Pat Dane knifed him, Hall charges
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I DARE SAY —
Recorded in blood
By Florence Fisher Parry
I saw a newsreel of the liberation of Paris. I heard on the radio the actual record of it. Shots upon Gen. de Gaulle at Notre-Dame; the hysteria of the people. And from day to day, I read small scattered inside-page items of how the Maquis of France, the French Forces of the Interior, are taking their own way of settling their score with the trapped Germans.
I read the lists of books that are published, dozens, hundreds of books about this war, first-hand reports, magnificent fiction, diaries, poems.
Suddenly there is a flood of newsreels at last released by the United States Army to the motion picture exhibitors who, all through this war, were not able to procure the news films that had been made and were still being held back. The Army and our government offered the excuse that it would be bad om the morale of trainees in the audience.
Now that the invasion of France is nearly over, now that the landings at Tarawa, Saipan are old stories, now with the end of the war imminent in Europe, suddenly we are seeing what we had a right to see months ago.
How much promotion money has been spent on our various War Bond drives? Millions, millions; and at the very time when the showing of realistic and timely newsreels of our boys as they fought in the Southwest Pacific, as they fought in Africa and Sicily and Italy and last Normandy, would have done more to storm our hearts and open our purses and crack our savings banks than all the Mardi Gras stunts and stump speeches and bands and movie appearances and lunches and banquets and benefits could ever have done!
The great performance
But what the newsreel failed to do; our reporters certainly made up for. Never have there been such magnificent dispatches from the combat areas.
As for the book publishers working under similar paper restrictions, they have put forth a produce of war literate that is simply magnificent. This is all the more remarkable because no one, so well as publishers, knows how quickly the reading public is through with war literature when war ends.
Yet on the very eve of Germany’s collapse, every major publisher in America is putting forth war books and still more war books! It is of some of these that I should like to speak now, for unless they are read now, they are likely to be missed and join the innumerable host of war books which came too late and missed their earned immortality.
Already World War II has given us a few really distinctive books: Limit of Darkness by Howard Hunt – just a story of one day in the lives of a group of American fliers at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal is one. Another is A Walk in the Sun by Harry Brown. It, too, is a report, in fiction form, of a torturous landing of a leaderless platoon and its making its way six miles inshore to a farmhouse. Both of these are small books. Each can be read in an hour. They have in them the elements of lasting literature. Others are A Bell for Adano, by John Hersey, and The Moon Is Down, by John Steinbeck.
The moving finger writes
Too, there have been some of the columns of Ernie Pyle which have in them the sudden impact of reality that makes you know, as you read them, that you cannot forget, not ever, what they have written.
But really great novel about this war has not been written.
Kay Boyle has written some good short stories about this war. Rebecca West, too, has managed to set down a very live record of a dangerous day, and even Katherine Anne Porter, in her new collection of stories The Leaning Tower, tells a story about Germany that will keep haunting the reader years after it is read.
I have just read a book, Still Time to Die, by Jack Belden – horrific, burning, alive with death and menace.
I want to live long enough to read what some of these survivors, now 20, 22, will write at 40, at 50, about World War II, unless, of course, they are too busy writing letters to their sons in World War III.
Government takes over 44 West Virginia mines
SFA moves swiftly to halt stoppages
By the United Press
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Fascist policeman on trial in Rome
Rome, Italy (UP) –
Pietro Caruso, chief of police in Rome during the last few months of the German occupation, who was sought by a mob which lynched a prison official last Monday, was brought peaceably to trial as a Fascist criminal today.
The trial was opened in Lincei Academy in a tense atmosphere as hundreds of armed police and mounted carabinieri guarded all approaches for blocks around. It had been kept fairly secret, however, and there was no public demonstration such as that which ended in the lynching of Donato Caretta, a chief prosecution witness.
The Academy was chosen because it is near the Regina Coeli Prison, making it easier to transport Caruso to the courtroom from his cell.
Caruso and his secretary, Roberto Occhetto, who is being tried with him, were impassive when they were brought into the courtroom. They are the first of the alleged Fascist criminals to be brought to trial.
Mrs. Bricker: Women’s political interest growing
GOP leader’s wife urges all to vote
By Betty Jo Daniels
After traveling more than 40,000 miles with her husband during his pre-convention tour, and with thousands of miles more ahead of her during his campaign tour, Mrs. Harriet Bricker, wife of the Republican candidate for Vice President, said last night she is convinced that women are more interested than ever before in politics.
Addressing members of the press, Mrs. Bricker said:
Everywhere, I think, women really are extremely interested in politics this year and are finding it quite challenge to become active in this campaign.
‘Important to vote’
She added:
I’m sure they will realize the significance and importance of voting now, during wartime.
Affirming her comment made during her husband’s first tour that she would make few public appearances “and no speeches,” Mrs. Bricker said her only comment is voiced in her hope that every American woman qualified to vote will do so in the coming election.
She likes people
She was attired in a two-piece black crepe suit, and a small, veiled black hat. She wore gold earrings and bracelet, which matched the buttons on her dress, and an orchid was pinned to her black faille purse.
She likes traveling with her husband, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, but finds it quite tiring sometimes when their schedule is particularly full and allows her little time for relaxation. But she likes people and receptions, she said.
Has several hobbies
Mrs. Bricker has several hobbies, among which are collecting glassware, victory gardening, and playing the piano. She has a light tan and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose from working in her garden.
