America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

9625

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Somewhere in Normandy, France – (by wireless)
One afternoon a couple of soldiers came around our camp to tell me about the strange, experience that had just happened to them. They were brothers, and the night before they had run onto each other for the first time in more than two years.

They are Cpl. John and Pvt. Edward O’Donnell of East Milton, Massachusetts. John is an artilleryman and has been overseas more than two years, all through Africa and Sicily. Edward has been overseas only a couple of months. John is 22 and Edward, 19.

The first Edward knew his brother was in the vicinity was when he saw some soldiers, wearing the patch of John’s division, getting ready to take a bath at an outdoor shower the Army had set up.

He asked them where the division was and then began a several hour hunt for his brother. John was attending an Army movie set up in a barn when Edward finally tracked him down. They sent in word for John to come out. When he got about half way out and saw who was waiting he practically knocked everybody out of their chairs getting to the back.

Their commanding officers gave them the next day off and they just roamed around with their tongues wagging – talking mostly about home.

*Ernie meets Pvt. Pyle

That same afternoon another soldier came by to say hello because his name is the same as mine. He is Pvt. Stewart Pyle of Orange, New Jersey. He is the driver in a car company, and now and then he gets an assignment to drive some very high officers. At least that will give him something to talk about to his grandchildren.

Pvt. Pyle is married and has been overseas nine months. Try as we might, we couldn’t establish any relationship. That might have been due to the fact that my name isn’t Pyle at all, but Count Sforzo Chef DuPont D’Artagnan.

Our family sprang from a long line of Norman milkmaids. We took the name Pyle after the Jones murder cases in 1739 – January, I think it was. My great grandfather built the Empire State Building. Why am I telling you all this?

Department of Wartime Distorted Values – The other day a soldier offered to trade a French farmer three horses for three eggs. The soldier had captured the horses from the Germans. The trade didn’t come off – the farmer already had three horses.

And – at one of our evacuation hospitals the other day, a wounded soldier turned over 90,000 francs, equivalent to $1,800. He’d picked them up in a captured German headquarters. The Army is now in the process or looking up regulations to see whether the soldier can keep the money.

Paratrooper chaplains first

In the very early days of the invasion, I said in this column that Capt. Ralph L. Haga of Prospect, Virginia, claimed to be the first chaplain ashore on D-Day.

Well, I got into trouble over that, because he wasn’t. If I’d had any sense, I would have known better myself. The first chaplains on the beachhead were those who jumped with the paratroopers and there were a batch of them – I believe 17, altogether. They were in Normandy hours before Chaplain Haga touched the beach.

As one bunch of paratroopers wrote me, “Our chaplains had already rendered their first consolation service in France before Capt. Haga got his feet wet.” So all credit where credit is due.

One afternoon several weeks ago, I went into Cherbourg with an infantry company and one of the doughboys gave me two cans of French sardines they’d captured from the Germans.

Right in the midst of battle is a funny place to be giving a man sardines, but this is a funny war. At any rate, I was grateful and I put them in my musette bag when I got back to my tent that night. I forgot all about them.

The reason I mention it now is that last night I got a hungry spell, and was rummaging around in the bag for candy or something and ran onto these sardines. They tasted mighty good.

9626

americavotes1944

pegler

Pegler: Press propaganda

By Westbrook Pegler

St. Louis, Missouri –
At this distance it is possible to examine more clearly specimens of propaganda which, amid the general clamor of continentalism on the Eastern Seaboard, are indistinct noises in the campaign.

I should like to discuss a United Press dispatch published in today’s St. Louis Star-Times, a highly beholden New Deal paper and not Red, nor even pink, but of that pale orange hue which comes of mixing a very little red with a liberal splash of another primary color.

The UP reported that Russell Davenport would not support Tom Dewey for the Presidency.

Not one American in 100,000 ever has heard of Russell Davenport. He is identified as the editor of Fortune, which sells by subscription only for $10 a year and thus can hardly be called a well-known magazine. Mr. Davenport is qualified as a quoteworthy person because he was a “close associate” of Wendell Willkie in 1940.

“Millions of other Republicans will find it necessary to make that decision,” not to support Mr. Dewey, Mr. Davenport was enabled to say on crowded press wires and on scarce white paper, as though this man had a recognized right to speak for multitudes.

