Background of news –
Jap peace moves?
By Jay G. Hayden
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Poll: Public found pessimistic about jobs
Expect six million unemployed after war
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Perkins: Casey, battling for UMW, sure hits that ball
Lewis editor raps Hillman, Democrats
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Casey’s at the bat, and really swinging.
Casey is K. C. Adams, one of John L. Lewis’ favorite authors. He is editor of the United Mine Workers Journal, the official Lewis program, and in today’s issue, Casey really hits hard.
It is not difficult to detect that Casey and his Journal and the eyebrowed boss of the Miners’ Union are against:
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“Sidney Hillman, self-appointed head of the CIO Political Action Committee, with Roosevelt approval, which… changed its name to cover up its ‘Commie’ domination… Phil Murray…. Reduced to a stooge… at Hillman’s side.”
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“Marshall Field III, richest man in America, who imagines he can become a newspaperman by spending money on newspapers which hardly anybody reads.”
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“The Democratic Party running on its record… The Little Steel formula and all other devices intended to freeze the American workingman as a political servant of the New Deal Party.”
** The Democratic platform, which “doesn’t exactly claim the war is the private property of the Democratic Party, but does claim the Roosevelt administration saw the war coming and got ready for it. Naturally enough, the sinking of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor by the Japs in a surprise attack, and the destruction of most of our oil tankers on the Atlantic Ocean, are not included in the platform boast of foreseeing the war.”
GOP answer is yes
Casey also tells his constituents, the half-million miners and their families, that the Republican platform answer is “Yes” and the Democratic answer is “no,” on the issues of:
Unfreeze wages.
Unshackle labor from being frozen to the job.
Restore the Department of Labor to union labor.
Reorganize, consolidate and simplify government boards and bureaus handling labor relations, and administer the laws on a basis of equality.
From now until the November election, the same arguments will be hammered at the coal miners and their voting relatives in an endeavor to accomplish what Mr. Lewis failed to accomplish four years ago – their diversion from voting the Roosevelt ticket. In 1940, Mr. Lewis had only a few weeks in which to work actively and in the open; this year he has several months.
Not as vicious as AFL
The Mine Worker attacks on Sidney Hillman and the CIO-PAC are not quite as vicious as those directed at the Hillman organization by publicists for the American Federation of Labor, who go farther in alleging a Communist background.
While Mr. Lewis and his union have not been taken back into the AFL, there is an apparent political sympathy between them – with the difference that Mr. Lewis is openly anti-Roosevelt, the AFL uncommitted on him, but definitely anti-Hillman.
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Wooing conservatives?
Stokes: Bricker veers away from GOP platform
Foreign policy stand at odds with Dewey’s
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
The Republican Party is about to get itself in the positions of playing both sides of the street, which is nothing new in politics, and sometimes it pays dividends.
This was indicated in the press conference Governor Bricker, the vice-presidential candidate, held at Albany during his visit with Governor Dewey.
The Ohio Governor said he still stood by the speeches he made in his pre-convention campaign for the presidential nomination. That is consistency, but it would seem to put him in conflict with the party platform on some points of both domestic and foreign policy, according to many interpretations, though the Governor himself does not see it that way.
Opposes foreign alliances
Without going into details, it seems fairly clear that Governor Bricker was more conservative on domestic policy in his speeches than is the platform. And as for foreign policy, he has reiterated his adamant opposition to any sort of international police force which would seem to be suggested by the party platform in the vague phrase “peace forces.”
Also, he has been hazy about post-war international collaboration, and he opposes any sort of alliance or arrangement with the other powers, such as Governor Dewey has advocated as a first step in peace plans.
Whether intentionally or not, governor Bricker became the focus of such “nationalist” or “isolationist” forces as were present at the Chicago convention.
Takes definite stand
His leaning certainly seemed that way to anyone who has sat before him at press conferences in recent weeks, as I have, and heard his replies to questions treating all phases of post-war international policy. That was the general impression. Nor did he try to evade or dodge. He was forthright.
