Packard: Cervaro hills stained brown with U.S. blood
Push against Italian town takes many lives and much courage
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Steele: Overseas Yanks in favor of national service law
Soldiers want anything that will stop strikes; believe drastic measures justified
By A. T. Steele
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Roosevelt’s conferences with press drop sharply
President now meets half as often with reporters as he did before war
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, who used to hold regular twice-a-week press and radio conferences, has averaged only a little better than one a week in the last year.
Wartime travel and occasional illnesses have been the principal reasons given for Mr. Roosevelt’s lessening contacts with reporters.
Continuing to “take it easy” after his recent illness on orders of his doctor, Mr. Roosevelt did not hold his press conference today. He also scheduled no Cabinet meeting, but held three appointments in his residential quarters.
For years it was the President’s custom to meet with newsmen virtually every Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning to make announcements and to submit to free-for-all questioning. These conferences were rarely cancelled and held even when he was out of town for the benefit of reporters traveling with him.
Since Pearl Harbor, however, Mr. Roosevelt has more and more missed his news conferences. Not one is held when he is out of Washington in wartime because reporters now travel with him only on exceptional occasions.
Mr. Roosevelt held only 59 press conferences in 1943, compared with 96 in 1942, 91 in 1941 and 96 in 1940, the third-term campaign year. During the 10 months he was in office in 1933, he held 83 conferences. The total since he took office on March 4, 1933, is 929.
The President has held only three news sessions since Nov. 9, shortly before he left the country for the Cairo and Tehran Conferences. He was out of the country for about five weeks and had no contact with press or radio reporters during that period. For the past two weeks, he has been ill and recovering from an attack of influenza.
He held two news conferences shortly after his return, one on Dec. 17 and again on Dec. 21, and one after Christmas, on Dec. 28, but none since.
A few days after the Dec. 28 conference, Mr. Roosevelt became ill and although he has virtually recovered and is holding a daily schedule of appointments, his physician, RAdm. Ross T. McIntire, has recommended that the President “take it easy” for a while.
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Gen. Stilwell carrying out war promise
Uncle Joe said 2 years ago he would beat Japs in Burma
By Darrell Berrigan, United Press staff writer
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Reporters are dizzy viewing style parade
Top-flight designers show dazzling array of new fashions
By Lenore Brundige, Press staff writer
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I know that no one at the time knew how sick he truly was, but he is trying to lead a nation at war. He might be a little bit busy lol.
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
The Stars and Stripes in the last war had many men on its staff who later broke into great prominence in the literary and magazine world. It is too early yet to tell what the various Army newspapers throughout the world in this war will produce, but we have a couple of likely candidates over here.
Soldiers and correspondents both would cast a willing vote for them right now. One is a reporter, the other a cartoonist. The reporter is Sgt. Jack Foisie of Berkeley, California; the cartoonist is Sgt. Bill Mauldin of Phoenix, Arizona.
Both are very young, both are quiet and earnest, both have native talent, and both have that ephemeral and uncultivated ability to express the soldiers’ viewpoint.
Sgt. Foisie has been on the staff of Stars and Stripes only since the invasion of Italy last July, yet he is already the man for whom the paper gets the most requests from units that want somebody to write about them.
Foisie has been overseas almost 15 months. Before transferring to the Stars and Stripes, he was in a tank-destroyer unit. He drove a half-track and ran a .50-caliber machine gun.
He fought all through Tunisia. He was never wounded, but in the Battle of Sidi Bouzid last February, he lost his half-track by a hit from an 88mm cannon. Along with it he lost everything he had, including his portable typewriter.
Before the war, Foisie was a reporter on The San Francisco Chronicle. When he went into the Army, he was determined not to lose the writing touch, so he brought his typewriter with him and wrote scads of letters to the folks back home, just to keep his hand in.
Doesn’t need practice now
He says his folks can’t understand how he could write them so often when he was in combat and is so bad about writing now that he has a quieter job. The answer is, of course, that he doesn’t have to write letters for practice anymore.
Toward the end of the Tunisian campaign, Jack wrote to Stars and Stripes and asked if there were any chance of getting on the staff. Capt. Boo Neville, the editor, wrote back a two-word letter:
Why not?
Jack thought he was being facetious and supposed that was the end of it. But 10 days later, here came official transfer papers with travel orders calling for transportation by airplane.
This airplane business so astounded and impressed Jack’s company commander that he cleaned up, put on his dress blouse for the first time in Africa, and personally drove Jack the 50 miles to the nearest airdrome to see him off.
Among correspondents Foisie has a reputation of always being willing to go anywhere and do anything. But he is shy, and for months kept in the background, just filling his job and saying nothing. Now that he knows everybody he jokes and kids as much as the rest.
When I first knew him, last summer in Sicily, he had a fairly marked hesitation in his speech. But on rejoining him in Italy, I noticed that it was gone. I spoke to him about it and he said he thought it was because he had gained more confidence in himself.
