$17-billion plan, including trade fund and international bank, approved
By Elmer C. Walzer, United Press financial editor
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Long-term credits discussed at meeting
By Kirtland I. King, United Press staff writer
Pawling, New York – (July 22)
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, studied a report on post-war trade with Russia today after a five-hour conference with Eric A. Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow.
Mr. Johnston, who conferred with Governor Dewey before the Governor left for a weekend at his farm, said Governor Dewey received the report with “great interest” but refrained from expressing an opinion at this time.
Discussing many things
Mr. Johnston said:
I submitted a report on my trip to Russia. We discussed foreign trade, especially trade with Russia, long-term credit and all other things essential to discussion if we are going to do business with the Soviets.
The Chamber of Commerce president said he told Governor Dewey that the conclusion of the war would open many new avenues of trade with Russia, but that we must be prepared to extend long-term credits. By long-term credits, he said, he believed Russian means from 15 to 30 years.
Capital goods trade
Mr. Johnston added that the trade with the Soviets “would not be so much for consumer goods but for capital goods – farm implements and machinery for the factories.”
He said:
There will be a tremendous opportunity for trade. The Soviet government wants to do business, but we will have to be willing to extend long-term credit.
Asks about Stalin
Mr. Dewey was particularly interested in Mr. Johnston’s three-hour conference with Joseph Stalin. Mr. Johnston informed Governor Dewey, wanted to know who was going to be the Republican presidential candidate and when Johnston said he believed it would be the New York Governor, the Marshal wanted to know all about him.
Mr. Johnston said that, prior to the Republican National convention, he said he would support the party’s choice for President and added, “I am a Republican. Of course, I will support Mr. Dewey, not only as a Republican but as a businessman.”
Mr. Dewey planned a weekend preparing for a trip to the Republican Governors Conference at St. Louis. He declined to comment on the ticket nominated by the Democrats in Chicago.
Lexington, North Carolina (UP) – (July 22)
An invitation will be extended to Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, within the next two weeks to speak at some city in North Carolina “in early September,” Sim A. Delapp, chairman of the State Republican Executive Committee, said today.
Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT) will also be invited to come to the state and speak during the current campaign.
Light voting reported in Texas election as Negroes are give vote for first time
Dallas, Texas (UP) – (July 22)
House Speaker Sam Rayburn, making his bid for his 17th term in Congress, faced one of the toughest battles in his long political career today as Texas voters balloted in a primary election.
Mr. Rayburn, “the Pride of Bonham,” was opposed principally by State Senator G. C. Morris of Greenville, a youthful, active campaigner.
Despite the fact that Mr. Rayburn and several other ling-termers in Congress staked their political future on today’s balloting, and it was the first primary in which Negroes were permitted to vote, only mild interest has been shown in the election.
Vote is very light
Voting proceeded slowly. Reports to the United Press from all sections of the state mostly were that “voting is light.”
In the Lubock area, fairly heavy balloting was reported. Rains had puddled fields and freed farmers from their chores so they could cast ballots.
In Bonham, Mr. Rayburn cast his vote early and then went to his ranch to spend the day.
The Negro vote was reported extremely light. There were no reports of trouble at any polling place.
Few Negro voters
Approximately 900,000 of the state’s 1,570,000 eligible voters were expected to ballot. Very few of those were expected to be Negroes, despite the recent Supreme Court ruling which extended them the right to vote in primaries. Few Negroes had paid the necessary poll tax and a large portion had already cast absentee ballots in an effort to avoid friction at the polls.
There was no senatorial contest in Texas this year and no torrid state issues to enliven the interest of voters. All Texas Congressmen are up for renomination except Rep. Martin Dies of Orange, who announced some time ago he would not run again.
In addition to Mr. Rayburn, Congressmen facing the stiffest opposition and possible runoffs in the second primary next month included Rep. Wright Patman of Texarkana in the 1st district, Rep. Hatton Summers of Dallas in the 5th, Nat Patton of Crockett in the 7th, Rep. J. J. Mansfield of Columbus in the 9th, Rep. Ed Gossett of Wichita Falls in the 13th, and Rep. Sam Russell of Stephenville in the 17th.
