Senate and House conferees on the soldier-ballot bill are wasting precious time. Whatever the final form of the legislation enacted by Congress, action will have to be taken by the state legislatures before there can be complete assurance that the ballots of the troops will be counted. And the legislatures are waiting for Congress to finish its work.
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The nagging woman has always been classed as a major league. Such a prejudice has been built up against her that we have lost sight of the fact that her tongue sometimes accomplishes good results.
You won’t find one husband in a million willing to admit it, but wives are generally right when it comes to family health lectures. Many a valuable citizen is preserved to his business, community and country, only because his wife nagged at him about his diet, his blood pressure, or his teeth. I dare say multitudes of children have been saved from injury and sudden death because a mother nagged at them to stay on the curb and to look both ways in the street.
Nor have we given credit to nagging as a social force. I think it would not be wrong to say that Mrs. Roosevelt nags. She runs here and there forever talking about social reform, humanitarian progress and other good works. All men and women who are moved by the impelling power of a cause are naggers. What would you call the WAC recruiters or the War Bond salesmen or those who plug for racial justice?
Florence Nightingale was a nagger. So were Clara Barton, Anna Howard Shaw, Jane Addams and Jeanne d’Arc and so are Sister Kenny and Margaret Sanger and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. For the good of the world, I hope that women will not hold their tongues.
Nag, nag, nag, it must be in the social field – to move men, to change society, to establish justice.
By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports
Senator Barkley’s charge, and Mr. Roosevelt’s denial, that the President has impugned the integrity of Congress recalls a similar incident during the administration of the first Roosevelt.
On Dec. 8, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt, then a lame-duck President, sent his last annual message to Congress. In it, he declared that a law of the previous year curtailing the activities of the Secret Service “was of benefit to no one except the criminal classes.” Recalling that the Secret Service had been “partly responsible” for the indictment and conviction of a Senator and Representative for land frauds in Oregon, the President blandly observed:
The chief argument in favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by Secret Servicemen.
Congress hit the roof. On Dec. 17, the House called upon the President, by resolution, to submit evidence that in restricting the Secret Service Congress had been actuated by fear of being investigated the resolution also called for proof that any representative was guilty of corruption.
The President came back on Jan. 4, 1909, with a long message insisting that the House had misinterpreted his words, and citing the Congressional Record to prove that in limiting the Secret Service Congress had considered its investigation of Congressmen.
‘Invasion of its privileges’
That only added fuel to the flames. The House solemnly passed a new resolution. This one called the Secret Service section of the annual message a “reflection of the integrity” of the House membership. It said that the President’s denial of any such intent would be judged “according to the accepted interpretations of the English language.”
Calling the Secret Service section of the annual message a “breach of the privileges of the House,” the House voted to lay on the table not only that section but also the presidential message of Jan. 4, 1909, as unresponsive to the inquiry of the House and as an “invasion of its privileges.”
Earlier Presidents had had similar experiences. In March 28, 1834, the Senate by vote of 24–20 resolved that President Andrew Jackson, in ordering federal funds removed from the Bank of the United States, after dismissing Secretary of the Treasury Duane for refusing to remove them, had acted illegally and unconstitutionally.
Jackson’s followers managed, over the opposition of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, to get a later Senate to vote to expunge the resolution. On Jan. 16, 1837, a line was drawn around the resolution in the Senate Journal, and across the words of censure were written” “Expunged by order.”
Tyler disowned by Whigs
In 1841, on the death of President Harrison, anti-Jackson Democrat John Tyler found himself at the head of a Whig administration. When he vetoes a bill for re-chartering the Bank of the United States, the Whig leadership in Congress disowned him, and all members of his Cabinet resigned in a body except Secretary of State Daniel Webster.
When Tyler vetoed a tariff bill in 1842, the House, on motion by ex-President John Quincy Adams, referred his objections to a committee. The committee submitted a report, adopted by the House, impugning the President’s motives and declaring that he ought to be impeached for opposing the clear will of Congress. Tyler submitted a firm protest to the House against its censure of him; the House refused to let the protest be entered on its journal.
Among the few defenders of the President in the Congress was a Representative from New York City named James Roosevelt (D), uncle of an uncle of Theodore Roosevelt.
