Background of news –
Soldiers’ votes in the Civil War
By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports
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Background of news –
Negro fliers blast Nazi lines in Italy
An advanced air base in Italy (UP) – (Dec. 9, delayed)
Bombs and bullets from America’s only squadron of Negro fliers now overseas helped crack the German lines during the current Allied offensive in Italy, it may now be revealed.
The Negro pilots, under the command of Capt. George Robert of Fairmont, West Virginia, flying P-40 Warhawks, have been in action in Italy for two months without losing a plane although two of their number were shot down during the Sicilian campaign.
The importance of their efforts was emphasized today when a Negro unit was inspected by Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, chief of the Northwest African Air Force. Only the ground crews were present, however, for every Negro pilot was flying over the Nazi lines at the time.
I was unaware that Roosevelt stopped in Sicily during his travels.
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (by wireless)
Fredric March and his camp-show crew came into town the other day on the last leg of an exhausting three-month grind through the Persian Gulf area entertaining our troops.
March has one man and two girls with him. The man is Sammy Walsh, a veteran café entertainer who professes to call himself a saloon worker. He carries off the light end of the show. This is his fourth tour for the USO.
The two girls are Jeanne Darrell, a singer, and Evelyn Hamilton, who plays the accordion. Both these girls know plenty about war. Jeanne’s husband is Lt. Maries of New Zealand. Evelyn has already done one tour of 11 months in the Aleutians, she has had malaria in the Near East, and her fiancé, a paratrooper, was killed in Sicily.
Usually, these camp shows are very light. Fredric March brings the first serious role to soldiers’ entertainment I’ve run onto. It’s a pretty touchy business, but he gets it over. He reads a stirring part of a Roosevelt speech of a couple of years ago, then he does some of Tom Paine’s patriotic pronouncements, then he gives a little talk of his own.
Since he has played mostly to non-combat troops in isolated areas, he does some morale building by telling them their jobs are as necessary and contributory as anybody else’s.
Tennis and prayer rugs
March played tennis with the King of Iran and proudly shows off a magnificent silken prayer rug the King gave him. He wears a blue camp-show uniform and a leather, fleece-lined jacket of the Air Force.
He keeps a framed photo of his wife and two children on the desk wherever he goes. His brother is in Italy and he hopes to see him before leaving this theater.
My telephone rang. The man on the other end said he was from Albuquerque. When he arrived, he turned out to be a sailor. His name is Hoyt Tomlinson and his mother and sister live at 510 W Roma. Hoyt has been in the Navy for two years and is on his ninth roundtrip across the Atlantic, with a couple of invasions thrown in.
He’s a cook, first class, and likes it.
Tomlinson loves to see people from Albuquerque. One time while on liberty in New York, he was sitting in a doughnut place on Broadway when he recognized a man’s back among the sidewalk crowd. He dashed out and chased the man down the street, knocking people over as he went. The man was a Mr. Baccachi of the Sunny State Liquor Company, Albuquerque.
Sailor Tomlinson says he was so homesick at the time he started to cry. And he was so delighted at seeing somebody from home he kept Mr. Baccachi up until 3:00 a.m.
Chicken: Pro and con
Tomlinson is clean-cut and big-hearted, and he insisted on going back to his ship and bringing me stuff like a baking chicken, canned ham and so on. But since I was just leaving for the front and already overloaded, I had to forego his Western hospitality. In a few days, I’d probably give a week’s pay for half a baked chicken.
The Special Service Branch of the Army recently had an artists’ competition in the North African Theater to give art-inclined soldiers something to do. The contest brought in 500 pictures painted by 127 artists or aspiring artists, 30 of them British soldiers.
The pictures have recently been exhibited, with 1,500 people a day visiting the show. The Army got a committee of professional judges and gave a $50 War Bond for first prize, and $25 bonds for second and third. Then all through the show, they furnished ballots for soldiers and sailors in the audience to vote their choices for prizes.
The most interesting thing to me about the show was that the first three chosen by the judges weren’t even in the running on the servicemen’s list. The judges weighed intellectually while the soldiers chose on the basis of I-don’t-know-anything-about-art-but-I-know-what-I-like.
