocket. That should soon thereafter draw in more of the Nazi strategic reserves, which seems to be Gen. Eisenhower’s purpose.

But all that depends, of course, on keeping the Montgomery offensive rolling.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Jap crises

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[NormanStewart]

Edson: Some letters from Jefferson on retirement

By Peter Edson

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[NormanStewart]

Ferguson: Basic right

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

CIO leaders overlooked a bet with formulating their recent Bill of Rights. They left out the right of every woman to a good husband. Their list includes:

• The right of every person to a job.
• The right of every farm to a decent living.
• The right to earn enough to provide food, clothing and recreation.
• The right of every businessman to protection against unfair competition and monopolies.
• The right to medical care and good health.
• The right to protection against economic fears of old age, sickness and unemployment.

One is surprised to find the feminine voter forgotten. Plans to provide her with a form of security which transcends all others were evidently an oversight.

For women there is no such thing as a husbandless utopia. May we remind the gentlemen who are politically active this year that a fear is now growing in feminine minds that their world, beautifully planned though it may be will lack this essential ingredient. The women just won’t be satisfied with jobs, or even a release from old-age fears. They’ll go on wanting what they wanted long before the CIO decided to give everybody everything – the married woman’s status in a monogamous society.

This campaign year calls for something extra in the way of political promises, so why not add another to the CIO’s list – the right of every woman to a husband.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Is Guam next?

By Bertram Benedict

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[NormanStewart]

Welles wants three-way split of Germany

Would give East Prussia to Poland
By R. H. Shackford, United Press staff writer

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[NormanStewart]

Public, private debt rises to $338 billion

War accounts for all of increase

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Money conference enters last lap

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[NormanStewart]

Wards lose again in WLB power test

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Roosevelt admits 1,000 refugees

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[NormanStewart]

CIO political group hit by AFL spokesman

Support by committee called kiss of death

Washington (UP) –
Philip Pearl, publicity director and official spokesman of the American Federation of Labor, charged today that the CIO Political Action Committee was resorting to “typical communist technique” and predicted that most candidates would find its support “the kiss of death.”

As far as President Roosevelt is concerned, Mr. Pearl declared, his election to a fourth term would be in spite if, rather than because of, CIO backing.

‘A tricky outfit’

Mr. Pearl said in his column in the AFL’s Weekly News Service that the CIO committee had shown itself to be a “rather tricky outfit” when it set up its new national citizens political action committee “to front for it.” By thus going underground, he said, the committee followed typical communist tactics.

He said:

The reason given is that unions, under the Connally-Smith Act, are forbidden to make political contributions and that therefore a new committee was necessary to raise campaign funds by voluntary contributions.

But a more practical reason is apparent. That one is to take the CIO name out of the organization’s title. The communist stooges behind the PAC are canny enough to realize that the initials CIO are

Backs Gallup poll

Mr. Pearl said that while he often disagreed with findings of the Gallup poll, he agreed with its recent report asserting that many people would be “inclined to vote against, instead of for, candidates who bear the CIO label.”

He declared:

If President Roosevelt is elected, the CIO will loudly claim all the credit. But if the President is elected to a fourth term, it will be in spite of rather than because of the CIO’s help.

As for candidates for lesser office, they are likely to find that the benison of the CIO in 1944, as in former years, will turn out to be the kiss of death.

[NormanStewart]

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Normandy, France – (by wireless)
Everything seems odd in Normandy.

The hedgerows are thick and ancient. The stone walls are sometimes so mounded over with earth that you don’t know there’s a wall beneath. The trees in the apple orchards are mellow with moss so thick that it seems like a coat of green velvet.

The towns and cities are just as old and worn-looking. I have yet to see a building in Normandy that appeared to have been built within the last three generations.

The tone is not one of decadence, but just of great and contented age. Even Cherbourg was a surprise. All of its buildings were old and worn.

It was a contrast to other war cities we have passed through – Algiers and Palermo and even Naples – where much building and remodeling have been done in this country, and the new homes are shiny and modernistic, and the street fronts look almost American.

A street scene in Cherbourg looks so much like the Hollywood sets of old European cities that you get your perspective reversed and feel that Cherbourg has just been copied from a movie set.

It’s the same way with the Norman architecture. The houses aren’t so smooth and regular and nice as California homes of Norman design. When you look at them you feel, before catching yourself, that they have copied our California Norman homes and not done too good a job.

Everything is of stone. Even the barns and cowsheds are stone – and in exactly the same design and usually the same size as the houses. They are grouped closely together around a square, so that a farmer’s home makes a compact little settlement of buildings that resembles a country estate at a distance.

Have more butter than they can use

Normandy is dairy country. Right now, the people have more butter on their hands than they know what to do with. It is a stupid soldier indeed who can’t get himself all the butter he wants. But even though it is a glut on the market, the French still ask 60 cents a pound for it.

When the Germans were here, they bought all the Norman butter, and at fancy prices too. German soldiers would ship it home to their families.

And although their new order is strict and full of promises of an ordered world, the Germans themselves created and fostered the Paris black market, according to the local people. Much of the butter bought in Normandy by German officers went to Paris for resale at unheard-of prices.

To be honest about it, we can’t sense that Normandy suffered too much under the German occupation. That is no doubt less because of German beneficence than because of the nature of the country. For in any throttled country thew farm people always come out best.

Normandy is rich agriculturally. The people can sustain themselves. It is in the cities that occupation hurts worst. I suspect that when we get to Paris, we will hear an entirely different story from the people.

Good-looking children the rule

Normandy is certainly a land of children. It seems to me there are more children here even than in Italy. And I’ll have to break down and admit one thing – they are the most beautiful children I have ever seen.

It is an exception when you see a child who isn’t exceptionally good-looking. Apparently, they grow out of this, however, for on the whole the Norman adults look like people anywhere – both good and bad.

One thing about the Normans is in contrast with the temperament we have known so long in the Mediterranean. The people here are hard workers. Some of the American camps and city offices hire teenage French boys for kitchen and office work, and I’ve noticed that they go at their work eagerly and like the wind.

The story of the French underground, when the day comes for it to be written, will be one of the most fascinating things in all history.

On the Cherbourg Peninsula the underground was made up of cells, five people to a cell. Those five people knew each other, but none of them knew any other members of the underground anywhere.

It was fun to see the Frenchmen on the day the underground began coming out into the open. They identified themselves by special armbands that they had kept in hiding. One underground man would look at a neighbor wearing an armband and exclaim in amazement: “What! You too?”

In one village, we asked some people who were not in the movement if they had ever known who the underground members in their town were. They said they could pretty well guess, just from the character of the people, but never actually knew for sure.