Thursday, October 28, 1943

The Charlotte News

Thursday, October 28, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the key Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain had been hit hard with 500 tons of bombs by Allied air raids, knocking out fully 525 enemy planes in thirteen days. The Allies had lost but thirteen planes, some of the crews of which had been rescued.

Not yet confirmed by American reports, the Japanese claimed that Allied forces had landed on Treasury Island, also known as Mono Island, twenty miles from Shortland Island.

Northwest of Raviscanina, the Fifth Army carved a deep salient in the Upper Volturno River Valley, taking Riardo, nine miles southwest of Raviscanina. Despite these gains, the Fifth Army remained to the left of the Eighth Army and short of the main German defense line along the Massico Ridge.

Under heavy artillery fire, the Eighth Army engineers threw bridges across the Trigno River, permitting the Army to establish a firm bridgehead northwest of the river. The Army took towns south and southeast of the river as well.


The Russians continued to move west and south of Melitopol, taking new towns and villages and chasing the evacuating Germans toward the Crimea.

A piece recounts of the low morale being experienced by German soldiers and civilians alike, most of whom had indicated to American prisoners just released that they expected the war in Europe to end by January. The German civilians were particularly hostile to American fliers and parachutists and sometimes spat upon them as prisoners.

Hal Boyle reports from Algiers that food, clothing, and medicine had become more scarce in Algeria, he was told by French civilians there, than before the Allied landing in November.

A report from Poland indicated that Lwow and all save 4,000 Jewish residents of the city were wiped out by the Nazis. The 4,000 were shipped to Janow concentration camp.

On the domestic front, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to reject a 10% national sales tax. That left only about two billion dollars in new revenue approved by the House against 10.5 billion requested by the Treasury to pay for the war.

John L. Lewis, speaking for the UMW, rejected the WPB proposal for a $1.12.5 wage increase per day. The proposed WPB hike would have raised the total wage per day to $8.12.5, but based, said Lewis, on an eight and a half hour day, compared to the present seven-hour day at $1 per hour. The result was that the new wage averaged out to only 95.5 cents per hour.

Mr. Lewis, however, did not take into account that the added hour and a half was based on travel time to and from the point of operations in the mine, the WPB proposal granting the UMW demand made in the spring for portal-to-portal pay, albeit at an effectively reduced hourly pay rate of 75 cents.

On the editorial page, "Farmer's Story" points out that the North Carolina farmer was suffering and, should things not soon be improved, many would fail. Among the shortfalls cited by the State Master in speaking before the Grange were that the farm was failing to produce by a quarter the necessary feed for livestock and poultry, a price ceiling on corn and a price floor on hogs had raised the corn-hog ratio too high and shut off the corn market as a result, and inequitable wages between non-farm and farm employees was hampering the availability of farm labor.

"The Illegitimates" points out that the burgeoning birth rate in Charlotte, increased through the first three-quarters of the year by fully 50% above the rate for the whole of 1940, also had provided concomitantly increases in illegitimate births, even if at the lower rate of about a 25% increase, (assuming a static population growth), most of which had come from the black community. Nevertheless, the figures put to rest rumors that illegitimate births were rampantly on the rise.

"The Faux Pas" finds Labor shooting itself in the foot by vowing to war against every Congressmen in 1944 who had voted for the Smith-Connally bill which imposed fines and possible jail time on union leaders for conspiring to strike in vital war industries. Congress had never been friendlier to Labor than in the previous decade, says the piece, and so voting out Labor-friendly Democrats in favor of Republicans very likely could result in a return to pre-New Deal times for Labor, hard times for Labor.

"The Women" speculates that women would likely be loathe after the war to relinquish the benefits they had gained in the absence of men in the workplace. The women in war industries were deemed more efficient and precision-oriented than men in the workplace in both Britain and Russia. The same would likely prove true in time in the United States.

An ancillary problem being encountered in the U.S. workplace was that women were ditching their lazy husbands and opting for making their own independent living.

Dorothy Thompson contrasts the Badoglio Government in Italy with the Darlan Government in Algeria after the Allied landing in November, 1942. Count Sforza, anti-Fascist leader, had more or less accepted Badoglio as a military leader accountable to political forces in the country. The consequent feeling was that he should not be rejected for the fact that he followed Mussolini as a good soldier, that he would equally respond to democratic forces at work in the country. But King Victor Emanuele was to be treated as a different case. He was a political leader and, as such, had given his blessings to the Fascists and Mussolini. He was thus unacceptable as a leader in Italy.

Drew Pearson argues that the blame for the civil war in Greece could be placed at the doorstep of the United States for following British policy of acceding to royalty. A British colonel who had mingled with Greek guerillas for more than a year reported that anti-Nazi resistance had been diluted by British and American support for King George II of Greece who had in turn supported the Metaxas dictatorship in Greece. George II was viewed by the guerillas as being little different from the Nazis and so U.S. support of him had created antagonism.

A conference of the underground leaders was called in Cairo and it was determined that the King should not return to Greece until a plebiscite could be had after the war to determine the form of government favored by the people. The protocol thus drawn up was presented to the Greek Cabinet which unanimously approved it and presented it to the King. George II indicated that he would await his decision on it until after he had spoken with Roosevelt and Churchill

In a subsequent meeting between British representatives with the Cabinet and guerilla leaders, a British representative expressed dismay at the Cabinet's opposition to the King. A member of the Cabinet expressed the belief that the American people were not in favor of forcing a king on Greece without popular approval. Ultimately, the matter was deferred, awaiting more official British response from Churchill as the British representative admitted expressing only his personal opinion.

Samuel Grafton posits that the new form of isolationism was nationalism in which the agenda was acquisition of buffer islands, establishing exclusivity over world air routes, and taking from Britain superiority in merchant shipping. The new form was still, says Mr. Grafton, characterized by the same notions as isolationism, living apart from the world, but now took on an offensive character to dominate the world.

Raymond Clapper remarks on Swedish outrage at the shooting down of a Swedish passenger plane, the blame for which had been laid on the Luftwaffe. Swedish public antagonism toward the Nazis generally had increased substantially since Mr. Clapper’s visit to the country in May, he reports, as evidenced by several actions of the Government, including the disallowing of Nazi troop and supply movements by rail across Sweden to and from occupied Norway, the granting of asylum to 5,000 Jewish refugees from Denmark escaping the new terror wave there by the Nazis in response to underground activity in a state which the Nazis had formerly sought to establish a model of occupation. No longer was the Government taking a strictly neutral stance in the war.

Mr. Clapper concludes by explaining the efforts undertaken by Swedish commercial aircraft to avoid being accidentally mistaken for Allied military planes: flying at high altitude at night in plainly marked aircraft and under cover of clouds, delaying flights for several days to achieve such flying conditions.

Although the piece does not say it, the reader is left to conclude that the shooting down of the Swedish aircraft by the Nazis was not accidental but deliberately in retaliation for the recent Allied-friendly gestures of the Swedish Government.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i>--</i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.