America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

americavotes1944

Roosevelt to talk politics in Philadelphia Oct. 27

Democratic city committee and ‘businessmen’ to sponsor rally at Shibe Park

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt will make a campaign speech Friday night, Oct. 27, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, David Lawrence, chairman of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee, announced today after a conference with the President.

Mr. Lawrence visited the White House as a member of a delegation representing “Business Men for Roosevelt, Inc.”

He said Mr. Roosevelt would speak at 9:00 p.m. ET. He added it would be an outright political rally sponsored jointly by the Democratic City Committee of Philadelphia and the national businessmen’s organization.

Andrew J. Higgins, New Orleans shipbuilder and honorary president of “Businessmen for Roosevelt, Inc.,” who led the delegation today, said he and his colleagues had invited the President “to address businessmen throughout the nation.”

“Businessmen for Roosevelt, Inc.,” will pay for Mr. Roosevelt’s radio time, he said, and the speech will be broadcast over the Blue and CBS networks.

Mr. Roosevelt’s next major address is scheduled for Saturday night, Oct. 21, when he will speak before the Foreign Policy Association in New York City.

Mr. Lawrence said Shibe Park will seat between 35,000 and 45,000.

Other members of the group which called on the President today included J. Louis Reynolds, Virginia, chairman of the Executive Committee in Philadelphia, and Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA).

Planes crash on all sides as Japs attack U.S. Fleet

Task force battles for 10 hours against waves of bombers in vicinity of Formosa
By George E. Jones, United Press staff writer


Japs cut draft age

London, England –
Japan will begin conscripting 17-year-old boys for military service Nov. 1 and will accept volunteers under 17, the German Transocean News Agency said today in a dispatch from Tokyo. The draft age limit had previously had been 19.

Southern Florida warned of storm

Miami, Florida (UP) –
A special bulletin today warned that a tropical hurricane is expected to pass over western Cuba tonight or tomorrow, and said that South Florida residents should stand by for probable warnings.

Late reports from the Caribbean indicated that the storm had finally taken a definite northward direction, after several days in which it idled about, giving no indication of what course it might take.

Reports from Havana said preparations were being made for the blow, with banks and theaters closing at midday. The National Observatory warned all Cubans to take fullest precautions after 8:00 p.m. ET.

On Oct. 29, 1926, a hurricane killed more than 600 persons in Havana and other parts of Cuba.

parry3

I DARE SAY —
The age of innocence

By Florence Fisher Parry

Frank Sinatra didn’t get a White House reception the other night at the Paramount Theater in New York. A boy who was sitting down front in the midst of the swooning bobbysocks threw three eggs at The Voice, and all three landed.

The policeman who later rescued him from the infuriated mob of junior misses escorted him to the subway and let him go. His explanation seemed to satisfy them: “It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

These young girls sit all day in the theaters where The Voice is appearing. They bring their lunches and dinners. They play hooky, they are completely out of hand.

One young mother complained to me the other day: “My girl nine years old has seen Double Indemnity three times.” How many times this same child has seen the horror pictures which are being shown in profusion on neighborhood double features and at our downtown theaters, she was unprepared to guess.

Now the scapegoat will be, as usual, the motion picture industry – its producers, exhibitors, all who have “furnished” this poisonous diet to our teenagers. The real offenders, the Responsibles, will, as usual, shift the blame upon the broad back of an industry which has borne more undeserved attack than any institution in our country.

Old before their time

And I say it’s time for a change. It’s time to place the blame where it belongs – upon the families and homes and parents of the children, for children whose movie habits are bad are simply children who have not been properly brought up.

They have been dragged at a preposterously early age to adult, unsuitable movies by young parents who have no other way to see the movies themselves or they have been got rid of by being sent with other children to the neighboring movie theaters, or they have been provided no other form of amusement. Children’s books, children’s entertainment, children’s games, are unknown to them. They have not been taken to circuses, Sunday School, entertainments, picnics, children’s parties; they have never seen a Punch and Judy show or a fairytale play. They have been plunged into adult amusements from the very start, until their tastes crave the aperitif of strong condiments in their entertainment, and they are spoiled forever for the kind of fun which children should have.