My favorite picture was a sketch of President Roosevelt which looked no more like him than I do. I think the guy who drew it ought to be given $25 just for trying.
Pegler: More on women in politics
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
There is something about the British attitude toward women in politics which appeals to my own very practical sense of reality and my passion for equality under law and custom. When a woman enters politics in England, she becomes a politician and forfeits, in the field of political activity, that special consideration which ordinarily is shown to women.
Unlike us, the British, from the days when the suffragettes were chaining themselves to the iron fences around the House of Commons and hunger-striking for the right to vote and hold office, faced the fact that women and men, on the average, are about equal in honesty, fairness and sincerity and that their political activity would not result in any measurable purification of public life.
This certainly has been our own experience for, although we have had several women governors, one woman Cabinet officer, a number of women members of both houses of Congress and countless female bureaucrats, any improvement, which the most sensitive observer could discern, has been purely incidental and evolutionary, if not imaginary. One state had a governor elected in the place of her husband, who had been seriously discredited, whose administration was just about as bad as his had been.
Norton and Perkins cases
In the current House of Representatives, we have a chairman of the committee on labor, Mrs. Mary Norton of Jersey City, a faithful and typical member of the organization of Frank Hague whose machine elects her. Mrs. Frances Perkins, as Secretary of Labor, has been, in a few kind words, a pathetic and bewildered figure without the dignity to resign as any manly man would have done in like circumstance.
And, because among the communists, the female of the species is as nasty as the male and as diligent in conspiracy, we have accumulated a due proportion of Bolsheviks in skirts in various bureaus of the government and in satellite political organizations of the New Deal, whose total contribution has been no different from that of an equal number of buck Bolos similarly placed.
In short, women in politics have been just so many politicians, notwithstanding which we doggedly maintain the old frontier tradition of chivalry toward them, realizing all the time, that they have shown neither special competence nor statesmanship and in most cases, have been dreary, fumbling duds and imposters claiming to represent womankind which, in a vote on that issue, would repudiate them with violent scorn.
Lady Astor called down
I was reminded of the British attitude by a brief dispatch from London a few days ago relating the latest incident in the long and garrulous career of Viscountess Astor, a pioneer and veteran politician with a tongue as sharp as her profile who long ago learned in her chosen career she must expect to be treated as a politician, and neither man nor woman.
Viscountess Astor interrupted the debate several times and Emmanuel Shinwell, a Laborite, who may not be a gentleman, yelled:
Throw her out. Something ought to be done about her, you know.
The dispatch said:
Several members protested against her repeated interjections. Sir George Davis, Conservative, complained, “We’ve had to put up with it for 20 years.”
Again, when Lady Astor applauded a point, saying “Hear, hear” the English equivalent of “Attaboy” or “You said a mouthful,” another Laborite glared at her and cracked. “Some of us would like to try.” The House cheered.
Our parliamentary manners are much politer than those of the House of Commons, which at times resembles a crowded pub on bank holiday, but we have no such equality of men and women in debate. The result being that we have to endure some awful and sinister female frauds in politics who, but for their sex, would be common hacks and so regarded.
There is a tempting note in Mr. Shinwell’s angry “Throw her out.”
Völkischer Beobachter (December 14, 1943)
Noch ein ‚Ergebnis‘ von Teheran –
Hull will die ‚Kleinen‘
dnb. Berlin, 13. Dezember –
Bekanntlich waren als Ergebnis der Teheraner Konferenz sogenannte „psychologische Riesenbomben“ gegen Deutschland und seine Verbündeten angekündigt worden. Nachdem die nichtssagende Verlautbarung von Teheran die Erwartungen unserer Feinde durch das völlige Fehlen solcher Erklärungen enttäuscht hat, versuchte der US-amerikanische Außenminister Hull, das Versäumte durch eine auf plumpe Täuschung berechnete Drohrede an die Adresse Ungarns, Rumäniens und Bulgariens nachzuholen.
