America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

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americavotes1944

Roosevelt to report –
Plans for new drive on Japs may be given

Gains in Pacific exceed hopes

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, in his promised report to the American people, may reveal the broad outlines of the Beat-Japan strategy he drafted in conferences with Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz.

Dispatches released yesterday, telling of Mr. Roosevelt’s visit to Hawaii to inspect the men and munitions fighting the Japs and to confer with military chieftains, said he planned to report soon on his trip, probably in a radio speech. No other indication was given as to time or place.

To quicken pace

The Pacific War has been going better recently than even the most optimistic had dared hope while the grand smash at Germany was in progress.

Mr. Roosevelt’s optimism in Honolulu seemed to reflect belief that the pace against the Japs can be quickened even more.

No details of any new strategy will be permitted to leak out until after it has been put into effect, of course.

But it was recalled that Adm. Nimitz has spoken previously about driving straight across the Pacific to the China coast and establishing a beachhead there, while Gen. MacArthur’s oft-stated aim is to lead conquering Allied forces back into the Philippines and to proceed thence with defeating Japan. The two plans have doubtless been fitted hand-in-glove.

To emphasize Pacific

In Washington, members of Congress who have long charged that the Pacific War was not being accorded proper relative importance, viewed Mr. Roosevelt’s Hawaiian trip as portending increased emphasis on and speedier prosecution of that phase of the global conflict.

In general, Congressional comment was divided pretty much along party lines. Acting House Democratic Leader Robert Ramspeck (D-GA) hailed the trip as indicating “that even bigger blows are to be struck against the Japs in the future.”

But Rep. Paul W. Shafer (R-MI) viewed it as strictly a vote-getting move. He said:

The President knows the war in Europe is about to collapse but he needs a war to direct so he can win the election.

Has good news

If Mr. Roosevelt does take the occasion of his forthcoming report to review the Pacific War, he will have much good news to report. He can recall the mighty Superfortress raids in Japan’s homeland, the latest carried out only yesterday; the speedy contest of Saipan, Tinian, Guam and other islands, and Gen. MacArthur’s steady march back toward the islands where Jap forces beat down his handful of men at the start of the war.

Meeting reports on July 29 – the day he completed his visit to the mighty base built up where U.S. forces suffered disaster on Dec. 7, 1941 – the President personally renewed his pledge that Gen. MacArthur would return to the Philippines leading triumphant U.S. forces.

Warning recalled

Since Mr. Roosevelt’s anticipated report is apparently to tell the people about what he found in the Pacific, if was not believed likely that it would need to involve many, if any, of the corrections of “misrepresentations” which he has promised to deliver.

In his fourth term nomination acceptance speech, delivered to the Democratic National Convention by radio from San Diego, California, just before he left for Hawaii, the President said that because of the war “I shall not campaign in the usual sense.”

But he added that:

I shall feel free to report to the people the facts about matters of concern to them and especially to correct any misrepresentations.

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americavotes1944

Willkie invited to White House

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt has invited Wendell L. Willkie to a White House conference.

The conference, a responsible source said, will be non-political at Mr. Willkie’s request and will deal solely with the nation’s policies.

In New York, the 1940 Republican presidential candidate refused to comment on reports that he had received the invitation.

The President’s letter of invitation was sent after Mr. Willkie had been sounded out on the subject of a meeting with Mr. Roosevelt. The letter was sent just before the President left on his Hawaiian trip and suggested a meeting after his return.

Mr. Willkie, who withdrew from the 1944 Republican presidential campaign after his defeat in the Wisconsin primaries, has remained silent thus far on what role, if any, he will play in the election campaign. He has not indicated whether he will support the GOP nominee, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

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americavotes1944

Dewey studies Roosevelt trip

Governor confers with GOP chairman

Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, and GOP National Chairman Herbert Brownell Jr. today plotted the next move in their campaign to put the GOP back in the White House.

Fresh from conferences with Republican leaders of 11 Midwestern states, Mr. Brownell said he carried an optimistic report. He told the Governor, however, that “plenty of hard work” has to be done between now and November and party followers are ready for action.

In long conference

Mr. Brownell was an overnight guest at the executive mansion and he and Mr. Dewey talked until after midnight. One of the principal topics was reportedly President Roosevelt’s inspection trip to Honolulu.