Yet such fun is available. It is being provided. Our department stores, our schools, many of our great institutions like the Buhl Planetarium and Carnegie Institute, are constantly offering delightful activities for children.

Next Saturday, for instance, at the Schenley Theater, begins a charming program of children’s plays, which will be given every month throughout the season by a group which calls itself The Pittsburgh Children’s Theater Society. The cost is so low: season tickets can be had for $1.50! The plays and entertainments are charming, suitable and gay!

Can’t you help?

The project began three years ago. There had been other local Children’s Theater projects, but they had been patronized largely by children already privileged. THIS was to be a children’s theater for everyone! The project still functions and will not be discouraged! Yet I know that in order to continue, it must, MUST have help: concretely, 390 new patrons who will subscribe $5 apiece.

There is no way to describe to you what this modest windfall would represent to those who have worked so desperately hard to keep aflame this charming project!

I have seldom used this space to raise funds! God knows there are hundreds of calls made upon us these urgent days, and most of them are worthy and many of them are far, far more important! But none, I think, has been quite so neglected, quite so – MISSED – as this one little plea on behalf of the children!

The war has been hard on them in countless ways! They have not known a peacetime household with peacetime conversation, peacetime nerves, peacetime leisure, peacetime recreations. They are shunted aside.

Poor little war casualties, we have forgot to keep them gay!

Here is a way, simple, cheap, charming: give them to the Children’s Theater Society for a few enchanted hours. And send your check for $5 to Mrs. Raymond H. Lester, 950 N Negley Ave., payable to The Pittsburgh Children’s Theater Society.

Films inaccurate about history! Shirley says so!


Strike cripples bomb output at Oakmont

50 maintenance men idle 300 at Scaife

Group fights veto power in peace council

96 organizations war U.S. officials

Seventh released in heiress’ death


Sedition group denied dismissal

americavotes1944

Lewis’ foe loses ballot fight

Washington (UP) –
Federal Judge Matthew F. McGuire today denied the petition of Ray Edmundson, former Illinois district president of the United Mine Workers, for an order banning distribution of UMW ballots which do not bear Mr. Edmundson’s name as a candidate for the position of UMW international president.

Mr. Edmundson resigned as Illinois district chieftain early this year. Subsequently he launched a campaign for election as international president to succeed John L. Lewis.

Judge McGuire ruled after Nicholas J. Chase, UMW attorney, said the matter had been properly decided by the union’s convention which met at Cincinnati in September. Mr. Chase said the 3,000 delegates representing 600,000 union members had decided Mr. Edmundson could not be a candidate because he was neither a member in good standing nor a mine worker.

americavotes1944

4th term opposed by Boston Post

Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The Boston Post (Independent-Democratic) said editorially today that it “cannot conscientiously support a fourth-term candidate for President.”

The Post said:

Four years ago, a similar position was taken by this newspaper against a third term, and the reasons for the decision taken have not altered but have been aggravated by the events of four of the most decisive years in the history of the nation and the world.

The Post said it was undemocratic “to accept calmly the possibility of a fourth term because of the precedent of the third term.”

Gracie Allen Reporting

By Gracie Allen

Hollywood, California –
I read in the paper that the women in England are worried about the shortage of corsets, it seems their figures are becoming almost as global as the war.

They’re demanding more and better corsets and they say if they don’t get them, they’re going to stage a sit-down strike. Well, I don’t wish to meddle in international affairs, but I certainly wouldn’t advise women who don’t have corsets to do too much sitting down. You have no idea how a situation like that can spread.

Here in America, we’re troubled by the girdle shortage. There’s only one pre-war girdle left in my house. After that’s gone, I don’t know what George will do.

americavotes1944

The truth about the Commies –
Communists switched to Roosevelt after Hitler invaded Russia

Up to that time they sabotaged our war efforts and tried to keep America from arming
By Frederick Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: American Communists, by utilizing their technique of infiltration, have burrowed into American unions, kidnapped the American Labor Party in New York, dominated the CIO Political Action Committee and made strong inroads into the New Deal administration. Today, these Communists stand as the greatest menace to American democracy.

The Scripps-Howard newspaper assigned Frederick Woltman, a staff writer, to ascertain and present the facts about the Communists in a series of articles of which this is the first.