DNC has problem to solve
By Gordon K. Shearer, United Press staff writer
Chicago, Illinois – (July 22)
One angle of the situation created by rival Texas delegations to the Democratic National Convention remained to be straightened out here today by the Democratic National Committee.
Both Texas state conventions nominated Myron Blalock of Marshall, Texas, to continue as committeeman from Texas. The state convention which claimed to be “Regular” proposed Mrs. H. H. Weinert of Seguin for National Committeewoman. The other chose Mrs. Clara Driscoll of Corpus Christi, who had resigned as committeewoman.
Some stay behind
Mrs. Weinert remained in the convention with former Governor Dan Moody, chairman of the delegation, and some others of the “Regular” group when others walked out in protest over having the vote divided. She remained in Chicago when most of the delegation left for Texas this morning, to be present for a possible contest of her designation as National Committeewoman.
Honors were about even between the rival factions when the final convention score was added. The “rump” delegation won recognition and half of the Texas vote in the convention. The other delegation wad first to get on the Truman bandwagon and voted 21 of its 24 votes for the winning vide-presidential candidate while the rival delegation cast its entire 24 votes for Mr. Wallace. Later, the state’s entire 48 votes were given to Mr. Truman.
Sat at opposite ends
The rival delegations sat at opposite ends of the Texas section during the balloting.
The faction headed by Herman Jones of Austin passed on the first vice-presidential ballot. Its caucus, before the convention opened, had voted for Speaker Sam Rayburn and when Mr. Rayburn did not want his name presented the group “sat out” the first round.
The Moody group gave 21 of its 24 votes to Senator John H. Bankhead (D-AL) on the first ballot, one to Senator Truman, one to Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) and one to Bascom Timmons (a former Texan and now a well-known Washington correspondent). Three of that faction voted for Mr. Wallace on the second ballot.
Obscure judge gains Senate in one leap
Chicago, Illinois (UP) – (July 22)
Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, nominated for Vice President by the Democratic National Convention, sprang in one leap from an obscure county judgeship to U.S. Senator in 1934 with the support of the political machine of Thomas J. Pendergast.
Senator Truman, attacked by his foes for his connections with the corrupt Pendergast machine, gained places on important committees during his first term in the Senate, however, and eventually won national recognition through his work in investigating war expenditures.
Senator Truman, 60, hardly looks the part of an investigator, his manner toward witnesses appearing before his committee seems almost apologetic, yet he pulls no punches in his reports, and once went so far as to threaten John L. Lewis with a subpoena.
Farmer until war years
Mr. Truman was born on a farm near Lamar, Missouri, May 8, 1884. His parents were natives of Kentucky. He attended Independence High School and graduated in 1901, there ending his formal education. He became a bank clerk, but was finally persuaded to return to the farm.
He remained on the farm from 1906 until 1917. Prior service in the National Guard won him a first lieutenancy when he enlisted at the outbreak of the war. He attended service schools here and in France, and rejoined his regiment as commander of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, in 1918.
Lt. Harry Truman, World War I artillery officer
Senator Truman’s company fought in the Saint-Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and other battles. He was discharged as a major in 1919, and later had a rating of colonel in the reserve. After the war, he returned to the Missouri farm and was not to leave until 1922.
Senator Truman is a Baptist.
He was 38 years old when he won his first office, judge of the county court of Jackson, Missouri. Missouri does not require its judges to be lawyers but in 1923, the year after his election, Mr. Truman enrolled in the Kansas City Law School and studied for two years.
He was defeated for reelection in 1924, but two years later became presiding judge of the Jackson County court, and in 1930 was reelected.
Throughout these years, Mr. Truman was a faithful worker for the Pendergast machine in Kansas City. The machine supported him in a three-cornered race for the Senate in 1934, and he won easily.
Rebelled only once
During his early days in the Senate, Mr. Truman was overshadowed by Senator Bennett Champ Clark. He rebelled against the Roosevelt administration only once. That was when he denounced the President’s nomination of Maurice M. Milligan for another term as U.S. District Attorney for Western Missouri.
Mr. Milligan had obtained numerous indictments against scores of Pendergast’s men for illegal election practices, and Senator Truman paid his political debt to the machine when he opposed the nomination. He lost the fight, however.