On his last visit to Albany, Mr. Brownell charged that Mr. Roosevelt was the first of 32 Presidents to claim that the title of Commander-in-Chief made him a soldier and that he was using the title to “perpetuate himself in public office.”

At that time, Mr. Dewey heard reports the President would deliver his speech accepting the Democratic nomination from foreign shores and he said if Mr. Roosevelt did, “I might have something to say about it.”

Concerned about trips

Republican leaders are concerned over Mr. Roosevelt’s inspection trips to the war fronts during the campaign. They are attempting to determine when such trips are necessary.

The Governor is expected to remain silent on the President’s Honolulu trip until Mr. Roosevelt has made his “report to the nation.”

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americavotes1944

Army censors at work –
Aviation guide also banned

Roosevelt’s picture cause for action

Washington (UP) –
An edition of the Official Guide to the Army Air Forces is the latest publication to be banned from sale at post exchanges because the War Department fears it might violate the Soldier Voting Act’s prohibition against official distribution of political propaganda.

The banned edition bears a picture of President Roosevelt with the caption “Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy.” A department spokesman said it was feared the picture and the caption might be interpreted as political propaganda.

Some not affected

Other editions of the guide, which do not have the picture and caption, are not affected by the order and may be sold at post exchanges. The copyright to the guide is held by the Army Air Forces Aid Society, which receives all royalties from its sale.

War Department officials conceded that they were interpreting the Soldier Voting Act’s censorship clause in a strict sense, but said that if any change in policy is necessary, it would have to be effected by changing the law.

The clause bans Army distribution of any publication “containing political argument or political propaganda of any kind designed or calculated to affect the result of any election.”

Beard’s book banned

Under it, the War Department has banned, in addition to the Air Forces Guide, British newspapers, and various other books.

Congressional sentiment for relaxation of the ban was growing. Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), author of the restrictive amendment to the Soldier Voting Act, said he expected satisfactory legislation to this effect would be worked out in conferences between himself and Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI), co-sponsor of the Voting Act.

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americavotes1944

parry3

I DARE SAY —
Boomerang

By Florence Fisher Parry

The War Department Library Committee, established to interpret the new law which forbids the circulation, at government expense, of any reading or picture material which contains political propaganda, is certainly going literal in a big way!

The sale of British newspapers has now been forbidden our American Army camps, and the motion picture Wilson has been banned from them. All of which is providing a genuine surprise to the man responsible for the rider to the Soldiers’ Vote Law, Senator Taft of Ohio, who protests that the Army is going to extremes in its interpretation of his law.

Now it looks as though the Senator’s provision, intended to prevent patent political rackets, is going to prove a boomerang. The United States Army, in scrupulously observing the new law, is demonstrating with stunning success how dangerous to our liberties is ANY attempt, however well intentioned, to legislate free speech and a free press.

The Army’s position is strictly correct, in prohibiting ANY AND ALL politically-biased literature or other such material from Army circulation at government expense. However intense its disapproval of the new law, its observance must be scrupulous.

Lesser of two evils

On the other hand, it is quite understandable why Senator Taft pressed legislation against the opposing party’s prevailing habit, so patently indulged, of using government money to pay for its own political propaganda. This practice has begun to assume sinister proportions, extending not only to printed matter, but to the screen as well. Documentary films glorifying the pet projects of the administration, even full-length movies like Government Girl, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and such hysterical propaganda as Gabriel Over the White House, had been enjoying an unchallenged field day. But Senator Taft’s ambiguous rider to the Soldier Vote Act permits too broad an interpretation.

Any law becomes a menace when it deprives our fighting men a FREE PRESS. And when we say a free press, we mean free, in the sense that opinion, assertive, aggressive and unafraid, must be expressed, however much downright PROPAGANDA it may contain.

Every newspaper in America is a propaganda organ. The majority are sharply partisan, politically belligerent and humanly prejudiced. Private ownership and a free press make this inevitable; and we would not have it otherwise. The evils of its alternative, a subsidized and government-instrumented press, are known to all.

Then how can newspapers fall under the ax of the U.S. Army in its effort to observe the strict letter of the new Soldier Vote Act? OF COURSE, the British press is pro-Roosevelt! Why should it not be? President Roosevelt, to the British people, is a name synonymous with largesse and a perpetual Lend-Lease.

That fact, however, should not present to the U.S. Army any more insoluble problem than that which it can find in the soldiers’ (at present) incontestable right to read their hometown newspapers, which are just as biased.