Washington –
But for Hitler’s invasion of Russia, President Roosevelt today would be without the support of the American Communists. Instead, these self-proclaimed superpatriots would be silenced and languishing behind prison bars and the stockades of internment camps.

Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee would lack a substantial bloc of its noisiest tub-thumpers and many of its most diligent $1-for-Roosevelt collecting unions would be leaderless.

The Communists’ current strategy of moving in on the Democratic Party under the guise of a “political association” might never have been contrived.

Sabotaged defense efforts

Until the very night Hitler tore up his mutual non-aggression pact with Stalin and turned his armies westward, America’s Communist Party, including its trade-union and other satellites, was engaged in a sabotage drive against the national defense efforts.

For 21 months, from Aug. 23, 1939, to June 22, 1941, as their contribution to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Communists resorted to every tactic known to world Communism to undermine America’s frantic, last-minute attempts to build a defense wall against the Nazi horde.

To them, the war was merely a “second imperialist struggle,” and President Roosevelt was a “warmonger” and “dictator.”

Earl Browder, major-domo of Communism’s American outlet, said on Sept. 8, 1940:

Roosevelt is leading the march, and scattering the wreck of even the limited democracy of the American Constitution along the way.

On Jan. 13, 1941, Browder & Co., now first-class passengers on the Roosevelt bandwagon, warned:

The destruction of the capitalist world is being carried out under the direction of Hitler and Churchill, of Mussolini and Pétain of France and the Mikado – and not of Roosevelt.

Daily Worker joined in

Through party pronouncements, the Daily Worker, the Communist-led unions and its various fronts, such as the American People’s Mobilization, the American Communists:

  • Bitterly denounced Selective Service as “a spearhead of the attacks on our democracy;” popularized the anti-Allied slogan, “The Yanks Are Not Coming;” and, while America’s youth was enlisting to defend their country, gleefully chanted:

Remember when the AAA
Killed a million hogs a day?
Instead of hogs – it’s men today
Plow the fourth one under!
Plow under, plow under
Every fourth American boy!

  • Attacked the 1941 defense budget as “a Wall Street conspiracy against the American people.”

  • Fought Lend-Lease, the arming of merchant ships and the arms mass-production program, which they tried to frighten the American people into believing had maimed and killed “thousands of workers.”

They reached the apex of anti-defense propaganda in a picket line around the White House which ended on the day of Russia’s invasion.

The high point of physical sabotage came with a series of defense industry strikes, culminating in the North American Aviation walkout at Inglewood, California. This was called a few weeks before Germany started war on Russia, which resulted in an instantaneous flipflop among the American comrades.

When the Communists defied the government at Inglewood and the President had to send in troops to protect the patriotic workers, it became evident that the sands were running out for them.

Strike resembled ‘insurrection’

The Attorney General, now Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, called the North American Aviation affair “more nearly… an insurrection than a labor strike.”

He added:

The distinction between loyal labor leaders and those who are following the Communist Party line is easy to observe. Disloyal men who have wormed their way into the labor movement do not want settlements; they want strikes. That is the Communist Party line…

Yet another administration official, terming the Communist strike leadership “irresponsible and subversive,” had this to say:

This defiance is a challenge that goes to the roots of the entire democratic system – and the efforts of this democracy to preserve itself.

Made peace with Hillman

This was the voice of Sidney Hillman, then associate director general of the Office of Production Management. William Z. Foster, now vice president of the Communist Political Association, blasted back that the “Hillman line of policy” was leading down the path “toward the surrender of the trade unions outright to the greed and autocracy of the warmongers and profiteers.”

The Communists and Mr. Hillman have since made their peace.

They joined forces to capture the American Labor Party in New York State; and, more recently to put across the fourth-term program of his CIO-PAC.

Formosa no longer target for Superfortress attacks

By Walter S. Rundle, United Press staff writer

Germans hurl heavy fire on 5th Army

Yanks meet all-out Po Valley defense
By Eleanor Packard, United Press staff writer

Kay: Tears stream from Greeks at sight of first American

Reporter hailed as hero on arrival in Thrace as last Germans evacuate
By Leon Kay, United Press staff writer

Monahan: Ten Little Indians slick who-dun-it

Nixon murder carnival has ‘em guessing, chuckling out front
By Kaspar Monahan


Bette Davis looks ahead

Post-war period vital, she says

Willkie burial to be held today

Rushville, Indiana (UP) –
Burial services will be held today for Wendell L. Willkie.