Represents no party

But has he? He represents no party. Even in the 1940 campaign, he had no position in the Republican Party. He was, at most, a sleeve-puller for a personal hero. Such advertisement as he has had, was derived from this association and the fact that he is the husband of Marcia Davenport who wrote some books.

Yet, by exercise of the suave effrontery of the con man who greets the sucker with a booming “Well, if it isn’t my old friend, Joe Butch,” the unsuspecting victim is given to feel that he really does know Russell Davenport. For the moment, through his own stupidity, he just can’t place him.

Mr. Davenport announced his decision at a forum of the newly-organized New York Liberal Party. The reader is too proud to admit that he doesn’t know what the Liberal Party is. It is what the Communists call a fraction, or ideological offshoot, of the Communist Party.

The American Labor Party, or Communist Party, now controlled by Frank Roosevelt’s henchman, Sidney Hillman, advocates the Russian type of dictatorship. Mr. Davenport’s friends of the Liberal Party prefer the Hitlerian type of dictatorship, but, of course, without antisemitism.

Both groups agree, however, on all the essentials of totalitarian rule. They agree further on Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy, and their only discord is a personal rivalry between Mr. Hillman and David Dubinsky of the Garment Workers’ Union, refugees both, who found here privilege, luxury and safety, but never have liked the way the Americans run their country.

No objection to persecution

Neither group has the slightest objection to persecution, of itself. Violence against American workers refusing to join a union, or to strike on the orders of union dictators, no less savage than the brutalities of Hitler’s Brownshirts, has left them calm.

Hideous slanders against decent Americans equivalent to Der Führer’s filthy anti-Jewish propaganda, is their common repartee. They force Americans who detest their ideas and candidates to attend their political rallies and contribute to their campaign funds.

Mr. Davenport announced his decision about the time that the primary returns revealed the nomination of Republican Ham Fish and Vito Marcantonio of the Communist front.

He said:

For weeks, Dewey resisted efforts to draw from him a repudiation of Ham Fish on the basis of his obstruction of attempts to prepare the country for war.

Mr. Marcantonio voted against every “attempt to prepare the country for war,” until Hitler attacked Russia. His Communist cohorts violently obstructed such efforts in the war plants. Mr. Fish’s obstruction consisted of his single vote in Congress. Mr. Marcantonio changed when Russia was attacked. Mr. Fish changed instantly when the United States was attacked.

Mr. Dewey did repudiate Mr. Fish. Mr. Roosevelt has not repudiated Mr. Marcantonio.

Yet here a political nobody is presented as a man of standing and a spokesman for millions in a dispatch from a reputable news agency, thus endowing him with a completely fictitious importance.

9627

americavotes1944

Editorial: By the CIO and for the CIO

Right while the CIO is starting the biggest campaign in union history to gain control of federal and state governments, one of its chief leaders has revealed how CIO officials regard public office when they hold one.

R. J. Thomas, president of the United Auto Workers, which with more than a million members is the largest CIO union, is also a member of the War Labor Board.

This is one of the most important of the agencies set up to prosecute the war – and its membership is based on that newfangled formula of equal division between representatives of labor, business and the public.

The idea, of course, is that these men of differing experience and viewpoint will be able to combine their talents and backgrounds best to serve the nation as a whole.

But Mr. Thomas does not regard his War Labor Board membership as a public service. Testifying in a New York trial, he candidly declared that he considers it a union responsibility and not a federal service.

“I am there to represent labor,” he said, and added that he thought it is his special duty “to nominate only CIO members to serve on WLB panels.”

Although paid $25 a day plus expenses for WLB service, Mr. Thomas said he didn’t regard WLB membership as “federal service or a federal job.” He is still working for the union even when Uncle Sam pays the bill.

The CIO, through its Political Action Committee, is now setting out to collect millions of dollars for political activity in the coming campaign.

“I hope we can get $25 million,” said David J. McDonald, its national finance chairman, before a meeting of 300 CIO representatives called to organize the Pennsylvania branch.

Mr. McDonald continued:

The more we spend, the better Congress we will have. The more we spend in Pennsylvania, the better state legislature we will have.

Treasurer McDonald made it plain that the organization of which he is financial head is working on the old theory that everything has its price – including Congress and legislatures.