What next?

The banning of the motion picture Wilson shows, too, the inherent evil of suppression of suspected “propaganda.” I’m afraid I would have been all too quick to pounce upon this picture had I discerned in it the slightest Democratic propaganda.

But I saw no such evidence. It is a faithful historical motion picture and can be invidious only as history itself can be invidious. Nor does its hero Wilson propound any foreign policy which BOTH our presidential candidates do not acknowledge and endorse.

What a kettle of fish! No British newspapers to our U.S. Armed Forces. No Wilson. No Charles and Mary Beard’s Republic. What next? No home paper? No magazine? Because its owner or “editorial policy” is either Democratic or Republican?

Manifestly, the cure is far more killing than the malady! The unfortunate thing is that such a rider to the Soldier Vote Act should have been considered necessary in the first place. For it did rise out of a patent abuse which for 12 long years has been functioning unrestrained.

That the needed remedy should have turned into a boomerang is unfortunate; but if it only serves to illustrate TO BOTH PARTIES the folly of meddling with the machinations of a free press, it may succeed in effecting some good.

1 Like
9855

americavotes1944

‘Nothing to unload,’ candidate declares

Omaha, Nebraska (UP) –
George W. Olsen of Plattsmouth, Democratic nominee for governor, appeared before the state convention last night and said:

I feel just like I did when I was 16 and took a load of apples to Nebraska City and got stuck in the mud. I decided to unload, but the end gate was gone and so were the apples. There I was, stuck and with nothing to unload.

I feel the same way here tonight.

Thank you for what you are still going to do for me. Goodbye.

9856

Dewey gets plea of doomed woman

Albany, New York (UP) –
For the first time since he became head of the state, Governor Thomas Dewey must decide whether to give executive clemency to a woman convicted of first-degree murder.

The case of Mrs. Helen Fowler and George F. Knight, Niagara Falls Negroes, convicted jointly of the robbery-slaying of a 63-year-old white man last October, was heard by the Governor yesterday.

Earl W. Brydges, counsel for Mrs. Fowler (the mother of five children), charged that she was not given a fair trial when she was tried jointly with Knight.

Niagara County District Attorney John Marsh maintained that both defendants took part in the crime and charged Mrs. Fowler with acting as “lookout” during both the robbery and killing.

9857

Japs attempt to belittle raids by B-29s

Growing anxiety revealed by enemy
By the United Press

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9858

40,000 Japs die in 8 weeks in Marianas

U.S. dead total 4,453
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer

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9859

Morganthau: Invasion money well received

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Tuberculosis, leprosy cure seem probable

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9860

Maj. Williams: Call a halt

By Maj. Al Williams

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9861

He’s a Stalingrad survivor –
Saint-Malo madman rallies motley crew, defies Yanks

Americans try everything to get him out but he keeps cooks, dishwashers fighting
By James McGlincy, United Press staff writer

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9862

Savings in 1943 show gain of $21 billion

Consumer spending hits new high

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9863

Völkischer Beobachter (August 12, 1944)

Der US-Meuchelmord an deutschen Gefangenen –
Deutsche Protestnote an Washington

dnb. Berlin, 11. August –
Vor einigen Tagen erhielt das deutsche Volk durch Pressemeldungen Kenntnis von einem unerhörten Kriegsverbrechen amerikanischer Soldaten an der Italienfront.

Sechs deutsche Soldaten, darunter ein Schwerverwundeter, die bei Cattelin Marittima nach Verschuss ihrer letzten Munition in amerikanische Gefangenschaft geraten waren, wurden von Angehörigen einer amerikanischen Infanteriedivision in einen Stall getrieben und dort mit Handgranaten und Karabinerschüssen meuchlings gemordet.

Nach gründlicher Untersuchung des Falles, die den Bericht in allen Einzelheiten bestätigte, hat das Auswärtige Amt diesen unglaublichen Völkerrechtsbruch nunmehr zum Gegenstand einer Note gemacht, die dem eidgenössischen politischen Departement in Bern zur Weiterleitung an die Regierung der USA übergeben wurde. Nach einer genauen Wiedergabe des barbarischen Verbrechens schließt die Mitteilung mit den Worten:

Dieser Vorgang, der durch die eidliche kriegsgerichtliche Vernehmung des überlebenden deutschen Gefreiten einwandfrei erwiesen ist, stellt eine unerhörte Verletzung des Völkerrechts durch die amerikanische Wehrmacht dar. Die Reichsregierung erwartet, daß die schuldigen amerikanischen Soldaten wegen dieses nackten Mordes bestraft werden und daß die nordamerikanische Regierung Maßnahmen trifft, die eine Wiederholung derartiger Mordtaten ausschließen.