The inference is that he is willing to remain the section of the Republican ticket to which the isolationists can rally, while the presidential candidate and the platform point in another direction. Governor Dewey declined to be drawn into the discussion.
Significant of Governor Bricker’s general attitude was his reply to a question as to whether he would welcome the support of John L. Lewis for the Republican ticket.
All support ‘welcome’
He said:
We welcome all support of the Republican ticket. At least I do. That’s the way you win elections by getting votes. If they agree with you and vote for you, well and good.
He was then asked about Gerald L. K. Smith. “His vote will be counted, if he votes for the Republican ticket,” he replied.
The confusion created by this sort of attitude was illustrated by a dispatch from Detroit in which Mr. Smith was quoted as saying that Governor Bricker had said the Republicans would welcome America First support, which was not what the Ohio Governor had said. But it indicates what follows such statements.
Some payrollers sick of Roosevelt
Don’t like New Deal’s raw deal to Wallace
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
“For Roosevelt before Chicago,” a phrase which Jim Farley used in 1932 to test a Democrat’s loyalty to the incoming New Deal administration, has taken on new meaning here.
Many “idealistic” government employees, banned from politics by he Hatch Act and therefore not subject to quotation, were “for Roosevelt before Chicago” this year. But they find themselves wavering now.
“Before Chicago,” 1944, they never could have been convinced, they say, that President Roosevelt would scuttle Vice President Henry A. Wallace.
Wallace always loyal
One explained:
Why, he is the only loyal Vice President FDR ever had.
Jack Garner not only opposed the New Deal program, but actually was running against the President in 1940. Henry Wallace never has done anything but try to be a New Dealer and espouse the things which made this administration progressive.
His great personal loyalty was expressed in that Chicago convention speech in which he said: “Roosevelt is a greater liberal today than he ever has been. His soul is pure.”
Yet 24 hours later, Wallace was having his political throat cut. And the evidence indicates that President Roosevelt was in on the kill. Hus lukewarm letter endorsing Wallace, followed by the one to National Democratic Chairman Robert E. Hannegan saying that Senator Harry S. Truman would strengthen the ticket, are proof.
Wallace men made ill
Since the President chose the type of politics played by the Hannegans, Hagues, Kellys and Flynns, maybe they can put him over for a fourth term. Men of the Wallace type cannot be expected to help much.
They are sick at the stomach over the Chicago performance, and wonder whether their one-time hero would rather be President than be right.
Paper demands Dewey repudiate America-Firsters
Madison, Wisconsin (UP) –
The anti-New Deal Wisconsin State Journal said today it will be forced to withdraw its support for the Republican ticket unless Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the GOP presidential nominee, repudiates offers of assistance from America Firster Gerald L. Smith.
The State Journal published a copy of a telegram it sent to Mr. Dewey in which the newspaper said it was profoundly shocked by vice-presidential nominee John W. Bricker’s welcome of support from British.
The newspaper said it would be forced, reluctantly but certainly, to withhold from the GOP ticket any support in the November election unless Mr. Dewey immediately and publicly repudiates “such un-American assistance.”
In Washington –
Possibility of early Nazi collapse to spur post-war legislation
Reconversion problems will head calendar when Congress reconvenes next Tuesday
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OPA wins edge in rationing fight
WFA plan to change meat points delayed
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Major battle impending on Guinea coast
Trapped Japs make numerous forays
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Normandy, France – (by wireless)
Then I moved over to an ordnance evacuation company.
These men handle the gigantic trucks, the long low trailers and the heavy wreckers that go out to haul back crippled tanks and wrecked anti-tank guns from the battlefield.
The ordnance branch’s policy on these wrecking companies is that if they don’t have a casualty now and then, or collect a few shrapnel marks on their vehicles, then they’re not doing their job efficiently.
The job of an ordnance evacuation company is often frightening, although this company’s casualties have been amazingly low. In fact, they’ve had only four and it’s still a mystery what happened to them.
The four left one day in a jeep, just on a normal trip. They didn’t come back. No trace could be found. Three weeks later, two of them came in – just discharged from a hospital. On the same day a letter came from the third – from a hospital in England. Nothing yet has been heard from the fourth.