And Mr. Thomas made it plain that as head of the biggest CIO union he operates on the theory that you’ll still working for the CIO even when you fill a public position on the public payroll.

The two theories joined together make an interesting explanation of how the CIO leadership would regard the government should it gain control of it by being the heaviest spender in a national campaign.

There is more than the Presidency involved in this vast, well-financed campaign by a single labor organization to gain control of the government.

Mr. McDonald made this quite plain by his reference to Congress and the Legislature.

The Presidency is far distant from the average man and woman. But the laws under which they live, the agencies and bureaus which enforce and interpret those laws, the county and ward and precinct bosses who are in power – all these are very close to the citizen in his everyday life. They are among the direct – perhaps the most desired – objectives of the CIO-PAC.

It wants CIO members or those who are dominated by the CIO in power – not for broad and even-handed public service, but directly to serve the CIO, as Mr. Thomas so plainly testified.

This is a campaign by a single labor group to elevate itself above all other groups – to initiate government of the people by the CIO and for the CIO.

9628

Editorial: Flank in Brittany

…

9629

americavotes1944

Editorial: On the right track

We’ll have more to say about the St. Louis conference of Republican governors, under the leadership of presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, when we see the complete result of their deliberations. Meanwhile, it seems to us, the six reports they made yesterday were a good start in their effort to define clear “areas of responsibility” between the states and the federal government.

Criticism of the trend toward federal centralization which has been so marked in the last 11 years will be most effective, we think, if it emphasizes the truth that concentration of power in Washington leads inevitably to confusion, duplication of effort, waste, inefficiency, and invasion of legitimate and necessary local rights. This, as the governors are pointing out, has been happening in many fields, and nowhere more strikingly than in the matter of increasing federal ownership of land.

9630

americavotes1944

Heath: ‘Little Steel’ formula may be scrapped by FDR

By S. Burton Heath

Mr. Heath visited Pittsburgh last Monday when Governor Dewey was here. This column is the result of his visit. Peter Edson, who regularly writes the Washington Column, is on vacation.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania –
The subject did not come up publicly white Republican presidential candidate Dewey was here. But it is a pretty safe bet that one topic that business visitors brought up, in their private conference with Mr. Dewey, was the steelworkers’ wage negotiations.

There are many here who feel very certain, off the record, that the demand of Phil Murray’s union for a 17-cents-an-hour raise will go to President Roosevelt about mid-October and will be decided between then and Election Day. In that case they expect that the steel workers will get a raise of from five to ten cents an hour – which would bust the stabilization program wide open.

The background is this, in brief:

Most of the contracts were “open end.” That is to say, they were perpetual until a specified notice of intention to terminate them had been given. Such notice was given last year and the unions now are working in effect without a contract.

May find subterfuge

President Roosevelt assured Mr. Murray that if the men kept at work under the terms of the old contract, any increases granted within the limitations of the stabilization formula would be made retroactive. That, in the words of one observer, was “doubletalk.” There can be no raises within the limitations of the stabilization formula. Any raise, however small, breaks through the formula.

But the union people do not think that the President promised such a thing to no powerful an organization of his strongest supporters without intending to make good in some fashion. One way would be to find a subterfuge by which the men could be paid for something they do now without pay – such as going into the mill, punching the clock and walking to their posts of duty.

The importance of the steel wage negotiations is evidenced by the time and labor that have been devoted to it already. There have been almost five months of public hearings, completed in mid-July, before a fact-finding panel of the WLB, during which around a million words of testimony were recorded in some 4,000 pages of stenographic transcript.

The case is important because it was in the steel industry that the stabilization formula for wages – a cost of living adjustment of 15 percent above the scale for Jan. 1, 1941 – was evolved.

Formula broken

That formula has been broken in a number of instances on the theory that an adjustment was being made in favor of the previously underprivileged. No such excuse can be made in steel, because the formula assumes either that steelworkers were not discriminated against or that the cost-of-living adjustment relieved any discrimination.

If the President concedes anything here, it will mean that he, personally, will have discarded the Little Steel Formula. In the opinion of many, that would mark the end of any firm, realistic struggle against inflation.

Nevertheless, few believe that he will be able to resist. After all, Mr. Murray is not only head of the steelworkers; he is head of the whole CIO. The CIO sponsored and finances the Political Action Committee, which is so influential in Democratic circles that top party and administration leaders from Vice President Wallace down sneaked up fire escapes to get Sidney Hillman’s okay on what they planned or wanted to do at the Democratic National Convention.