9864

US-Verluste in China

Tokio, 11. August –
Die japanischen Luftstreitkräfte, die an der Hunanfront eingesetzt sind, haben vom 27. Mai bis 9. August insgesamt 869 Flugzeuge der in China stationierten amerikanischen Luftflotte vernichtet. Von diesen wurden in Luftkämpfen 654 Maschinen abgeschossen, während japanische Flakbatterien die übrigen 215 Feindflugzeuge vernichteten.

9865

Die schmale Lücke –
Kampf um den normannischen Deich

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9866

Roosevelt spielt den starken Mann

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9867

Vorwürfe Nahas Paschas an die Anglo-Amerikaner –
Um Palästina, Öl und Juden

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9868

Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (August 12, 1944)

Communiqué No. 126

Allied troops have crossed the LOIRE River and have reached a point ten miles south of NANTES. Some fighting continues in the areas of NANTES and ANGERS.

In the BRITTANY Peninsula, a small part of the enemy’s one remaining strongpoint at SAINT-MALO is still holding out. Heavy fighting is in progress in DINARD. The situations at BREST and LORIENT remained unchanged.

In NORMANDY, the enemy is maintaining a stubborn defense in the MORTAIN-VIRE sector. Near MORTAIN, an Allied attack is meeting strong resistance from German armored units east and north of the town. Farther north, our troops have pushed beyond GATHEMO to the vicinity of VENGEONS, on the GATHEMO-TINCHEBRAY highway. Further gains have been made below VIRE, and the enemy has been pushed back to a point 1,000 yards south of MAISONCELLES LA JOURDAN.

East of VIRE, Allied troops advanced from 1,000 to 2,000 yards on a six-mile front in spite of determined enemy opposition. Further west, in the vicinity of SAINT-PIERRE-LA-VIEILLE, Hills 266 and 229 were captured. Patrols operating from the ORNE bridgehead through the FORÊT DE CINGLAIS and from east of the LAIZE penetrated to BARBERY.

THURY-HARCOURT and SAINT-MARTIN-DE-SALLEN were cleared of enemy, and southeast of THURY-HARCOURT the village of ESSON was taken. Fighting continues in the town of VIMONT.

During the 24 hours ending midnight August 9, the total of prisoners taken, in the western sectors, mostly in BRITTANY, reached 4,822.

In a day of widespread air activity, harbor defense, fuel depots, railway yards and bridges, locomotive depots, submarine shelters, and airfields were under attack by many formations of our heavy bombers.

The stubbornly-resisting harbor defenses of BREST were bombed at more than 20 points by small formations.

Fuel depot targets included SAINT-FLORENTIN, PACY, STRASBOURG, LA PALLICE, and BORDEAUX.

Railway yards attacked were at STRASBOURG, MULHOUSE, BELFORT, SAARBRÜCKEN, LENS, DOUAI and GIVORS.

Airfield targets included VILLACOUBLAY, TOUSSUS LE NOBLE and COULOMMIERS.

Still other targets were the submarine shelters at LA PALLICE and BORDEAUX, the locomotive depots at SOMAIN and the ÉTAPLES rail bridge, which was attacked last night.

Our medium bombers also operated against a variety of targets. Coastal batteries, which were holding out in the SAINT-MALO area, were attacked in support of our ground forces. In the FALAISE sector, mortar and artillery positions were bombed. Other targets included an ammunition dump in the FORÊT DE ROUMARE, rail targets at SAINT-MAXIMIN and at FISMES, and a temporary bridge at OISSEL.

Fighter-bombers operated both in close support of our forces and also on strafing missions in the ÉVREUX area and from PARIS southeastward to DIJON.

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U.S. Navy Department (August 12, 1944)

Communiqué No. 537

Atlantic Ocean.
The USS FISKE (DE 143) was sunk recently in the Atlantic by a submarine torpedo.

The next of kin of the casualties aboard the FISKE have been notified.