Mr. Willkie will be laid to rest in East Cemetery, only a few miles from his rich Rush County farms where he vacationed from business and politics.

Rushville’s business places will be closed when final rites are held at the Wyatt Memorial Mortuary this afternoon.

The services will be conducted by Rev. George A. Frantz of the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, assisted by Rev. C. B. Reeder, acting pastor of the Rushville First Presbyterian Church.

Mrs. Edith Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee’s widow; his son, Navy Lt. Philip Willkie, and a group of family friends arrived this morning from New York City where Mr. Willkie died Oct. 8.

americavotes1944

Stokes: Witch-hunting

By Thomas L. Stokes

Salem, Massachusetts –
Waking up in this almost legendary seaport at 3 o’clock in the morning and looking out the window into a fog so thick that it almost hides the large statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne less than a hundred yards down the street is one of those experience that linger, for the past seems to rise with the fog and hover around.

It is so, particularly, for anyone with a feeling for the lure of this 300-year-old town whence the whaling boats sailed off to the cold waters, where they once hanged people for witchcraft, where long afterward the moody and mystical Hawthorne lived an almost solitary life and wrote his tales of tortured souls.

As I sat by the window the past receded into the present, into the current political campaign, and there came back, for reflection here in the stillness, the voices I had heard in Boston all the day before, the voices that told of the prejudices, the hates in men’s souls, even as Hawthorne knew them, the witch-hunts that are going on today.

A new kind of witch

There is a man named Earl Browder, out of Kansas – just as were was in another era a man named William Z. Foster and a man named Eugene V. Debs and another today named Norman Thomas who advocates a political, social and economic theory much in conflict with majority opinion.

He can still talk in the American tradition of free speech. He can even talk in Boston, as he did, though he got a few firecrackers tossed into his meeting. That is acceptable American practice, very proper in Boston. Once, there, a bunch of men threw some tea overboard into the harbor.

But Earl Browder is a modern witch, far beyond old Salem, not so much of himself. but as a symbol in this campaign because he has happened to come out for the reelection of President Roosevelt. Republicans are very joyful, and are thumping the tubs merrily, and thumbing their noses at Democrats and shouting “Communism” and “Reds.” Democrats are frightened about it, and complaining among themselves.

Why doesn’t that man quit making a show of himself?

And there’s another witch named Sidney Hillman. They are burning him too at the stake, mentally.

The voices I had listened to, which came back as I sat at the window staring into the fog, had other things to say, too, as had voices in New York when I was there, in explanation of the political reactions in this campaign. These were about foreign nationalities in Boston and New York, set aside in the minds of politicians in separate compartments, just as if they were not Americans.

Appeal to ancient prejudice

The politician must appeal to them – or so he thinks – on the basis of ancient desires and ancient prejudices about the homelands, as they may be affected by the war. It happens every four years.

They propose to appeal to the Italians, the Poles, the Irish, and the others, as if they had just come here yesterday. The politician plots his devious doctrines. The plotting goes all the way to the top. President Roosevelt and Governor Dewey are making statements and speeches and receiving delegations to entice this or that group, and smart men sit in backrooms and try to figure out the reaction and the next move.

There’s a Saltonstall and a Bradford running for high public office in this state. Their forebears came over at the start. They are Americans. Why do those who came over only three generations ago, or two generations ago, or even one generation ago have to be treated otherwise?

The question was propounded into the fog. It was drifting about, so that it seemed the stone image down in the street moved.

Perhaps he was shifting about uneasily. I couldn’t see his face. He had his back to me.

Gene Tunney changes opinion –
Competitive sports demonstrate value in service training

By Jack Cuddy, United Press staff writer

Harold Lloyd ends long holdout on radio

Silent star heeds call of sponsor
By Si Steinhauser

Airline plans U.S. to Paris trip for $250

Expects to make flight in 13 hours