Bomber crash takes 17 lives
Two B-24s come together in Arizona flight
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In Washington –
Subsidy ban veto will be refought on price control
Farm bloc foes will pass credit agency extension, then challenge bill continuing price curbs
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Soldier vote hopes
Washington (UP) –
The germ of hope for enactment of compromise soldier-vote legislation was kept alive today as states’ rights adherents and federal ballot supporters mulled over three compromise proposals – but it was a feeble germ.
House and Senate conferees were to consider the proposals when they meet again Monday, but there was no indication that the House conferees would back down from their adamant opposition to any form of federal ballot. They voted 3–2 against considering any plan whatsoever.
A dropkick, he says –
Diplomatic drinking liquor costs U.S. $300,000 a year
Appropriation wins over protest that we feed ‘em, why wine ‘em to make ‘em like us
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Former governor dies
Wilmington, Delaware –
Richard C. McMullen, 76, former Governor of Delaware, died of a heart attack at his home yesterday.
Weirton Steel case examiner for NLRB dies
E. G. Smith was preparing brief on close shop when taken ill
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‘Scuttle butt’ on flattop keeps men ‘rumor happy’
Gossip of news-thirsty sailors embroiders facts with wildest fantasy
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Editorial: ‘By Raymond Clapper…’
Raymond Clapper’s last dispatch, an unfinished column which he apparently interrupted to set out on the flight that cost his life, is printed today.
It may have seemed remarkable to some that we should continue printing Mr. Clapper’s column for so many days after his death. And it has indeed been remarkable – a notable testimonial to the hardworking nature of this great reporter.
It was no matter of chance which enabled us, when Ray Clapper set out from Washington for the Pacific, to continue his column daily without interruption. Whereas some of us might have considered the arduous journey to Australia and the South Pacific islands job enough in itself, he managed not only to keep his column coming in daily, but to build up a “cushion” of advance columns against the day when he would go to sea with a task force and be unable because of radio silence to send us anything for days and perhaps weeks.
And when the task force did set out, and he could no longer deliver his copy, he kept on turning out columns so that he would be ready when transmission was available. After his death, the Navy delivered these articles.
He was as hardworking a newspaperman as we have ever known.
Editorial: ‘Scarcity economics’
Vice President Henry Wallace is warning the country against the danger of what he terms the “American fascists of Wall Street” who, he contends, believe in “scarcity economics.”
This philosophy of scarcity economics, he adds, must be displaced by a doctrine of “economic abundance.”
But doesn’t Mr. Wallace recall the days, not so long ago, when pigs and cotton were being plowed under in America on grounds that such “scarcity economics” would end the Depression and lead us to prosperity?
And wasn’t that policy of scarcity economics being administered not from Wall Street, but from Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington – through the office of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace?
Perhaps there is something to the old saying that the memory of man is short-lived.
Ferguson: Fascinators as symbols
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Sometimes I wonder whether we can win the peace with women all wearing fascinators. There is, of course, nothing wrong with fascinators. They are merely one of the pieces of equipment women use to call attention to themselves.
And there is something appealing about a pretty face framed in a piece of colored cloth. At the start of the war, there was a sweet unselfish motive apparent when all over the country women began simplifying their dress. They seemed to be saying:
I will restrain my desires for self-expression and postpone them until the war is over.
But shawls have always been symbols of submission. Poor downtrodden people have worn them for centuries. And the trouble with poor downtrodden people is that they are sometimes poor in spirit.
Now if these pretty little fascinators we see around denote cooperation, well and good. But if they mean that the women are willing to take orders while waiting to the men to get the war over, then I think we should probe more intently into their possible significance.
Post-war America will need women who refuse to be submissive. And for that reason, the shawled heads of our young girls do give me a turn as they pass in almost constant procession.
The shawls are pretty, and the fascinators fetching. But let us hope they are not symbolic of a return to a certain old-fashioned way of thinking, when women tied down their spirits as they tied up their heads.
Saves 15 lives
Lt. (jg.) Nathan G. Gordon, USN, landed his plane time and time again in Kavieng Harbor, New Ireland, to rescue a total of 15 U.S. airmen who were shot down during a raid on the Jap base. The rescues were effected under heavy fire.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Most infantry companies in the American frontlines are now composed largely of replacements, as they are in all armies after more than a year of fighting.
Some of these replacements have been here only a few weeks. Others came so long ago they are now as seasoned as the original men of the company.
The new boys are afraid, of course, and very eager to hear and to learn. They hang onto the words of the old-timers. I suppose the anticipation during the last few days before your first battle is one of the worst ordeals of a lifetime. Now and then, one will crack up before he has ever gone into action.