Dewey filled in

It is considered doubtful whether the case can be kept from the President until after election – whether, if the race is close, he will dare go to the polls with the Murray union’s demands undecided. Nor do realists think that, two weeks or a month before Election Day, he will send the union away empty-handed.

Pennsylvania being a doubtful state with the second highest electoral vote in the country, the implications of this situation are important to the Republicans. It is pretty much a certainty that Governor Dewey has been given a fill in, so that he can be prepared, when the time comes, to make all possible capital out of whatever course the President may take.

9631

Ferguson: D-Day sailor

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

…

9632

Bay State gives edge to Roosevelt

52% for President, over Dewey
By George Gallup. Director, American Institute of Public Opinion

…

9633

americavotes1944

New Deal promoting industrial strife, GOP governors claim

Administration accused of mishandling welfare agencies, usurping state rights

St. Louis, Missouri (UP) –
The Republican Governors Conference concluded its work today with final reports charging the New Deal with chaotic administration of welfare agencies and arbitrary handling of labor problems in a manner tending to promote industrial strife.

Under the leadership of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, the governors submitted the last of their bill of particulars challenging the Roosevelt administration in the form of five reports and a statement of conclusions. Mr. Dewey said the action of himself, vice-presidential candidate Governor John W. Bricker, and the 24 other GOP executives was unanimous in all instances.

With the conference out of the way, Mr. Dewey began today a series of conferences with Missouri politicians and representatives of other groups. He will entrain for New York this evening, ending a one-week, three-state campaign organization tour which led through Pennsylvania and Illinois to the banks of the Mississippi.

14 domestic issues

The five reports today completed the conference agenda of 14 domestic issues in which the GOP cited conflict between state and federal interests in a broad field of governmental relationships and demanded greater scope and responsibility for local government.

Today’s reports dealt with social welfare, education and public health; public expenditure; labor, water resources; and state-federal tax coordination.

Charging the administration with inefficient and arbitrary approaches to labor problems, the governors demanded “an immediate and drastic change in the spirit and methods of administration of these [labor] laws.”

They objected to a general policy of federal collection of tax funds to be shared with the states and said “taxes must be simplified and reduced after the war is won.”

The governors hit at the Wagner-Murray Bill to provide medical care for the population generally with a federal subsidy.

There is too much duplication of state and federal effort, the governors said in discussing public expenditures, and they called for action to make “the cost of government fit the American pocketbook.”

Ask powers for states

In three reports issued last night the governors demanded continued state control of the insurance business, return of the public employment service to state administration and the freeing of agriculture from “the unreliable controls and whimsical restraints that now hamper production.” Six reports were issued early yesterday.

The administration, the governors charged, is using the public employment service to extend its political power over labor.

In their conclusion made public today, the governors complained that the federal government has not been attentive to the needs of all parts of the country for lack of personal contact between the President and the governors.

9634

americavotes1944

Bricker speaks Sept. 9

Columbus, Ohio –
Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential nominee, said today he will make his first campaign speech at Indianapolis Sept. 9 before the Indiana Newspaper Association.

9635

Texan finds new polio treatment

…

Circulation of cash hits new peak

Money in use jumps to near $23 billion

…

9636

Farm report shows –
U.S. better fed now than in any other war

Trend is toward higher priced foods
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer

…

9637

How G.I. Bill of Rights works –
Servicemen faring better than World War I veterans

Men still on active duty already have benefits it took fathers 25 years to win
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

…

Big ports to aid in Allied drive

…

9638

Maj. Williams: U.S. air strength

By Maj. Al Williams

…

9639

X plus Y plus Z equals Q; that will stop robots!

…

9640

Williams: It’s hard to give up on Yankees, but they must get help to win

By Joe Williams

…

9641

Jive tunes go to battle with U.S. troops

Latest hits heard in tanks
By Si Steinhauser

…

9642

‘Tank-dozer’ aids Normandy Yanks

Washington (UP) –
The Allied battle through the hedgerows of Normandy was aided by a new U.S. Army “tank-dozer” equipped with a powerful blade that can snap or push over trees up to 18 inches in thickness, the War Department revealed today.