He married Miss Bess Wallace, his schoolboy sweetheart, June 28, 1919. They had one daughter, Mary Margaret, born in 1924.
The Trumans live in a 14-room, gabled house in Independence. Missouri.
Only a small number ever read them
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Democrats planning election surprise
Washington – (July 22)
Congressional observers believed today the Democrats may be preparing a timebomb for the Republicans in the form of a soldier vote law amendment which might be brought to the Senate floor shortly before the November election.
The amendment, now dormant within the Senate Election Committee, would permit any serviceman who has not received his state absentee voter’s ballot by Oct. 1 to automatically receive the shortform federal ballot containing only the names of candidates for President, Vice President, Senator and Representative.
To embarrass GOP
This would immediately throw off all restrictions on the use of the federal ballot now contained in the Soldier Vote Act. Introduction of the amendment is regarded as certain to touch off another renewal of the better partisan battle which twice convulsed Congress early this year.
It is also regarded as a likely Democratic weapon to attempt to embarrass the GOP and particularly its presidential nominee, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, already under fire because of his refusal to certify the federal ballot for New York’s one million servicemen.
Under the present law, only servicemen overseas whose state governors certified the use of the federal ballot by July 15, and who apply for state ballots by Sept. 1 but fail to receive them by Oct. 1, may vote the short-term federal ballot.
Only 20 approve
The War Ballot Commission reported this week that only 20 state governors had approved the use of the federal ballot. Governor Dewey was one of the 28 governors refusing to accept it.
Introduced last April, the amendment has been permitted to lie dormant by Committee Chairman Theodore Francis Green (D-RI). Mr. Green and Senator Scott W. Lucas (D-IL) are its coauthors, as well as the coauthors of the original soldier vote bill.
San Francisco, California (UP) – (July 22)
Cdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota just returned from conquered Saipan Island, told a press conference today his only 1944 political activity will be to cast his absentee ballot in November from a Pacific war theater.
Asked if he planned to take any part in state or national campaigns, the 37-year-old former governor whose backers proposed him as a 1944 presidential candidate, replied “none whatsoever.”
Cdr. Stassen is assistant chief of staff and flag secretary to Adm. William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet.
Pennsylvanian grows in national stature
By Kermit McFarland
Chicago, Illinois – (July 22)
The slim, clipped-spoken gentleman from Missouri, Senator Harry S. Truman, who won the Democratic vice-presidential nomination here last night, brought both triumph and defeat to the Pennsylvania delegation.
Like the Republicans who were here before them, the Democrats from Pennsylvania won a certain amount of national standing by their operations at the convention.
Except that in the Republican Convention, the Pennsylvania job was done by one man, Governor Edward Martin, and there was an energetic unity of action within the delegation.
Badly split
The Democrats were badly, and in some respects bitterly, split. And it was a case of he who laughs last laughs best.
Democratic State Chairman David L. Lawrence, through the strong ties he has developed with DNC Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, tore off the last laugh. He supported Senator Truman for the nomination and was one of the half-dozen in the “inner circle” who mapped the skillful strategy which stampeded the convention for the Missouri Senator on the second ballot, although, ironically, it did not stampede his own delegation.
Deluge of telegrams
Earlier, Mr. Lawrence had been disappointed. At the first caucus, 41 delegates voted to support Vice President Henry A. Wallace for renomination.
But then as the Truman boom began to show its strength, there were indications that the delegation would break away from the CIO and Mr. Guffey and go at least half for Mr. Truman.
The CIO met this threat with a show of pressure. It arranged a deluge of telegrams from CIO locals back home – vigorous and in some cases peremptory telegrams which demanded the delegates support Mr. Wallace. These wires came in by the bunch.
CIO gallery
In addition, the CIO-PAC packed the galleries – attempting the same stunt which played such an important role in the nomination of Wendell Willkie at the Republican Convention of 1940. The telegrams and the howling galleries had the effect of stiffening some of the hesitant Truman backers, who resented the pressure.
But they also made other delegates apprehensive and as a result the hastily taken caucus just before the first ballot developed a slight gain in the delegation for Mr. Wallace.