One day I was wandering through an olive grove talking with some of these newer kids when I saw a soldier, sitting on the edge of his foxhole, wearing a black silk opera hat. That’s what I said – an opera hat.
The owner was Pvt. Gordon T. Winter. He’s a Canadian. His father owns an immense sheep ranch near Lindbergh, Alberta, 200 miles northeast of Edmonton.
Pvt. Winter said he found the top hat in a demolished house in a nearby village and just thought he’d bring it along. He said:
I’m going to wear it in the next attack. The Germans will think I’m crazy, and they’re afraid of crazy people.
Private played dead
In the same foxhole was a thin, friendly boy who seemed hardly old enough to be in high school. There was fuzz instead of whiskers on his face and he had that eager-to-be-nice attitude that marked him as not long away from home.
This was Pvt. Robert Lee Whichard of Baltimore. It turned out that he was only 18. He has been overseas only since early winter. He has seen action already. He was laughing when telling me about the first time he was in battle.
Apparently, it was a pretty wild melee, and ground was changing hands back and forth. Pvt. Whichard said he was lying on the ground shooting, “or maybe not shooting, I don’t know,” because he admits he was pretty scared.
He happened to look up and here were German soldiers walking past him. Bob said he was so scared he just rolled over and lay still. Pretty soon mortar shells began dropping and the Germans decided to retire. So, they came back past him, and he still lay there playing dead until finally they were gone.
Bob says the other night he dreamed his feet were so cold that he ran to the battalion aid station and there were his mother and sister fixing some hot food over a wood fire for him and poking up the fire so he could warm his feet. But before either the food or his feet were warm, he woke up – and his feet were still cold.
Another soldier came past and said he’d dreamed the night before that he was home and his mother was cooking pork chops by the tubful for him to eat. This one was Cpl. Pamal Meena, whose father is a Syrian minister in Cleveland.
The post office system has broken down as far as Cpl. Meena is concerned. He has been overseas five months and has never got a letter. The corporal has not been in combat but is ready for it. He says he hasn’t decided whether he is going to be a minister, like his father, but he has taken to reading his Bible since he came to war.
Has Ernie in stitches
One day I was walking through another olive orchard which held the 34th Division headquarters, and I noticed a soldier under a tree cleaning a sewing machine.
This was Pvt. Leonard Vitale of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He’s an old-timer in the division. As I looked around, I saw a couple of other sewing machines sitting on boxes. I asked:
Good Lord, what are you doing? Starting a sewing-machine factory?
Pvt. Vitale said no, he was just getting set to do altering and mending for division headquarters. The first two sewing machines he had bought from Italians, and an AMG officer had given him the newest machine. It was a Singer, in an elaborate mahogany cabinet.
Pvt. Vitale said he wasn’t an expert tailor but had picked up some of the rudiments during the three and a half years he’d spent in the CCC and thought he would do all right and make a little money on the side. As I walked away, he called out:
I’ll have this war sewed up in a couple of months.
I grabbed a rifle from a nearby MP and shot the punster through and through before he had me in stitches.
Pegler: The Chaplin case
By Westbrook Pegler
Chicago, Illinois –
Charlie Chaplin’s current troubles with the Department of Justice are a messy comeuppance to a little ingrate who found opportunity, appreciation and wealth in a cordial country to which, nevertheless, he never gave allegiance. He is not nice; he is stingy and he has had the impudence to associate himself with the communist enemies of the country in which he took refuge from two wars while his native England sat right under the guns of the Germans.
Nevertheless, his indictment on charges of violation of the Mann Act and an obscure law to punish those who deprive others of rights guaranteed by the Constitution is bad business. For years, by common consent and confirmed practice, the Mann Act was held to apply only to cases in which females were taken across state lines for prostitution.
The first Mann Act case of importance, also a California case, concerned two young men and two girls who went off to play house without benefit of clergy. It raised a great fuss and several similar cases ensued in which ladies of mature years were induced to give testimony against woebegone gents with whom they had wittingly run away on mischievous business. Jack Johnson, the Negro fighter, was one of them.
Crime or indiscretion
In time, however, there came a change of sentiment. The law had been passed to put down the interstate commercial traffic in women, many of them poor, ignorant farm and mill town girls who were being recruited by professional hunters from Chicago for service in the dumps which then thrived under popular sanction and political license. The debates showed this to be the intent of Congress but, as often happens, the text made no distinction between one thing and another and some district attorneys had made serious crime of a proceeding which Mr. Dickens described as an amiable indiscretion.
The Chaplin case under the Mann Act, even if the allegations can be proved, obviously comes under the latter heading and the federal government, especially in these times, could better use its manpower and money than to flog a man, however mean, for taking a guest on a trip. California probably has state laws and New York certainly has, under which, if it were worth the bother, the offense of seduction, impairing the morals of a minor or unlawful cohabitation could be punished. This is strictly police court business and beneath the notice of the U.S. Department of Justice, which here again resorts to tricky practice and meddles in affairs of the states.