The tank-dozer had a huge 3½-ton bulldozer blade mounted on an M4 Sherman tank, combining the terrific work power of one and the striking power and protection of the other. In Normandy, it was used to slash passages through earth walls and hedgerows where Nazi soldiers had taken cover to oppose Allied attackers with machine guns, mortar and tank fire.

9643

Senate group lays shortage to distillers

Says hoarding practice hurts public’s purse

…

Police spread net for three gunmen

Service deserters terrorize whole area

…

9644

americavotes1944

CIO-PAC causes split in ranks of organized labor

Rebuffs come from all sides and labor movement is worried over outcome of stand

Few political ventures in recent years have aroused the intense interest caused by the CIO Political Action Committee, and its effort in the 1944 elections – and few have so completely split the ranks of organized labor.

Both the American Federation of Labor and the United Mine Workers Union, in their national publications, have rebuffed the PAC.

Railway papers caustic

Most biting of all labor comment, however, has come from the weekly publication of the railway brotherhoods, Labor. In an editorial entitled “Mr. Hillman’s Fantastic Proposal,” that paper declares flatly the PAC will “strengthen the hands of organized labor’s foes, and increase the demand for more rigid regulation of labor unions.”

Because of the great interest in the PAC, and because the Labor editorial has been discussed but briefly in articles published here, the text of the editorial is reprinted today:

Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, is chief director of the CIO’s political activities. In order to comply with the provisions of the Smith-Connally Bill, he proposes to operate through two committees, one made up of members of the CIO and the other of citizens who sympathize with the CIO’s objectives.

Mr. Hillman says that each of these committees will have a campaign fund of $3 million. That’s a total of $6 million. In addition, he proposes to “freeze” what is left of a fund of $700,000 raised influence this year’s primaries.

Never before attempted

Never has any group in the labor movement attempted to raise such huge sums for political purposes. for example, the Standard Railroad Labor Organizations, which during the last 25 years have been more active in the political field than any other labor group, have never spent in any campaign as much as one half of one percent of the amount Mr. Hillman says he and his associates will throw into the 1944 campaign in order to reelect Mr. Roosevelt and members of Congress approved by the CIO.

Parenthetically, it might be pointed out that the CIO “tests” for candidates are not trade union “yardsticks,” and frequently emphasize issues of no direct concern to the working man.

As a consequence, candidates with good labor records are being viciously and even viciously opposed by the CIO, while candidates with comparatively poor labor records are ardently approved by the CIO.

Labor movement worried

However, that is a comparatively minor issue. What concerns us at the moment is Mr. Hillman’s proposal to raise great slush funds to carry the coming election.

Coupled with Mr. Hillmans open alliance with the Communists in New York States and elsewhere, we have a situation which is full of ominous possibilities for the entire labor movement.

No fair-minded American can question the right of workers to organize for political purposes and to ardently support their friends and oppose their enemies.

However, if Mr. Hillman, or anyone else, imagines that a proposal to raise $6 million to control a presidential campaign will not cause the most serious repercussions from one end of this country to the other, he simply does not know the American people.

Inevitably Mr. Hillman’s program will strengthen the hands of organized labor’s foes and increase the demand for more rigid regulation of labor unions.

If only the CIO were affected by such hostile popular reaction, we might shrug our shoulders and say, “It’s none of our business.” Unfortunately, while the great majority of trade unionists have no interests in or sympathy for Mr. Hillman’s grandiose plan, the entire labor movement is likely to feel the sting of popular disapproval.

Reds dominate organization

Mr. Hillman’s alliance with the “Reds” is also a matter of moment to all trade unionists. For years, AFL unions were plagued by Communist efforts to penetrate their ranks. There were successfully resisted, but only after long and bitter and costly struggles.

Now, with the approval of the CIO, Mr. Hillman has thrown the doors wide open to the “Reds.” They dominate his political organization. They write the propaganda the CIO circulates in political campaigns. They will direct the expenditure of the millions Mr. Hillman proposes to raise for this campaign.

Labor seriously questions if Hillman’s tactics will aid the Roosevelt-Truman ticket. It is much more likely to injure it. But whatever the effect may be on the presidential campaign, Labor fears the consequences may be most disturbing to the regular labor movement. Therefore, it seems advisable to repudiate Mr. Hillman’s unprecedented program at the very beginning.