Asiatic ‘Pittsburgh’ left battered
B-29s set huge fires at Anshan, Manchuria
By Walter Rundle, United Press staff writer
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Success in Pacific to cut U.S. submarine building
Men and women released from that job will get other shipbuilding work
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Yanks attack trapped Japs
Troops supported by fleet of planes
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Chinese repel Japs’ attack
Flamethrowers used against enemy
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Simms: Overoptimism could delay Nazis’ defeat
Allies have early victory within sight
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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Pro-Roosevelt Democrats on top in Texas
Foes promise battle in state convention
Dallas, Texas (UP) –
Pro-Roosevelt Democrats today retained control in a majority of Texas counties in which conventions were held last Saturday, but anti-fourth term forces apparently remained strong enough to put up a battle at the state convention here Sept. 12 when presidential electors are chosen.
At least 93 counties reporting elected pro-fourth-term delegates to the state convention, but 34 named anti-Roosevelt delegates and 41 voted to send uninstructed delegations to the Dallas meeting. Twenty-four counties did not hold conventions.
Fisticuffs, verbal battles and rump conventions marked the meetings in many counties, presaging a stormy session at the state meeting.
Conventions bolted
Several county conventions were bolted either by pro-Roosevelt or anti-Roosevelt Democrats and an anti-fourth-term group’s rump convention in Dallas was upset by Roosevelt-Truman followers. However, the anti-Roosevelt group obtained control of the Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston conventions.
The first open rupture occurred at the state convention in May when the anti-Roosevelt group succeeded in passing a resolution releasing the state’s electors from voting for the party candidate unless the two-thirds rule of nominating the President and Vice President was abolished, and the convention adopted a platform plank giving the states power to say who should vote in primary elections.
Fifth largest bloc
Neither of these demands was met at the national convention, and the anti-Roosevelt forces are attempting to get control of the state convention to carry out their threats.
Texas has 23 electoral votes, the fifth largest bloc in the country, and if the anti-fourth-term Democrats succeeded in naming the presidential electors, it would mean the loss of the state for Mr. Roosevelt, despite the fact that a majority voted for him. In a close election, this might prove catastrophic.
In Washington –
Both parties act for quick reconversion
War news better, Congressmen agree
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They want Truman
Washington (UP) –
Several members of the Senate War Investigating Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, have expressed the hope that Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO), the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, continue as chairman until after the elections, it was learned today. Senator Truman has announced he will resign his post tomorrow.
Fortune: The Eve of St. Mark’s is great love story of heroic soldier
Maxwell Anderson play adapted faithfully; Eythe, Anne Baxter
By Dick Fortune
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Editorial: Greetings, Mr. Dewey
Western Pennsylvania has long been a political progressive region.
The voters here were the first to turn against the highhanded methods of the Republican Old Guard. They were among the first in Pennsylvania to vote against Prohibition candidates and they led the parade to the New Deal when it first took office.
Throughout recent years, voters of this region have shown an increasing discrimination and independent in marking their ballots. More and more, they have demanded that their candidates for public office “show them something.”
This quite accurately could be called the region of the political pendulum.
Today, Western Pennsylvania welcomes, for the first time since his renomination, the Republican candidate for President, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
In choosing Pittsburgh for his first campaign appearance, Mr. Dewey, we think, picked a strategically sound place to begin. If he can convince local labor, business, agricultural and other leaders of his earnestness and abilities, he will have made an important start on his campaign for the White House.
Whether or not the Republican nominee can carry Allegheny and other Western counties in the November election will depend, to a great extent, on the campaign developments yet to come.
In any case, Pittsburgh is glad to see Mr. Dewey, Mrs. Dewey and the Governor’s political and official associates. Regardless of politics, the people here will hope that the New York Governor will find it possible to pay another visit to the city later in the campaign, when he is ready for addresses on the major issues of the election.
The CIO in politics –
Hillman leads drive to get out big vote in fall election
PAC urges its members to ‘help your fellow workers get registered’
By Blair Moody, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Normandy, France – (by wireless)
We drove slowly across the two pastures in the big M19 retriever truck with which our ordnance evacuation company was to pick up two crippled German tanks. The wrecker truck followed us. It was just after midnight.
We came to a lane at the far side of the pasture. Nobody was there to direct us. The officers had gone on ahead. We asked a sentry if he knew where the German tanks were, he had never heard of them. We shut off the motors and waited.
I think everybody was a little on edge. We certainly had American troops ahead of us, but we didn’t know how far. When things are tense like that, you get impatient of monkeying around. You want to get the job done and get the hell out of there.
We waited about 10 minutes, and finally a sergeant came back and said for us to drive on up the road about half a mile. He climbed on to direct us. Finally, we came to a barnyard and then very slowly backed on up the road toward the enemy lines. I stood on the steel platform behind the driver so I could see.
It was very dark and you could only make out vague shapes. Finally, one huge black shape took form at one side of the road. It was the first of the German tanks.
Anxious to get finished
Being tense and anxious to get finished, I hope our trick would take the first tank. But no. We passed by, of course, and went backing on up the road.
