Reading Eagle (September 1, 1944)
Americans race through Argonne and force Meuse; British, Canadians roll rapidly over rocket coast
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Wedges penetrate foe’s Italian defenses at three places
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Columbia, South Carolina (UP) –
A Belgium-educated South Carolina Negro – competing against a Democratic governor and a Republican for the South Carolina Senate seat of E. D. “Cotton Ed” Smith – expressed confidence today that he has “a fighting chance” to beat the field in the November general election.
The Negro, 51-year-old Osceola McKaine of Sumter, was nominated Wednesday by the Progress (Negro) Democratic Party and was believed to be the first member of his race to seek public office in the state on a Democratic ticket.
His opponents will be Governor Olin D. Johnston, who defeated Smith in the recent state Democratic primary, and James B. Gaston, the GOP nominee.
Following his defeat, there was widespread speculation that “Cotton Ed,” colorful veteran of six terms in the Senate and a violent critic of the Roosevelt administration might run in the November election on the ticket of the anti-New Deal “Southern” Democratic Party to fill out its slate of candidates.
Chairman J. K. Breedin of the Southern Democrats emphasized, however, that with the exception of presidential electors his group would support choices of the regular Democrats.
McKaine was educated in Boston and Belgium and did newspaper work in New York City before returning to his home state in 1940 where he has since been associate editor of the Lighthouse and Informer, Columbia Negro newspaper. He has recently been active in a fight to pull salaries of Negro schoolteachers up to the level of white teachers.
In the last war, McKaine was a first lieutenant with the 367th Infantry Division in France.
Yesterday, the Progressives also named a slate of presidential electors, pledged to President Roosevelt and candidates for Congress from each of the state’s six districts.
By Dorothy Thompson
The nearer we come to Germany the less we seem concerned with what is happening inside Germany. Our official attitude is that the problem will be solved by purely military means – by occupation. Three armies will march into assigned areas, or the areas will assign themselves by the movement of our three armies, and the country will be taken over.
At this point, the three Allied governments and their armies will face a problem unprecedented in the history of the world. They will enter a country in complete collapse without a government or administration that can be used, and – as far as any of us know – without a policy regarding what we hope to create in Germany.
That moment is imminent. When it breaks, the much-debated question of whether there are “good” Germans becomes irrelevant. We shall have to find “good” Germans – good, at least, for our purposes. The “goodness” or “badness” of individual or groups will depend wholly on our aims.
Our avowed immediate purpose is to liquidate Nazism and punish war criminals. That automatically throws out practically the whole administration, central and local.
Now, however one draws the frontiers of Germany, it is an area containing 60 to 80 million people, it is an area containing 60 to 80 million people, highly organized, centrally administered, deeply bureaucratized, and living in a narrow space, a fact which in itself demands a high degree of integrated administration. It is industrial, not agricultural, already demoralized by bombings and shifts of population, and containing 10 to 12 million foreign workers. It obviously cannot be administered by Americans, Russians and Britons without the aid of thousands of Germans. But what Germans?
Normally speaking, the people on whom we could count would be self-appointed. They would be individuals who, in the course of the war and its preceding period, have emerged as opponents of the Nazi regime, and they would be, en masse, those once-organized groups who, by all their traditions, and by the record we have, have been anti-Nazi.
Presuming foresight of the situation that is now looming upon us, we would have been in contact with such people, giving them every aid. That they exist has been proved from the type of government the Nazis have set up; otherwise, there would not have been so terroristic a control over the home front.
And in the last month we have had proof of it in the plot which involved high-ranking officers of the General Staff, as well as many civilians. Dr. Karl Goerdeler, for instance, was an active, plotting anti-Nazi since the early days of the Hitler regime, and his connections were not only with part of the Reichswehr but with the old Social Democrats and trade unions. How strong he may have been, I do not know. But the conspiracy existed, and could have been strengthened.
There are all sorts of symptoms that anti-Nazis made overtures to the Allied powers and tried to get aid tin overthrowing the Nazi regime – both before and since the war began. As far as we can see, they failed completely, and the plot was discovered and its leaders liquidated by the Gestapo.
In the days of the plot, the attitude expressed by inspired American publicists was: We will not be cheated out of our victory; we demand unconditional surrender. But that is not the question. The question is: Who is going to surrender? And what will come after the surrender?
Actually, the unconditional-surrender formula is in the wastepaper basket. Surrender implies authority that can and will surrender. The Nazis will not. The French Fascists have not even surrendered in Paris and Marseilles. They have had to be dislodged, house by house, and could only be dislodged by Frenchmen, because we don’t know who they are or where they are. It is unlikely that the German Nazis will show less fight than the French Fascists – but what Germans are going to help us?
The Russians have a German group who will help liquidate Nazism. But we have not. The reason is not that there are more pro-Russian Germans than pro-Western. The reason is that the Russians consciously foresaw a situation.
The situation we have met in France has astonished at least our correspondents. It is a revolutionary situation. But it is an organized revolution, with its partisans assisted by our arms, the majority of the people with it, and with personnel to conduct it. It is a Sunday-school picnic compared with what we will confront one of these days in Germany. For Germany is not only the most powerful center of fascism but the last stronghold of all the Fascists of Europe. And for whatever policy we pursue – the breakup of Germany, the truncating of Germany, the government of Germany without division – for any choice, we shall have to have assistance.
