I DARE SAY —
Ordeal
By Florence Fisher Parry
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For the ferocious patriots –
Half-dead Saipan children amaze Yanks with courage
Filthy little Japs found among dead on island given tender care by Marines
By Keith Miller, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Patrols stab at Nazi lines on Arno River
Germans bombard port of Livorno
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Forget own suffering –
Kirkpatrick: Frenchmen weep for the Reds
Nazi bestiality to women bared
By Helen Kirkpatrick
Cherbourg, France –
The unspeakable treatment accorded the Russians by the Germans has left a lasting impression upon all Frenchmen who witnessed it.
One resistance leader here told me:
We’ve had a hard time, but the Russian people have suffered more than any other. We know; we’ve seen.
Plight desperate
The Germans, it seems, brought hundreds of Russian women into Cherbourg to work on the docks and railroads, unloading, digging and building. There were at least 1,000 of them.
Their plight was desperate. They were assigned no living quarters, given no clothing and little food. Some wore only burlap bags. Many dropped dead during the winter. French patriots used to sneak out at night to give them food.
Women used as slaves
The Germans used these Russian women as slaves; armed guards drove them to and from work. Among the last batch to reach here, according to my informant, were a doctor, a pilot in the Red Air Force and a young mother, who carried her one-year-old baby with her to work.
“These women were real martyrs,” said the resistance leader. “Need you ask what we French think of the Germans?”
Small air force stymies Japs
Chennault’s fliers bolster Chinese
By A. T. Steele
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Army works out ballot details
Rome, Italy (UP) –
U.S. Army authorities have completed preparation for conducting a presidential election among the soldiers in all commands of the North African and Italian theaters of war.
Three hundred voting officers have been appointed and by Tuesday, it was said, there will be 500 commissioned officers prepared to handle the many complications of conducting an election more than 3,000 miles from home. Each officer will receive two days of special training in the soldier ballot and voting procedure.
Army authorities are maintaining the strictest of political neutrality in making certain that every soldier learns how to properly cast his ballot. In this connection, it was announce, “the first big job will be the distribution of postcard applications for state ballots during the first week of August.”
Editorial: Candidate Roosevelt accepts
Mr. Roosevelt can be either a wartime President and Commander-in-Chief above partisanship, or he can misuse that position as a candidate for a fourth term. Last night, he took advantage of his office to launch a political campaign from a naval base. For months the Republicans had predicted that he would do something like that. We did not believe he would be so crude. We were wrong.
Not that there was anything new in his formal acceptance speech. He used the same I-am-above-politics pose in his advance acceptance from the White House earlier this month, the same Commander-in-Chief excuse for his candidacy. But that he would time a military inspection trop for a partisan appeal to his party convention did not seem quite up to his protestations as expressed in his letter to Chairman Hannegan.
“I shall not campaign in the usual sense for the office,” he said last night. “In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. In these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time.”
But he found time to route his military train through Chicago for a secret conference with his political chief of staff. He found time to dictate the party platform. He found time from his naval base inspection to run the partisan convention by phone through his party henchmen. He found time to make a partisan campaign speech.
Fortunately, the conduct of the war will not suffer too much. For our real military commanders are forbidden to be political candidates and do not run parties for personal power.
Of course, Mr. Roosevelt does not think he is being partisan. Granted the indispensable idea, the only partisanship is opposition to him. If you vote for him, you transcend party. As he said last night, “in the last three elections the people of the United States have transcended party affiliation.” Or as his spokesman, Convention Chairman Jackson, put it in warning against a Roosevelt defeat: “We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.”
Certainly, that is not a “campaign in the usual sense.”
Editorial: Playing politics with war
If you hadn’t heard or read it, you could hardly believe it.
Senator Samuel D. Jackson, Democratic Convention Chairman, went the full limit to make a party issue of the war. Here are his exact words:
A change in national administration in time of war… is frightening to contemplate. It is dangerous to make… [It] might well prove to be the tragedy of this generation… Our people will not gamble with the lives of their sons…
But how many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tōjō? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Adolf Hitler? Frankly, could Goebbels himself do better to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration… We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon!
There it is. If you dare vote against a fourth term, you “gamble with the lives” of our sons, you give aid to the enemy, you make the election “Hitler’s secret weapon.” Treason?
Isn’t that going just a little too far even for a spokesman of the indispensable Commander-in-Chief?
Editorial: Extermination camps
For many months, there has been little doubt that the Nazis have been operating extermination camps in Upper Silesia, but official confirmation has just come from two European relief committees with headquarters in Switzerland. They give figures showing that in the two years ending last April, more than 1,715,000 Jewish refugees were put to death.
In addition, hundreds of thousands have been executed elsewhere, and many have died under the inhuman conditions prevailing during their removal to the camps. Since April, at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews have been sent to the execution halls.
Extermination has been the prime weapon in Hitler’s feindish plot to control Europe. There has been little difference between the execution chambers using poison gas and the firing squads using bullets. Even famine has been promoted to decimate populations in the occupied lands.
In the darkest days of barbarism, centuries ago, more inhuman treatment of conquered populations would have been hard to find.
Jackson calls change now ‘dangerous’
Says enemies of U.S. would profit by it
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Senator Samuel D. Jackson, Democratic nominee for Governor of Indiana, told the Democratic National Convention yesterday that a change in national administration in time of war was “frightening to contemplate” and that it was “dangerous to make.”
Mr. Jackson said the Republican Party, “to counteract the disadvantage of having such an unusually young and unpracticed candidate” (New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey), was attempting to make “an asset of a liability” by stressing Mr. Dewey’s youth against the “decadence” of the present administration.