Die Erklärung erinnert an die vor zwei Jahren erfolgte Kriegserklärung der bulgarischen, ungarischen und rumänischen Regierung an die USA und bezeichnet diese Regierungen in der Hull geläufigen Gangstersprache als „servile Marionetten.“ Hull wirft dann überheblich die abwegige Frage auf, er wisse nicht:
…in welchem Maße diese Regierungen auf die Großmut der USA gerechnet haben, ihre Völker vor den Folgen dieses übereilten Schrittes zu verschonen.
Tatsache sei, daß die an der Macht befindlichen Regierungen in diesen drei Ländern rücksichtslos ihre Teilnahme am Kriege gegen uns fortgesetzt und mit Menschen und Material die deutsche Kriegsmaschine gestärkt haben.
Die Erklärung schließt mit der üblichen Dreistigkeit, mit der die Herren im Weißen Haus mit Worten umzuspringen pflegen, wenn die militärischen Tatsachen nicht ihren Hoffnungen entsprechen. Freche Drohung und faustdicken Bluff verbinden sie zu grotesken Formulierungen, mit denen Hull auf die Ungarn, Rumänen und Bulgaren, die ebenso wie Deutschland für nichts anderes als ihre nationale Existenz und Zukunft kämpfen, Eindruck zu machen sucht: So droht Herr Hull:
Es muß ihnen klar geworden sein, daß sie mit Sicherheit die Verantwortung für die Folgen der Niederlage, welche die Vereinigten Nationen Deutschland zufügen werden, zu teilen haben.
Rumänien antwortet
Gegenüber der plumpen Drohrede Cordell Hulls an Rumänien lassen maßgebende rumänische Kreise keinen Zweifel darüber, daß die Stellung Rumäniens in dieser Frage klar und unzweideutig Stei. Schon in vielen öffentlichen Kundgebungen des abgelaufenen Jahres sei die Überzeugung zum Ausdruck gekommen, daß Rumänien im Osten um seine völkische Existenz kämpfe und seinen Kampf gleichzeitig als einen wertvollen Beitrag zur Wahrung der europäischen Zivilisation ansehe. Man verweist in diesen Kreisen auf die von den rumänischen Blättern bereits unmittelbar nach der Konferenz von Teheran den von dort ausgehenden Gerüchten gegenüber unmißverständlich und einheitlich zum Ausdruck gebrachte Haltung. So schrieb zum Beispiel der offiziöse Timpul, das von Teheran ausgehende „moralische Trommelfeuer“ könne nur dort wirksam sein, wo man lieber auf der Lauer liege als kämpfe. Im rumänischen Volk jedenfalls finde die Nachricht von dem Siege der rumänischen Truppen auf der Krim mehr Achtung als jedes anglo-amerikanische Bluffmanöver.
Die Front meldet sich zum Wort in einem Aufsatz der Porunca Vremii: So schrieb ein Hauptmann in diesem Blatt:
Die Frontkämpfer werden der rumänisch-deutschen Waffenbrüderschaft treu bleiben.
Der Feind irrt sich
Am Sonntag fand im Militärklub in Plovdiv eine feierliche Kundgebung aller Mitglieder des Verbandes der Reserveunteroffiziere des Gaues Plovdiv statt. Der Kundgebung wohnten Ministerpräsident Boschiloff und Innenminister Dr. Christoff bei. Der Innenminister unterstrich den Gedanken, daß sich der Feind durch die Luftangriffe und durch seine Agitation bemühe, die innere Front des Landes zu schwächen. Der Feind irre sich aber, denn er werde erst über die Leichen von zehn Millionen Bulgaren die bulgarische Grenze überschreiten können. Das bulgarische Volk stehe in seinem größten Teil an der Front des Staates. Der bulgarische Bauer liebe seine Scholle und sei bereit, sie um jeden Preis zu verteidigen.
Ministerpräsident Boschiloff erklärte: Die Außenpolitik Bulgariens werde von 99% des bulgarischen Volkes gebilligt. Das bulgarische Volk verlange nichts Fremdes, könne aber auf seine nationalen Ideale nicht verzichten. Die bulgarische Außenpolitik habe die Verteidigung der legitimen Rechte der Nation und die Sicherstellung der Einigkeit und Unabhängigkeit Bulgariens für die Zukunft zum Ziel. Alle guten Bulgaren müßten sich daher verpflichtet fühlen, der Regierung in ihrem Aufbauwerk beizustehen.