Can’t remember what happened
And the strange part is that neither the two who returned nor the one who write from England can remember a thing about it. They were just riding along in their jeep and the next thing they woke up in a hospital. All three were wounded, but how they didn’t know. Friends suppose it was a shell hit.
At any rate, a sergeant in charge of one section of the mammoth movers, known as M19s, took me around to see some of his crewmen. They all go by the name of “the Diesel Boys.”
Their vehicle is simply a gigantic truck with a long, skeletonized trailer behind.
Like all our Army over here they were strung out around the hedgerows of the field under camouflage nets, with the middle grassy fields completely empty.
My friend was Sgt. Milton Radcliff of Newark, Ohio. He used to be a furnace operator for the Owen Corning Fiberglass Company there. He and all the other former employees still get a letter every two weeks from the company, assuring them their jobs will still be there when they return. And Radcliff, for one, is going to take his when he gets back.
Sgt. Vann Jones of Birmingham, Alabama, crawled out of his tent and sat Indian fashion on the ground with us. On the other side of our pasture lay the silver remains of a transport plane that had come to a mangled despair on the morning of D-Day.
A funny country, France
It was a peaceful and sunny evening, quite in contrast to most of our days, and we sat on the grass and watched the sun go down in the east, which we all agreed was a hell of a place for the sun to be going down. Either we were turned around or France is a funny country.
The other boys told me later that Sgt. Jones used to be the company cook, but he wanted to see more action so he transferred to the big wreckers and is now in command of one.
There are long lulls when the retriever boys don’t have anything to do besides work on their vehicles. They hate these periods and get restless. Some of them spend their time fixing up their tents homelike, even though they may have to move the next day.
One driver even had a feather bed he had picked up from a French family. The average soldier can’t carry a feather bed around with him, but the driver of an M19 could carry 10,000 feather beds and never know the difference.
Proud of their company
The boys are all pretty proud of their company. They said they did such good work in the early days of the invasion that they were about to be put up for a presidential citation. But one day they got in a bomb crater and started shooting captured German guns at the opposite bank just for fun, which is against the rules, so the proposal was torn up. They just laugh about it – which is about all a fellow can do.
Cpl. Grover Anderson of Anniston, Alabama, is one of the drivers. He swears by his colossal machine but cusses it, too. You see the French roads are narrow for heavy two-way military traffic and an M19 is big and awkward and slow.
Anderson says:
You get so damn mad at it because convoys piled up behind you and can’t get around and you know everybody’s hating you and that makes you madder. They’re aggravating, but if you let me leave the trailer off, I can pull anything out of anywhere with it.
Cpl. Anderson has grown a red goatee which he is not going to shave off till the war is won. He used to be a taxi driver; that’s another reason he finds an M19 so “aggravating.”
“Because it hasn’t got a meter on it?” I asked.
“Or maybe because you don’t have any female passengers,” another driver said.
To which Brother Anderson had a wholly satisfactory G.I. reply. He said, … [REMAINDER OF COLUMN VOLUNTARILY CENSORED]
Capt. Trefethen: Prosperity, ruin follow South Sea war
Not all islands have rocked to bomb explosions
By Capt. Ellis M. Trefethen, North American Newspaper Alliance
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In and about filmland –
Selznick wants theater seats oiled for premiere; some are
By Erskine Johnson
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Wheeler urges federated Europe
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Wrong ballots sent servicemen
Sacramento, California (UP) –
California Secretary of State Frank M. Jordan charged today that California servicemen overseas have been issued federal war ballots for the November election before they have had a chance to receive state ballots.
Under federal law, the ballots should not be issued unless servicemen have certified they had applied for a state ballot and had not received it by Oct. 1.
Mr. Jordan said his office had been receiving from servicemen federal ballots for the November election, providing for choice only of President, Vice President, Senator and Representative. Some of the ballots were mailed even in advance of the Democratic National Convention, he said.
The ballots are not valid, Mr. Jordan added, and will be returned to the senders. Other states had reported receiving invalid ballots from servicemen overseas, he said.