Are we doing anything to encourage and organize such assistance? Do we know yet what policy we shall seek assistance for? Or are we doing all we can to bring about the discouragement and liquidation of any group that might help us?
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
George Spelvin, American, being called to Washington to state his views on the conditions of peace, took the stand just after lunch.
Q. (By Senator Nilly) Mr. Spelvin, the committee would be pleased to hear your views on the matter in which we are to solve the German problem.
A. (By Mr. Spelvin) Well, Senator, the way I see it and I don’t want to be arbitrary, but you are absolutely right because the dirty Nazis certainly were responsible, and President Roosevelt just before the war, why, you remember, he sent Adolf Hitler a letter or maybe a cable but anyway, this message, whatever it was, whether a letter or what, well he asked Hitler not to mess up those other countries in Europe, so Hitler, he was riding pretty high those days, so he sent letters to all those other countries asking if they were afraid he was going to mess them up and, of course, if you are sitting right under the guns like they were, why you don’t like to get fresh so they said, “Oh, no” they said, they never thought of such a thing and then you remember, why, whammy, he socked poor little Poland and then Denmark and Norway and–
Q. (By Senator Nilly) I don’t like to interrupt but if you will pardon the interruption, why, what the committee is more interested in, Mr. Spelvin, is of course we all do remember the events of those days, but the committee would like to have your views on–
A. (By Mr. Spelvin) Well, I was coming to that, Senator, and the way I see it when a country starts two world wars in 25 years and they say they are the master race and they ought to rule the world and then you have to pull everything out of joint for four or five years, yourself, to lick them, well it seems to me the best way you can do is bust them up in little pieces and if it was me I would favor moving the French border up to the Rhine and I would give the Dutchmen a piece of Germany and the Danes and the Poles, too; but, Senator, the hell of it is, if you will pardon the expression, well you recall the Germans took Alsace and Lorraine that other time, and the Frenchmen couldn’t rest until they got them back, and the same way with the Italians, they got back some land but most everybody was a Heinie in those places by this time so the French they made them teach French in the Alsace-Lorraine schools and Mussolini he made his Heinies learn to speak Eyetalian and made it a felony to yodel–
Q. (By Senator Nilly) Then I take it that you mean–
A. (By Mr. Spelvin) Well, yes in a way, because you have to face facts and if we say we are going to let people live by the consent of the governed and then you take and give eight or 10 million Heinies to the Frenchmen and Poles and all like that, why, naturally, they are going to feel very bad and after another 25 years maybe England has got another government or France goes cockeyed again like she done – like they did – this last time and these Heinies will make a deal some way to fight for their freedom from the oppressor and there you are all over again.
Q. (By Senator Nilly) But, sir, if I may interrupt and of course the committee wants your views, not mine, but if I may point out–
A. (By Mr. Spelvin) And then, furthermore, Senator, right is right and if we say we are against aggressors then do we mean all aggressors, or do we forget all about Finland, because you may remember, President Roosevelt, why he burned up that Stalin that time for being an aggressor against Finland and then again, after Hitler messed up Poland why Stalin he just split up Poland with Germany, so now he is fixing to keep part of Poland and give Poland part of Germany, but how about all those Poles that were living in the part that Joe took and we never did get any true reports what happened, but we did hear he sent a lot of them to Siberia; and those Ukrainians, too, that he didn’t trust, what happened to them?
Q. (By Senator Nilly) And what about Quisling and Laval?
A. (By Mr. Spelvin) Well, I think like you do on that, and I certainly would burn them down, but when you are out after traitors, why the way I see it as an American, why I see it as an American there was a lot of other traitors there in France and they did their worst to louse up France so Hitler could walk in, and it was the same in our own country but now they call those bums patriots and, excuse me, I don’t know whether you are democrat or not, but President Roosevelt he lets those dirty rats, no-account, lowdown Communist traitors get jobs in our government, like the Dies Committee said, and now they are all mixed up in Sidney Hillman’s Communist outfit so–
(By Senator Nilly) The committee thanks you Mr. Spelvin.
Recognition of ‘Hero of El Alamein’ comes after Bradley is moved up in France
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Stalin, now at front, is expected to cross Atlantic later for meeting of ‘Big Three’
By Blair Moody, North American Newspaper Alliance
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French say most of flying torpedoes blew up before reaching Channel coast
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University man and Navy officer publish science test scores to prove theory
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New York (UP) –
Three Republican governors launch the party’s second salvo in four days against President Roosevelt and the New Deal tonight in a nationwide broadcast supporting the candidacy of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
KDKA will broadcast the speeches at 10:30 p.m. ET.
National headquarters here promised there would no repetition of the confusion caused Tuesday night when three other governors made last-minute changes in “canned” speeches sent them by the Republican National Committee. This time, each governor will draft his own speech based on an outline of the issues involved.
Governors speaking tonight are Edward Martin of Pennsylvania, Andrew Schoeppel of Kansas and Edward J. Thye of Minnesota.
NLRB-WLB conflict causes mine strikes
By Fred W. Perkins
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McCook, Nebraska (UP) –
George W. Norris, 83-year-old former Nebraska Senator who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage Tuesday, was still in critical condition today, but his attending physician reported he had taken “some liquid food” last night.
Mr. Norris does not respond to anything said to him, but does show signs of recognizing persons at his bedside, his physician said.