Although he is a good soldier, Foisie went up and down in rank six or eight times before joining Stars and Stripes, due largely to the whims of various commanders.
Loses regard for rank
His ups and downs destroyed all his regard for rank and now he truly doesn’t care whether he’s private, sergeant or lieutenant. He actually argued against it when they made him a sergeant on Stars and Stripes, and wouldn’t wear his chevrons until forced to.
Jack Foisie is 24. He is a darkish blond, with hair starting to thin in spots. He has a big chin, and his eyes are set back in his head, giving him the appearance of looking out of two narrow slits. He is left-handed, does not smoke, and is of French extraction but speaks little French.
He was born and raised in Seattle and went to the University of Washington for two years – until his folks moved to Berkeley. His father is Frank P. Foisie, head of the waterfront employers of the Pacific Coast, which means he’s the man who sits across the table and argues with Harry Bridges.
After the war, Jack has two ambitions – to finish school and to get married. The marriage business comes first. Her name is Florence McTighe and she lives in Trenton, New Jersey. The big question will be how to make a Californian out of her.
Foisie has lived a rugged life both as a combat soldier and as a reporter. Recently he has been on special assessment, living in town and making trips out to the airfield by jeep. He has found it interesting but is beginning to be a little frightened.
He said:
I’m getting soft. The life is too nice. It would be better to be back at the front living with doughboys and writing about them.
Tomorrow we’ll tell about Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist.
Pegler: On the recent New York Legislature bill
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
A bill has been introduced in the New York Legislature to punish individuals who promote racial and religious hatred. A bill of similar intent is pending in Congress.
Both are unwise and more likely to provoke than to abate such propaganda because an attempt to enforce them would surely raise important questions of freedom of speech and of the press. Truth is a good defense and if a propagandist should present truths about individuals in a hateful way artfully calculated to arouse hatred of a whole group, we would simply have to acquit him.
Opinion is also privileged, so such efforts seem not only futile, but dangerous to their own purpose.
The better approach is that of Joseph M. Proskauer, who has proposed a pledge for all Americans to refrain from spreading rumors or slanders against any sect, and to condemn no whole element of the population for offensive conduct of individuals. Archbishop Spellman has endorsed Mr. Proskauer’s effort as all real Christians should.
Negro press arouses hatred
To my mind there is more talk of antisemitism than antisemitic talk and the most disturbing propaganda as between the white and Negro Americans is found in the Negro press, which may honestly believe that it is promoting interracial amity but goes much too far and succeeds in arousing hatred of the whites among the Negroes.
The communists, always on the prowl for issues which can be fanned into devouring fires, also have had a part in these hate campaigns. And no estimate of the provocations could eliminate Marshall Field and his New York journalistic “whatizzit” which gives an impression that in New York and Boston horrible persecutions are being inflicted on the Jews. The Christians of New York and Boston are doing nothing of the kind.
I think the whole effect of Mr. Field’s material is to aggravate relations. But done by his method, whatever his motive may be, it certainly could not be made the basis for prosecution under any law, however wisely drawn.
This is not to contend that there is no prejudice against Jews among persons who call themselves Christians and honestly believe themselves to be respectable and right-minded.
There are some who smirk and say that “the Chosen People” have taken over this or that neighborhood or club, forgetting that it was the chosen people of the master race of Hitler who frankly did put forth the proposition that they were chosen to rule the world and employed in their relations with other countries every foul and treacherous device and deceit in the long catalog of sins which they had charged against the Jews.
Within the law
No law can touch any such persons for remarks of this kind, but he might be reached by the pledge of Mr. Proskauer; for many who speak so are not really hateful, but only carelessly prejudiced and unconscious of the hurt they do.
To those who are fighting antisemitism, too, a word of admonition seems due.
There is altogether too free use of the term “antisemite” or “Jew-hater” and decent men have been persecuted and put under boycotts for ulterior motives who have been scrupulously fair in speech and conduct. A man so victimized is sorely tried and only his true Christianity and his horror of Hitlerism keeps his steady.
It is not antisemitism to resist and criticize certain individuals in public office or other influential position, or union officials or communists who happen to be obviously Jews. To call this antisemitism is to abandon the principle of Mr. Proskauer’s pledge, for thereby all Jews are lumped together and placed under condemnation when the critic’s intent is to deal with the individual as such and not as a representative Jew or even a Jew at all.
Errol Flynn’s lawyer takes charge of Chaplin’s case
Attorney tells comics to quit worrying about Joan Barry and grand jury
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Hitler and Göring ‘eat’ 1943 broadcasts
Yanks, Britons and Russians shatter Axis pledges
By Si Steinhauser
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The media and his administration certainly hid the true extent of his health issues, but by this point, it was pretty much an open secret.
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