Mrs. Bricker, accompanied by Mrs. Edward Martin, wide of the Pennsylvania Governor and Mrs. Margery Scranton, Republican National Committeewoman, attended the Republican rally in Syria Mosque.
She sat on the platform between Governor and Mrs. Martin while her husband delivered his address and at the conclusion of the speech was introduced to the audience by James F. Malone, Republican County chairman.
Dewey and wife in narrow escapes
Fateful No. 13 plays big role
Portland, Oregon (UP) –
The wreck of the Dewey campaign train yesterday offered some examples of the fateful number 13.It was the 13th day since the special pulled out of Pennsylvania Station in New York. There were 13 cars in the train, with the baggage car, most seriously smashed, No. 13 on the train.
Portland, Oregon (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, dogged by disaster – including two train wrecks and a narrow escape during an auto trip, arrived here last night only a few hours before time for his nationwide broadcast.
On the wheels of a freight train wreck that delayed his departure from Seattle, Governor Dewey’s train rammed into the rear of a passenger train stalled at Castle Rock, Washington, because of obstruction from the first wreck.
Governor Dewey and his wife were badly shaken but not injured in the wreck, which brought injuries to more than a score of persons.
The Deweys proceeded to Portland in a private car provided by an auto dealer and, while making the trip, were nearly parties to another disastrous crash when a furniture truck turned sharply ahead of the Dewey car. Only skillful driving saved the nominee’s car from plunging off the highway.
The Deweys were in their separate bedrooms when the two trains smashed at 11:50 a.m. (2:50 p.m. ET). the impact hurtled the passengers from their seats and shattered glass in the trains.
Poll: Roosevelt shows gains within CIO
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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750 bombers from Italy hit Balkan targets
Weather cuts down raids from Britain
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3 U.S. ships, landing craft lost in Pacific
U.S. subs sink 29 more Jap craft
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Editorial: Who pays for ‘prosperity’?
Democrats appear to be relying heavily on “Roosevelt prosperity” as a pro-fourth-term factor at the November polls.
Prosperity? Sure, many people not in uniform are making more money than they were before the war. (Mr. Roosevelt was President then, too, incidentally.) But where does the money come from?
An analogy might be the case of a man who borrows $1,000 from a friend and then throws a big party for the generous pal. Should the latter feel a warm glow of camaraderie – or should he start worrying about the money?
The recent tax report of the research committee of the Committee for Economic Development estimated that “after the war the average cost of supporting the activities of the federal government, if spread evenly over the entire population, would be more than $500 a year for a family of four.” And a footnote added:
This would not be the full picture… It is estimated that state and local governments, after the war, will have to collect around $12 billion a year in taxes. Accordingly, the total cost of government in the United States after the war, if spread evenly over the whole population, would be in the neighborhood of $850 a year for a family of four.
Or put it another way. The national debt today is some $211 billion. It certainly will go past $250 billion before the war is over. The total population is around 136 million. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that the population consisted entirely of four-person families – 34 million of them. A little arithmetic shows that the average share of that $250-billion debt will be $7,353 per family. This is an obligation that a good many of us have neglected to put down in our personal budgets.
In short, “Roosevelt prosperity” turns out to be a patty at our own expense. Guests will be presented with the bill as they leave the festivities. And they will have to settle it – through taxes, or through inflation of one kind or another which will chop down the value of their savings and their income.
Of course, most of the expenditures have been necessary, because of the war. But he who attributes the pleasant state of his bank account to economic wisdom on the part of the White House, and expects more of the same indefinitely from that same erratic economic fountain, is living in a fool’s paradise.
Editorial: Dewey keeps the offensive
Governor Dewey is showing skill as a political campaigner who can take the offense and keep it.
The New Dealers were still sputtering denials to his charge that they fear the problems of peace and demobilization when he let go his haymaker indicting the “planned confusion” of their labor policies. And before they could think up the answers to that one, he hit again by challenging the indispensability of one man, which the New Dealers themselves have chosen as the campaign’s primary issue.
Mr. Dewey used the words of Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate, Mr. Truman: “The very future of the peace and prosperity of the world depends upon his reelection in November.”
And how, asked Mr. Dewey, is a fourth term indispensable to that?
The first essential to peace and prosperity, he said, is unity in our government and unity and strength among our people. But the record shows 12 years of setting “group against group, race against race, and class against class,” labor against employer and labor against labor. And 12 years of quarrelling and bickering among the high-up New Deal administrators.
“An administration which cannot unite its own house even in war can never unite the nation for the tremendous peace tasks ahead of us.”
A second essential to peace and prosperity is “joint, harmonious action between the President and the Congress. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of 12 years of trying to bring Congress into popular disrepute, 12 years of “executive arrogance toward the elected representatives of the people.” For, said Mr. Dewey:
As a result, no bill which this administration can propose to Congress is today received with anything less than suspicion.
My opponent has demonstrated that he cannot work with the present Democratic Congress. How in the name of the future of our country can he be expected to get along with the Republican Congress which will be elected this fall?
A third essential is “a strong and vigorous America with jobs for all. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of an administration which, after spending $58 billion through seven peace years, still had 10 million unemployed – and “we had to have a war to get jobs.”
We’ve a hunch the New Dealers will talk less about the indispensable man from here on to Nov. 7.