The charge of depriving the young woman of a constitutional right is equally pallid and insincere. If Chaplin and his agents and certain public officials of a smug and corrupt little California suburb railroaded a pregnant girl out of town, that should be a local affair. If the people of the town are so low that they will tolerate this doing by one of the neighbors and their local officials, they should be left to stew in their own evil juice. It is not the business of the national government and the whole proceeding is garish and disreputable.
Shysterism a la Capone
There are just further manifestations of a shysterism which has pervaded the Department of Justice in recent years. Al Capone was a monstrous criminal, but Chicago was rotten and he finally got 12 years for failure to declare his income and pay his tax. The sentence was excessive and the whole country well understood that he was punished under one law for violations of many others, mostly state laws.
Similarly, in Kansas City, the federal government used the old law against the denial of constitutional rights to clean up corrupt election methods of the Pendergast machine, a purely local responsibility, and, in Louisiana, when the state failed, the Department of Justice distorted a law against fraud by mail to punish men for the actual crimes of grand larceny and conspiracy.
In several union prosecutions, federal laws were invoked to punish violations of state laws, although, in most of them, the Supreme Court held that unions had a special right to commit federal crimes and reversed the convictions.
All this may tend to create fear of the law but it does not instill respect. On the contrary, it gives people to believe that their government is not above resort to those sly tricks which President Roosevelt, in another issue, described as clever little schemes having the color of legality.
Clapper: More
By Raymond Clapper
This is Raymond Clapper’s last column. It was written aboard the carrier from which he flew to his death in the battle of the Marshall Islands. The column was only about two-thirds completed; the second page of manuscript carried the slug “more.”
Frank Mason, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, delivered the copy from the carrier to Pearl Harbor, and it was wirelessed from there to the States.
Before leaving for the Pacific, Mr. Clapper wrote that “some people in Washington feel there is no sufficient awareness at home of how much our men are doing and in what a living hell they must sometimes do it.” He went to the Pacific to help increase that awareness. Some 14 columns written by Mr. Clapper in the days before his death have been printed posthumously, in the belief that he would have wished us to help him carry out that self-appointed mission.
With the Pacific Fleet, in the Marshall Islands – (by wireless)
Contrary to many predictions that I heard in Washington and in the Southwest Pacific, the invasion of the Marshalls did not prove to be another Tarawa. All concerned had one thought in mind in planning the Marshalls campaign – that there must be no repetition of Tarawa.
Nobody will admit officially that Tarawa fell short of what it should have been. But there were some faults in the plan of operations. For the Marshalls campaign, changes in planning were made to ensure that no matter how much delay the troops might encounter upon reaching shore, their cover would stay with them and hold the Japs in their holes.
Furthermore, the approach to the main objectives was planned on an entirely different basis for the Marshalls campaign. We not only made sure that the Japanese airpower was knocked out before our landings began, but the landings themselves were planned differently.
We slipped around to one of the rear atolls where we were not expected. On the first day we occupied small undefended islands near the larger ones of Roi and Kwajalein. The purpose in occupying those was to set up artillery for heavy bombardment of our main targets.
Enormous concentration
And above all there was an enormous concentration of the Pacific Fleet, with sufficient strength to have taken on any defense Japan wanted to attempt, including the use of her fleet.
The night before the battle began, the captain of the happy carrier which I was aboard during the air attack talked to his entire ship about the battle that was about to begin. He said the Marshalls battle was well-planned and carefully thought out, and that we started out with “a powerhouse of strength.” He said this was the biggest task group ever assembled in the Pacific.
The men aboard all had complete confidence. There were no jitters. There was almost a holiday air, because they knew that what the captain said was true. For days we had traveled in the midst of a large number of battleships, cruisers and other carriers. You could not look around the horizon without seeing the flattops of carriers and the peaked-pagoda effect of the low-water silhouettes of our newest battleships.
East Lynne at Eniwetok
After the first days of hammering at Kwajalein, as we swung out for our “strike” the next morning before dawn at Eniwetok, which is within bomber range of the great Jap base at Truk, one of our Navy fighter pilots, Lt. Robert A. Ogden, an Ohio State law graduate from Portsmouth, Ohio, reflected the spirit on board when he announced:
Tomorrow night, “East Lynne” at Eniwetok.
We are not bothering to clean out all the Japs from the Marshall Islands. It is more economical, and just as effective, to cut them off and let them “die on the vine,” as the method is referred to out here. That is what Gen. MacArthur is doing in New Guinea. It is a form of piecemeal blockade.
[MORE]
NOTE: Here the dispatch ended.