Caught by surprise
The die was cast; the bandwagon was already rolling. But the Wallace delegates, under the spell of the “labor” threat, banked on a deadlock, at least for one more ballot. The rapidity with which other states cast off their favorite sons and climbed on the Truman bandwagon caught the Pennsylvania Wallace delegates by surprise and before they could get the standard to waving – signal for recognition from the rostrum – Mr. Truman had nearly 300 votes more than he needed to clinch the nomination.
Senator Guffey, grabbing the microphone from the delegation’s chairman, former Judge John H. Wilson of Butler, did finally offer a motion to make the Truman nomination unanimous. But since no result had been announced on the roll call, he was ruled out of order.
Consults backers
He hesitated and consulted with his backers while a few more states switched to the winner before he again asked for recognition so he could record all of Pennsylvania’s 72 votes for Mr. Truman.
Mr. Guffey was unable to conceal the humiliation that the Wallace defeat heaped on him.
When reporters sought a statement from him, he first snapped, “I moved to make the nomination unanimous, didn’t I? No other comment.”
Later he reconsidered and added:
I will be glad to support the ticket. Senator Truman is a good friend of mine. I though Wallace was stronger, but the convention differed with me.
As for Mr. Lawrence, he added considerably to his influence in national Democratic politics, for he was one of the half-dozen who engineered the Truman nomination.
Consumers advised to stock up now
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‘Needed for Japan,’ Forrestal says
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Pittsburgher helps slaughter eight
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance
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But all share in war guilt through greed, apathy or by direct will
By Ira Wolfert
Saint-Lô, France – (July 22)
The German prisoners we are taking in France fall into three main divisions.
First there is the Nazi from the occupied countries and the greatest proportion come from Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, White Russia, Georgia and the Baltic countries, however, are also represented.
Then there are the Germans who themselves seem to represent the “occupied” country, meaning old Germany and Austria. Last – and least – are the Nazis themselves: The Hitler Youth, the SS (Elite) troops and so forth.
The German High Command seems to be treating its subjected soldiers as it treats the Allies. Its Slavs, Czechs, Balts, Austrians and old-type Germans are treated as the Italians were treated in Africa. They are the expendables. They fight the rearguard actions when the gasoline is short, as it seems to be for the Germans here. They are given no gasoline with which to escape with their equipment. And when the shells are scarce, they are rationed very stringently among these members of the German armies.
Get puzzled look
Whenever we drive for anywhere these are the people we take first, and scattered among them, salting and firming them, are the proper Nazis – the hard, young, killer-type of men who have known no other adult life but one of war. These soldiers get a puzzled look when you ask them to think on what they have just gone through and see whether their idea of the glories of warfare is the same as the Nazi idea.
The fact that the old-type Germans – the non-politicals – are tired old men from a kind of Nazi-occupied country within Germany was made clear to me in numerous conversations I have had with prisoners, particularly during the last week when the fighting reached a considerable fury in this narrow sector.
What the Germans, which I saw taken, said was so nearly identical that they can almost be quoted as one. These Germans, on whom Nazification had not taken hold so deeply, are fed up with Hitler and the Nazis, but they do not know how safely to get rid of them. they are not yet desperate enough to turn their guns against the Nazis who have a hold on their heads.
They have no sense of guilt over having started the war, and, therefore, see no reason why any people should exact vengeance from them personally.
“We are a little people,” they say. I heard this continually in wheedling, whining tones. “What could we do about it?” They blame the death and destruction that has come finally to them too, along with the rest of the world, simply on the mysterious malevolence they refer to as the war, and not on Nazism.
The attitude of the incorrigible Nazis is still that the Führer cannot be wrong. They still insist there will be an offensive that will win the war for Germany, and soon there will be secret weapons suddenly unveiled – the Luftwaffe will rise again, there will be enormous guns, and then 10,000 years of Nazified peace.
Parrot-like tone
It is plain in most cases that the Nazis saying all this do not believe it themselves. What they are saying and talking by rote comes with a parrot-like tone in their voices and a blank look in their eyes.