When you’re nervous you feel even 12 inches closer to the front is too much and the noise of your motor sounds like all the clanging of Hell, directing the Germans to you.
I knew it was foolish to be nervous. I knew there was plenty of protection ahead. And yet there are times when you don’t feel good to start with, you’re uncomposed and the framework of your character is off balance, and you are weak inside. That’s the way I was that night. Fortunately, I’m not always that way.
Finally, the dark shape of the second tank loomed up. Our officers and some men were standing in the road beside it.
A laymen would think all you have to do is to hook a chain to the tank and pull it out of the ditch. But we were there half an hour. It seemed like all night to me.
First it had to be gone over for booby traps. I couldn’t help but admire our mechanics. They knew these foreign tanks as well as our own.
One of them climbed down the hatch into the driver’s seat and there in the dark, completely by feel, investigated the intricate gadgets of the cockpit and found just what shape it was in and told us the trouble. It seemed that two levers at the driver’s seat had been left in gear and they were so bent there was not room to shift them out of gear. After some delay a crowbar finally did the trick.
Meanwhile, we stood in a group around the tank, about a dozen of us, just talking. Shells still roamed the dark sky but they weren’t coming as near as before.
Loud noises bother Ernie
There would be lulls of many minutes when there was hardly a sound but our own voices. Most everybody talked in low tones, yet in any group there’s always somebody who can’t bear to speak in anything less than foghorn proportions.
And now and then when they’d have to hammer on the tank it sounded as though a boiler factory had collapsed. I tried to counteract this by not talking at all. Finally, we started.
Slowly we ground back down the road in low gear with our great, black, massive load rolling behind us. We’d planned to pull it a long way back. Actually, we pulled it only about half a mile, then decided to put it in a field for the night.
When we pulled into a likely pasture the sentry at the hedgerow gate wanted to know what we were doing and we told him, “Leaving a German tank for the night.”
And the sentry, in a horrified voice, said, “Good God, don’t leave it here. They might come after it.” But leave it there we did, and damn glad to get rid of it, I assure you.
We drove home in the blackout, watching the tall hedgerows against the lighter sky for guidance. For miles the roads were as empty and silent as the farthest corner of a desert. The crash of the guns grew welcomely dimmer and dimmer until finally everything was nearly silent and it seemed there could be only peace in Normandy.
At last, we came to our own hedgerow gate. As we drove in the sentry said, “Coffee’s waiting at the mess tent.” They feed 24 hours a day in these outfits that work like firemen.
But my sleeping bag lay unrolled and waiting on the ground in a nearby tent. It was 3:00 a.m. With an almost childish gratitude at being there at all, I went right to bed.
Pegler: The wrong man
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
I have just come away from the mirror and what do you know? The Republicans nominated the wrong man in Chicago.
Height six feet something, weight 180, clean-shaven, except on weekend, with a distinguished tough of gray at the temples, gay, witty, popular, lovable and just the right age, 50 next month, if not any too bright.
So, they had to pick a little guy with an eyebrow mustache with not a gray hair in his head and a serious preoccupation with the problems of national government who doesn’t try to wow them with gags at his press conference and won’t be 43 until after election.
These deficiencies are being exploited rather importantly against Mr. Dewey who doubtless will be called Tom Thumb before long if he hasn’t been so-called already, and some of the objections from the direction of Sidney Hillman’s Communist front are enough to make a person check back to make sure whether our fellow is a candidate for the Presidency or the police department.
They are particularly about such things in the cops. Their minimum height would disqualify Mr. Dewey.
Roosevelt offers contrast
Mr. Roosevelt, by contrast, is a big, limousine job, above six feet even now, and back in the early 1920s when he ran for Vice President there were fight managers in town who would have been glad to take him over, knock five years off his age and throw him in there for a shot at the heavyweight title. True, Dempsey would have taken a bead on his chin and knocked him into the dollar seats.
Another one who outscores Mr. Dewey in height, stance and looks is poor old Paul McNutt, who has found himself behind the eight ball ever since Mr. Big first got elected in 1932. There is a nice guy who, by force of circumstances, was compelled to waste his own chances serving the career of the very man who blocked his own ambition.
Mr. McNutt is a picture politician and one of his old managers admitted back around 1936 that he was practically all looks but was figuring to do a lot with him just the same.
This Hoosier politician was talking over the field one day, along toward convention time, and said that but for Mr. Roosevelt, his gut would be worth a fortune on the hoof.
I yelled:
McNutt! Why the Republicans could beat him with Hoover! All they would have to do would be to drag out his record as a lower-case Huey Long when he was Governor.
A real ‘show horse’
The Hoosier said:
Oh, I know all about that. I don’t figure to really run him for President. The mug couldn’t run a lick but he is a hell of a show horse, just the same. With that white hair and those dark eyes and I could so us a lot of good in the convention if the big guy would get out of the way.
I don’t want to be dirty to the Communists but, if it comes to a matter of height and the way a candidate landscapes his lip in this campaign, I wonder how they figure on squaring themselves with their boss. Because little Joe isn’t any taller standing up than Roosevelt is sitting down, and that tangle of hair-combings that he wears would make a good start toward stuffing a sofa.