Fast zur gleichen Stunde also, als Hull die Bulgaren, Ungarn und Rumänen mit dem Kinderschreck eines amerikanischen Sieges auf die Rachsucht der Plutokraten gegen die stolze Tapferkeit ihres europäischen Selbstbehauptungswillens vorbereitete, wurde ihm in dieser Plovdiver Kundgebung von den Bedrohten fest und entschlossen gesagt: „Der Feind irrt sich, nur über unsere Leichen geht sein Weg auf unserem Kontinent.“
Die Liquidierung der Hullschen Großsprechereien wirkt umso eindrucksvoller, als sie so prompt und mit so viel Selbstsicherheit geäußert wurde.
Die Kundgebung sowie die Reden der Minister wurden im bulgarischen Rundfunk übertragen. Cordell Hull hätte, wenn es ihm nicht peinlich gewesen wäre, also die wahre Meinung der von ihm mit Drohungen verfolgten europäischen Völker unmittelbar hören können.
U.S. State Department (December 14, 1943)
893.5151/976: Telegram
The Ambassador in China to the Secretary of State
Chungking, December 14, 1943 — 8 p.m.
Urgent
2417.
To Secretary of Treasury from Adler. …
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I indicated that the price of United States dollars had become an outstanding issue for all United States Government agencies in China relations and that the working out of a satisfactory arrangement was advisable from point of view of Sino-American relations. Kung replied that “the Generalissimo had said no.” When I inquired again into the possibility of the sale of gold, Kung informed me that Chinese Government sales had been quite small, its policy being to buy back a substantial part of what it had sold to keep up price which is now around CN 13,000 per Chinese oz. selling in Chungking.
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Kung intimated that Generalissimo had discussed exchange rate with President in Cairo but did not inform me of content of discussion.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
GAUSS
U.S. Navy Department (December 14, 1943)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 194
Army heavy bombers of the Seventh Army Air Force attacked Imeiji Island, Jaluit Atoll, on December 12 (West Longitude Date), dropping approximately 50 tons of bombs on shore installations and on a cargo transport in the lagoon.
Damage to our planes from antiaircraft fire was negligible. None of our personnel was wounded.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 195
Army heavy bombers of the 7th Army Air Force raided enemy installations on Wotje Atoll on December 13 (West Longitude Date). One of our planes was damaged by anti-aircraft fire. There were no personnel casualties.
Two Navy search Liberators of Fleet Air Wing Two made a low-altitude attack on Jaluit at dusk on December 12. One pilot was wounded and both planes suffered some damage from machine-gun fire.
The enemy made small night raids at Tarawa on December 11 and 12. There were no casualties nor damage to our installations.
The Pittsburgh Press (December 14, 1943)
RAF bombers hit Germany for 4th night
U.S. raiders down 15 German planes and lose 9
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8th Army gains near Adriatic
Nazi tank attacks repulsed before Ortona
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Patton tours Middle East; Balkan push believed near
General appears in Cairo as Swiss report Germans rushing reinforcements south
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
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Union financial statement retained in tax measure
Senate group votes 11–10 to keep filing requirement; Social Security rate freeze approved
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Japanese-American, 20, becomes WAC member
Denver, Colorado (UP) –
While 17 relatives stood around in the executive offices of the Colorado State House, a 20-year-old Japanese-American was sworn into the WAC yesterday.
The new member of the Women’s Army Corps, brown-eyed Iris Watanabe is believed to be the first Japanese-American from a relocation center to be inducted.
Mort Cooper rejected
St. Louis, Missouri –
Mort Cooper, St. Louis Cardinals pitching ace, was rejected today when he reported for induction into the Army. Physicians did not reveal the cause of his rejection.
Talk of a third party in South expected to veer to fourth term
Bailey and smith are only speaking now; governors, they say, rule votes
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Revolt faced by Roosevelt on race issue
Committee rulings attacked; Congress is asked to investigate
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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