It was odd to see these three types of Nazis come shuffling together out of the ruins of Saint-Lô. They, like the Americans who fought them there, hardly had heard of the town until a few weeks ago. Now Saint-Lô has been nearly levelled to the ground. The walls of structures that still remain stick up crazily like broken bones out of a pile of dead.
The Germans soldiers walked humbly along a road that smelled strongly of death. It was impossible to distinguish among the three types as they slogged along and it was hard to see why anyone should bother to distinguish among them. Whatever their plight at the moment, they had brought this on themselves and on the rest of the world.
It was they who had made the landscape gaunt – the non-German Nazis with their greed; the non-Nazi Germans with their apathy and tolerance of the Nazis; and the Nazis themselves by their direct will. They all seemed to be accomplices in the same terrible, shocking crime.
Knocked out tanks prove sharpshooting
By John M. Carlisle
With U.S. forces in Saint-Lô, France – (July 22)
There were five Nazi Tiger tanks knocked out. They stood idly nearby, battered and abandoned, in a sunken road behind the hedgerow where the company was resting back of the lines.
One of them was thrust in the hedgerow itself, a twisted hulk beyond repair. Some of the G.I. Joes stood around it, and most of them were smiling. They liked the deadly accuracy of our 75mm guns on our own tanks that had knocked out these Tigers a couple of days ago.
Pvt. William J. Rosen of Royal Oak, Michigan, said:
Our tanks made some sharpshooting direct hits on that old Tiger there. That, sir, was fancy shooting, very fancy. When I was doing defense work back home and working on the tank arsenal assembly line, I never dreamed our boys could shoot that well.
Hates snipers
Pvt. Rosen talked of the snipers upfront. He said:
I’m getting so I hate them. They pot away at us all the time. Then when they run out of ammunition, they climb down and surrender. One of them got four or five of our men before we got him.
Pvt. Rosen then pointed to a cabbage patch in the middle of the open field. He said, proudly:
There were 40 Jerries and their officers in one pocket there and one of the last things we did was wipe them out. Our artillery had them pinned down, firing into them and behind them. we pinned them down with rifle fire from the front. We never gave them a chance. Our artillery is all right, mate, better than all right.
Across the back hedgerow, in another field, Pvt. Casimer W. Przetacznik of Detroit was cleaning his rifle. His arms and hands were scratched from the thorns of the hedgerow, but they had healed. But the scars still showed.
Dives through hedgerows
He said:
I just dive through those hedgerows when we have fixed bayonets and are advancing. Sometimes the Jerries are on the other side. They always surrender when you get that close to them. I learned right off the bat not to go through any hedge openings. The Jerries have them zeroed in with mortars.
Nearby was Pvt. Russell L. Dornbush of Muskegon, Michigan, a platoon runner, who was helping some pals clean a heavy machine gun. They handled it with all the care that a watchmaker handles expensive watches.
He said:
It’s not just kidding up there. Those burp guns [Jerry automatic pistols that look like portable machine guns] are popping at you from the hedgerows all the time. A bullet from a burp gun hit my cartridge belt, right over my stomach. I guess I turned 30 colors of the rainbow and…
O’Connor, captured in 1940, escaped last fall
By L. S. B. Shapiro
With British and Canadian forces below Caen, France – (July 22)
Lt. Gen. Sir Richard Nugent O’Connor, commander of the tank forces that broke through into the area below Caen, paid high tribute to the assault formations that gained the original bridgehead and made it possible for him to gather his tanks for the battle that is now raging.
Gen. O’Connor told this correspondent shortly after he arrived:
Whatever the future may hold, there will be nothing to touch the beach landings and the seizure of the lodgment area.
The commander, looking fit and obviously happy to be in action again after confinement in an Italian prison camp for three years, spoke almost exclusively about the feat of the assault troops on D-Day when he was interviewed for the first time in France today.
Praises assault troops
He said:
I honestly do not believe there has been a greater military feat than that done by the assault formations. The Americans particularly had bad luck when they found a whole German division sitting on the beach where they landed and they fought their way through to take Cherbourg.
It was a magnificent show, the whole assault feat. Don’t let that be sidetracked by whatever the future may hold. There will be nothing to touch it.