He put on long pants for the first time when he went to Tehran and before that he always wore those stovepipe boots which, as any military stylist will tell you, are used more to create an illusion of height than to ward off rattlers.
They certainly must be affectation of vanity in a man with a desk job such as Joe’s because they are hard to get on and off and they murder your feet.
So, if Mr. Dewey had to sit on a dictionary to see over that big desk in Albany, Stalin could keep house in a drawer of the same desk and La Guardia couldn’t get into the chair without a ladder.
Anyway, the Commies should be the last to rib Mr. D. about this size. That Hillman, himself, is no Carnera and moreover they are always hollering up their great love for the little people of the USA. This sounds as though they are against little guys.
Stokes: Governor Dewey isn’t on a barnstorming trip; he’s out to line up those 26 GOP states
He’s out to learn views of voters
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
26 Republican governors control the states in black in this map. These states represent 345 electoral votes, many more than the 226 votes necessary to win. Republican governors control the political machinery in these states and that is what Governor Dewey is going after in his first political tour.
Governor Thomas E. Dewey is on a unique mission in this quest for the Presidency in this tour which takes him to St. Louis for a conference with 25 other Republican governors.
Though he is showing himself to the people here and there, as in Pittsburgh today, this is no barnstorming, speech-making campaign swing. It is strictly a business affair. It comprises, first, political organization, and second, consultation with politicians and spokesmen of various economic groups to learn what issues most concern the voters this year.
Governor Dewey and his managers are trying to profit from the mistakes of the 1940 Republican presidential campaign. Wendell L. Willkie paid but meager attention to politicians and political organizations.
Governor Dewey has proved himself adept at political organization. On this trip, he is seeing the political managers on their home ground. Meanwhile, he is holding his fire on campaign issues pending further survey and study.
Some of the latter he is doing on this trip, beginning in Pittsburgh today in conferences with representatives of labor, farm and business groups, as well as with local political leaders. This he will continue at Springfield, Illinois, tomorrow and at St. Louis.
The climax of this first campaign venture is, of course, his two-day conference with the other Republican governors. Utilization of the Republican governors in this campaign is generally recognized as the smartest political coup so far of this year’s campaign in either party.
It may pay substantial dividends. The 26 states represent 345 electoral votes, many more than the 226 votes necessary to win. Republicans control the political machinery in these states, which is an initial advantage, particularly if there is a light presidential vote this November. Governor Dewey’s endeavor is to steam up the governors to get their machinery in smooth working order.
He also has another objective, aside from purely political organization mechanics.
This is to utilized the governors in pushing what Mr. Dewey seemingly expects to develop into a major issue, that is, recovery for the states of some of the powers yielded up, or appropriated, in recent years to the federal government. This offers an introduction to the issue of federal bureaucracy, for the big federal mechanism has been built up to administer functions formerly reserved to the states.
The governors are in a position to present this story in a practical fashion that would have more meaning than mere shouts about the bureaucracy arising from so many campaign stumps in recent years.
Most of the Republican governors have recognized that the big social and economic problems of today require federal supervision, coordination, and in many cases financial help, particularly post-war readjustments, but they also hold that local, decentralized administration is most healthful, effective and economical.
G.I. Bill’s loan provisions still tangled in red tape
Only a few of one and a quarter million eligible veterans benefitting now
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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Mrs. Luce hints she may not run
Connecticut quarrel in GOP is cited
Hartford, Connecticut (UP) –
Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT), glamor Congresswoman, is unwilling to seek reelection unless a rift between Kenneth Bradley, her political adviser, and Governor Raymond Baldwin is patched up, her friends reported today.
Mr. Bradley resigned over the weekend as chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, saying he did so at the insistence of Governor Baldwin. He was to step down from the chairmanship Aug. 8.
Republicans, perturbed by the warfare in the state party leadership, appealed to Samuel F. Pryor Jr., Connecticut’s ranking Republican, to bring Mr. Bradley and the Governor together in the interest of the Dewey-Bricker ticket.
CIO endorsement of attorney Margaret Connor of Bridgeport, for the Democratic Congressional nomination, was viewed by political observers as giving Mrs. Luce no better than a 50-50 chance of reelection since Bridgeport, an industrial city, has the largest vote in the district.
Appeal for labor support
Mrs. Luce appealed for labor support on the basis of her labor vote in Congress, but was snubbed because of her outspoken criticism of President Roosevelt.
Friends quoted Mrs. Luce that Mr. Bradley’s resignation might be the signal for her retirement from Congress, adding that if she retired, she would make a nationwide speaking tour on behalf of the Dewey-Bricker campaign.
Bradley praised
She said Mr. Bradley, who induced her to run for Congress two years ago, was “a wise and experience campaigner whose leadership has helped put six Congressmen and a governor [Baldwin] into office.”
She said:
Judging from the comment which has reached me, it seems unlikely that the organization will accept his resignation on the eve of the crucial national election. The acceptance of it would be a sign of disunity and factionalism in the Republican organization, and to that extent it would make the task of everyone running for office in this state much more difficult.