Mr. Jackson said:
That last word “decadence” is an indecent slander, if intended for the President. Roosevelt is in full vigor and in the flower of his energy. He has more rugged vitality in him today than any two men the opposition has to offer.
The opposition offered weak and unwholesome pap to the American voters three campaigns in succession. The American voters would not take it from Hoover in 1932. They would not take it from Landon in 1936. They would not take it in 1940, and they will not take it in 1944.
‘To carry New York’
Mr. Jackson asserted that Mr. Dewey was selected as a nominee in the hope that the 47 New York State electoral votes would carry the Old Guard back to the White House.
“What a fantastically vain hope that is,” he declared. “But in that hope, they are willing to take the risk of his obvious inexperience…”
‘Wisdom is needed’
He said:
What the Presidency demands now, is not so much a bright young man, as a man of wisdom and experience with depth and breadth of vision.
America will win this war finally and completely, no matter who is elected President of the United States next November.
But how many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tōjō? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Adolf Hitler?
Frankly, could Goebbels himself do better to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration – the administration that made it possible for the Russians to drive the Nazis back to the Prussian border?
We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.
Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller wins equal rights fight
Constitutional amendment battle won against Mrs. Roosevelt’s, Frances Perkins’ opposition
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Chicago, Illinois –
Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, sister of U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey and Democratic National Committeewoman for Pennsylvania, won a hard-fought victory in the drafting of the 1944 Democratic platform. She obtained the adoption by the Platform Committee and the ratification by the party convention late yesterday, of a plank advocating approval by Congress of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.
Her opposition included Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of the President), Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, half a dozen leading women’s organizations, and a sizable part of the Platform Committee itself, who preferred to duck the issue.
Mrs. Miller, however, had taken steps to see that she got a voice on the Platform Committee. The Pennsylvania delegation had designated Mrs. Miller and Senator Guffey as the state’s representatives on the committee.
Senator Guffey was busy handling details of Vice President Wallace’s campaign for renomination during most of the platform discussions, but Mrs. Miller sat in on committee discussions and also appeared as a witness before her own committee.
Mrs. Miller, active in political affairs for years, is a legislative chairman of the National Woman’s Party, chief proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, but said she appeared in her witness role as a national committee member.
The National Woman’s Party contends that, despite legal guarantees, women still don’t have equal rights under many state laws in matters regarding property, employment, jury service and marital affairs, and that the way to correct the condition is by constitutional amendment.
Opponents objected that the amendment would sweep away laws for the protection of women in industry. Mrs. Roosevelt sent a message saying that, until they were more highly unionized, it would be a hardship on women in industry. Secretary Perkins called the proposed amendment “drastic and ill-considered.”
Mrs. Miller, however, pointed out that the Republican Convention last month adopted an equal-rights-for-women plank, and although other committee members tried to develop an acceptable substitute, she stood her ground.
“This is the happiest day for me,” she said as the convention approved the platform with her plank in it, saying:
We favor legislation assuring equal pay for equal work, regardless of sex. We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.
Poll: Two-party system favored by South
Believes it could gain more attention
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Helen Gahagan accuses GOP of doubletalk
Says Democrats are conservative party
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Mrs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, national committeewoman from California, said last night in an address to the Democratic Convention that the Democratic Party is “the true conservative party” and the Republican leaders “are the dreamers.”
Mrs. Douglas, actress wife of movie actor Melvin Douglas, accused the Republicans of “doubletalk” and said the Democratic Party had conserved hope and ambition “in the hearts of our people.”
She said:
We have conserved the skills of their hands. We have husbanded our national resources. We have saved millions of homes and farms from foreclosure and conserved the family stake and democracy.
Conserve faith in government
We have rescued banks and trust companies, insured crops and people’s savings. We have built schools. We have checked the flooding rivers and turned them into power.
We have replanted the forest, re-fertilize the soil. Ours is the conservative party. We have conserved the people’s faith in a people’s government – a democracy.
‘GOP leaders are dreamers’
Mrs. Douglas said that because they are the conservative party, the Democrats reject “the hazy Republican dream” that the nation can get along “with its government dismantled, its housing programs destroyed, its wage and price controls thrown out the window.”
“The Republican leaders are the dreamers,” she said. “They have no contact with the people or with the realities of their wants and needs.”
Mrs. Douglas said the Republican program is a dream, “a nightmare of muddle and confusion.” She said there are not enough Democrats to elect a President, nor enough Republicans.
Best friend of GOP
She said:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been elected President for three successive terms – and each time the Republicans have helped put him into office.
The last three elections have shown that the Democratic Party has been the best friend the Republican rank-and-file voter has ever had: He knows it, and he has voted accordingly.
‘It’s doubletalk’
Criticizing the Republican presidential nominee, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and the Republican platform, Mrs. Douglas said:
The Republican candidate has pledged himself to carry to Japan a defeat so crushing and complete that every last man among them will know that he has been beaten.
And at the same time, the Republican platform does not indicate by a single line – or a single word that there is any need for further sacrifice. That is doubletalk.
The Republican Party has pledged itself to reduce taxes to the normal expenditures of the government as soon as the war ends, and also has pledged itself to reduce the national debt. It has not explained how taxes and debts can be so reduced at the same time. That is doubletalk.
The Republican Party declares that it is the party of the Constitution, but its nominee declares that he will not participate in the active management of the war.
Argument called inept
This thoughtless and inept argument ignores the fact that our Founding Fathers carefully provided for civilian control of the military as the only possible safeguard of democratic life. The Constitution gave the people the right to elect a civilian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
Yet the Republican nominee runs for the office of Commander-in-Chief on the solemn pledge that, if elected, he will not fulfill his duties. That is doubletalk.