Gen. O’Connor returned to action after a few months’ rest in England. He was a tank commander under Gen. Sir Archibald P. Wavell in the North African desert warfare of 1940 when he was captured. He escaped in Italy during the advance up the peninsula last October.
Not so good for tanks
I asked the general what his most vivid impression of fighting is now, as compared with four years ago.
He said:
Most striking to me is that I never have been the British Army so well trained and so fit as the forces in Normandy. As for the Germans, they still are very brave men, but they are stretched. I think it is significant that they didn’t attack our forces heavily during the first stormy days after the D-Day landings. Now they have brought their crack divisions into line instead of holding them as strategic reserves. Yes, I think they are badly stretched.
Looking over the country on which his tanks are fighting, he said:
Of course, this is altogether different from desert warfare. Wide outflanking movements by tanks such as we had in the desert is not easy here. The desert was the tank commander’s country.
End of European war seen by Christmas
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Candidate Roosevelt said:
I shall not campaign in the usual sense for the office. In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. Besides, in these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time.
Also, “I do not wish to appear in any way as dictating to the convention.”
But the record as developed in the Democratic Convention does not support Candidate Roosevelt’s words.
He arranged a military inspection trip, which conveniently took him through Chicago for a secret conference with convention leaders, and then proceeded to run the meeting by remote control.
The platform and vice-presidential choice were his own.
Before the convention, Mr. Roosevelt told his loyal friend and Vice President, Henry Wallace, to run – for the latter was unwilling to do so without his support. Mr. Wallace ran – and was killed off by a letter which damned him with faint praise.
Before the convention, Mr. Roosevelt also told his loyal friend and “deputy” president, Jimmy Byrnes, to run – and then nodded for his withdrawal after the convention was in session.
Backers of Mr. Wallace and Mr. Byrnes felt they had been double-crossed, and said so.
Another presidential letter was flashed approving Justice Douglas – but by that time the confused delegates looked on it as perhaps just a trick to divide the Wallace forces.
Another vice-presidential candidate, Senator Barkley, has also been given presidential approval in an open race – but also got the gate.
These various vice-presidential candidates, it developed, had all been mere scenery. Mr. Roosevelt’s handpicked national chairman, Hannegan, and the big-city bosses – Kelly of Chicago, Flynn of New York and Hague of New Jersey – had been told that the real choice was Senator Truman, and they put him over very neatly.
The record is that Mr. Roosevelt did dictate to the convention and did play partisan politics – despite his high-sounding assurances.
Regardless of the political hocus-pocus which led to Senator Truman’s nomination, he was the best available running mate.
On a statesmanship basis, Mr. Truman is “a first-rate second-rate man,” rather than a top flight potential successor in the White House – and, being an honest and modest person, he knows it. But he is excellent for the Roosevelt purpose, which is to pacify as many of the warring Democratic factions as possible.
Mr. Truman’s single asset was apparent but not real – his left-wing CIO support was in the fourth-term bag anyway. So, the same presidential hand that raised up the unpolitical Wallace in the unwilling convention of 1940, struck him down in 1944 because he was no longer useful.
But Mr. Truman is almost a complete campaign asset. Although originally sent to the Senate by the notorious Boss Pendergast, he has established an excellent Senate record. He has many political assets which will help pacify the smarting factions of a divided party.
Mr. Truman’s chief appeal to the public is his record as chairman of the Senate committee uncovering war contract frauds – “honesty in government,” and “the taxpayers and soldiers’ friend.” He has a good World War I record. He is not too old.
As an “average man,” he may be a campaign relief to many ordinary Democrats who are fed up with the unfailing cleverness and superior charm of the indispensable man. Also, Mr. Truman has no potent political enemies.
Maybe the humble but well-liked Truman can get more support for the Commander-in-Chief from his own political general staff and party field commanders, which he needs. Maybe that is the main reason that the best politician in the business – unless Mr. Dewey licks him – ditched half a dozen of his loyal friends in favor of Mr. Truman, who was not his friend and did not aspire to be Vice President or President.
First-hand story of Japanese attack on USS Quincy, Vincennes and Canberra
By Roger H. Wood
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Manila Bay hero awakens nation
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