Father of slain baby asked about electrocution, expert says
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General’s wife represents Red Cross service on visit here
By Maxine Garrison
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Absence of big drydocks means islands are not key naval station
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer
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PT boats also attack in Southwest Pacific
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
All the highways from Naples north are thick with speeding convoys of supplies, day and night.
Lights are used right up to the combat zone. Both British and American trucks crowd the roads. Drivers pound the big trucks along at 40 and 50 miles an hour, and the main highways are no place for a nervous Nellie.
The highways over here were originally good macadam, but now they are filled with holes from the intensity of the traffic. Engineers work on them constantly.
At the edges of the cities, the roads are wide and lined with stately sycamore trees, you feel as though you were driving through a beautiful tunnel.
Both the American and British armies have put up thousands of stenciled and painted signs along the roads, directing drivers to the numerous units.
When you come to a central crossroads you can see anywhere up to a hundred signs clustered on top of small stakes, like a flower garden in bloom.
If you were really puzzled about your destination, you’d have to pull off and study the hodgepodge for five minutes before finding out anything.
Somebody in our Army must have been a roadside advertising man before the war, for we have all kinds of signs along the highways in addition to the direction signs. They are tacked onto trees, telephone poles and posts.
Signs Burma Shave style
There are many in the Burma Shave poetic style, the several phrases being on separate boards about 50 yards apart, such as this one:
If you leave… good clothes behind… you may need them… some other time.
That’s an admonition against the American soldier’s habit of abandoning gear when he gets more than he can carry.
Another one in Burma Shave fashion, and of dubious rhyme, says:
Some like gold… some like silver… we always salvage… bring it, will you?
There are also frequent warnings against venereal disease, and one sign way out in the country says, “Is your tent clean?” A lot of frontline soldiers who haven’t even been in a pup tent for months would get a laugh out of that one.
As we advance mule by slow mile across the Italian mountains and valleys, our many command posts are set up wherever possible in Italian farm or village houses.
The house are mostly all alike. They are very old and substantial-looking, yet they shake all over from the blast of our nearby guns.
Sometimes the Italian family still lives in one room of the house while the Americans occupy the rest. At other times the family has gone – nobody knows where – and taken with it everything but the heaviest furniture.
Faded pictures still hang on the walls – wedding-group pictures od 40 years ago, and a full-face picture of some mustachioed young buck, in the uniform of the last war, and old, old pictures of grandpa and grandma, and always a number of pictures of Christ and various religious scenes and mottoes.
Pictures invariably of same sort
I’ve billeted in dozens of Italian homes on the farms and little towns of our frontlines, and invariably the faded pictures on the walls are of the same sort.
In one house, nothing was left inside except the heavy cupboards and two heavy suitcases stored on top of the cupboards. We didn’t nose into the suitcases, but I noticed that one bore the label of a big Italian steamship line and underneath the label it said, in English, “Steerage Passenger.” Somebody in that poor family had been to America and back.
One day I heard a soldier say:
I’d sure like to see just one good old-fashioned frame house. I haven’t seen a wooden building since we came to Italy.
They say there are frame buildings farther north, but in this part of Italy everything is brick or stone. You almost never see a building afire.
These pitiful towns like Vairano and San Pietro and San Vittore and Cervaro and even Cassino, which have been absolutely pulverized by exploding shells and bombs, have gone down stone by stone and never from flame. They die hard, but they die.
Jap mementoes kept at Annapolis despite hotheaded protests
By Jess Stearn, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Roosevelt asks right to designate certain positions for returning servicemen
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Völkischer Beobachter (March 1, 1944)
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U.S. Navy Department (March 1, 1944)
For Immediate Release
March 12, 1944
Liberators of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed and strafed installations on Wake Island on the afternoon of February 28 (West Longitude Date).
The attack was made at extremely low altitude. Airdrome installations were bombed, and six planes on the ground were destroyed or severely damaged. All of our planes returned safely to base.
A single Navy search plane bombed Nauru on February 28.
On the same day, Mitchell bombers and Warhawk fighters of the 7th Army Air Force and Venturas of Fleet Air Wing Two attacked three enemy-held bases in the Eastern Marshall Islands.