America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

8958

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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8959

Hull cautions nation against overoptimism

Says Germans realize ‘impending defeat’

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8960

Circus to resume its tour July 30

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Nazis still hold hostages in abbey

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General takes lead in new Tokyo regime

Cabinet formation proceeding, Japs say
By the United Press

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americavotes1944

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.”

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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.”

8965

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?

8966

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.

8967

Edson: U.S. wishes carry no weight in Argentina

By Peter Edson

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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.

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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.

8970

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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Port Chicago magazine to be reconstructed

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8972

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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.

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It’s no foreign war, Reynolds tells conclave

Correspondent replies to Clare Luce speech

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds told the Democratic National Convention last night that American servicemen have learned “this was no foreign war,” and on foreign soils have discovered “an outpost of America where there are no barriers.”

“They learned this was no foreign war when they first landed in England,” he said.

There, he said, when American men saw the scars of war on the House of Commons, which “has always been the symbol of free speech in Britain,” and Westminster Abbey, which “has been the symbol of the Christian way of life,” they knew that Hitler was waging war against “our ideals and our way of life.”

Answer to Mrs. Luce

Apparently referring to Rep. Clare Boothe Luce’s “G.I. Jim” speech at the Republican Convention, Mr. Reynolds said:

I do not propose to speak for your son abroad, and I never would commit the unholy sacrilege of speaking for his dead brother who has been killed in combat. No man – or woman – can speak for him. We can only accept his sacrifice humbly and not presume to speak for him with our unworthy tongues.

No barriers at fronts

Mr. Reynolds, who has toured many of the battlefronts, said American men overseas had found out one thing about war… “There are no barriers at the front.”

He said:

Kids here at home grow up surrounded by barriers… all man-made.

Neighborhood barriers, city barriers, state barriers, social barriers, racial barriers, political barriers, barriers of wealth. You climb over one barrier only to find another ahead of you.

Then you find yourself at the front, thousands of miles from home. And suddenly, perhaps for the first time in your life, you realize that here on American soil, as an outpost of America, where there are no barriers. This was always the dream you’d had of America, a dream that never before has come quite true.

There are no Democrats or Republicans at the front; there are no Italian-Americans or Polish-Americans; there are no New Yorkers or Californians or Texans or New Englanders… Only Americans… Only Americans purged of the artificial barriers we still make so much of here at home.

A ‘G.I.’ has the answer

Mr. Reynolds warned that the nation’s fighting men abroad are so proud of their country they would “hate to see it tarnished by the sad spectacle of fellow Americans indulging in the childish pastime of name calling.” He said the reaction of men in uniform to a “smear campaign” by either party would be unfavorable.

Aboard a troopship on the way into Salerno last September, Mr. Reynolds said, a soldier best expressed what Americans are fighting for when he said:

“Added all together, and it means we’re fighting for the right to bawl out the umpire.”

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GOP, Democratic platforms have great deal in common

Comparison shows that trend of times has put its mark on both parties’ policymakers
By Raymond Lahr, United Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
The Democratic Party hopes to win the 1944 campaign on its record of 12 years in power during war and peace and on a terse platform of 1,200 words set against a 4,000-word Republican declaration.

The party platform, adopted by the National Convention yesterday, began:

The Democratic Party stands on its record in peace and in war. To speed victory, establish and maintain peace, guarantee full employment and provide prosperity – this is its platform. We do not here detail scores of planks. We cite action.

That contrasted with this paragraph of the Republican platform:

Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the President, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen; and this country could remain a Republic only in name.

Contain common pledges

The two platforms contain some common pledges, some divergent ones and some in sharp conflict. Here is a comparison of some of the planks.

Foreign policy

DEMOCRATIC: The party pledged “to join with the other United Nations and the establishment of an international organization based on the principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving states… to make all necessary and effective agreements through which the nations would maintain adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war and of making impossible the preparation for war and which would have such forces available for joint action when necessary. Such organization must be endowed with power to employ armed forces when necessary to prevent aggression and preserve peace.”

REPUBLICAN:

We favor responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world. Such organization should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression.

Race problems

DEMOCRATIC:

We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.

REPUBLICAN: The party endorsed a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, anti-poll tax and anti-lynching legislation, and an inquiry into discrimination in the Armed Forces.

Agriculture

Both parties endorsed support prices and crop insurance. The Democrats promised “to foster the success of the small independent farmer” and “to aid the home ownership of the family-sized farm.” The Republicans endorsed measures “to make life more attractive” on the family farm. The Republicans condemned the Roosevelt administration for “confused, unreliable, impractical price and production” policy during the war and implicitly accused it of regimenting farmers.

Labor

DEMOCRATIC: The Democratic platform contained no specific plank on labor, but promised adequate compensation to demobilized war workers and enactment of additional legislation or the amendment or repeal of existing laws as experience indicated the need.

REPUBLICAN: The Republicans charged the administration with “selfish and partisan control” over government labor agencies, with perverting the National Labor Relations Act, emasculating the Labor Department and undermining collective bargaining. They “accepted the purposes” of the labor relations, wage-hour, Social Security and other laws for the protection of workers.

Miscellaneous

Both parties pledged to support submission of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women; equal pay to women for equal work; free access to world news; encouragement for risk capital; liberal benefits for war veterans; reduction in wartime taxes as soon as possible; encouragement for little business; expansion of foreign trade through reciprocal agreements (with the Republicans adding a proviso requiring approval by Congress); development of self-government in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration.

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Defiant Texas delegates assail ‘power politics’

‘Regulars,’ pushed around in convention, say CIO and Communists ousted them

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
“We ran into a buzzsaw of power politics,” members of the Texas delegation at the Democratic National Convention who walked out of the convention said today.

They made the comment in a statement addressed through Texas Democrats. A copy was sent to the Democratic National Committee. It was signed by the dissident members of the delegation who left the Chicago Stadium yesterday after the convention voted to split Texas’ votes between the “Regular” (anti-fourth-term) delegation and the rump delegation, which supported President Roosevelt.

Hot under the collar

The Texans said:

The bureaucrats, the CIO Political Action Committee, and a liberal sprinkling of Communists joined forces to tell Texas Democrats where they stand in national politics. The action of the Texas convention was thwarted by the Hillman, Tobin, and Browder followers who carried the ball behind the perfect interference of an army of bureaucrats.

The action of the Credentials Committee [which recommended splitting the state’s votes] was a deliberate slap at duly constituted authority. The trouble was the Regulars were not under the domination of the powerful elements that had control of the National Convention.

For this reason, it was necessary to discipline the Regulars and show Texas Democrats the consequence of disobedience to boss rule. That is exactly what the convention proceeded to do in a most arrogant and dictatorial manner.

A complaint was made that the convention’s Rules Committee turned “thumbs down” on the reinstatement of the two-thirds rule for nominations, and that the platform adopted by the convention was written “designed to secure the support of Negroes, the CIO, the Communists, and other radical groups.”

Texas planks turned down

Noting that every plank proposed by the Texas delegation was rejected, the statement complained specifically of refusal to recognize “reserved power of states to determine qualification of voters and to regulate public school attendance without interference from the federal government.”

“Worst of all,” it said, was refusal to approve passage of a law to prohibit management-labor contracts from requiring any war veteran to join an organization or pay a fee to get employment.

A special train leaving tomorrow will carry most of the Texas delegates from both Texas factions.

8976

Chaplin’s first wife, silent film star, dies

Mildred Harris was attempting comeback; divorce from Charlie created storm

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Ration-free steaks may be delayed

Short postponement agreeable to WFA

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