Wednesday, November 17, 1943

The Charlotte News

Wendesday, November 17, 1943

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Red Army moved north and south of Gomel, the last important German stronghold east of the Dneiper, to effect a pincer operation on the city.

Bad weather and German counter-thrusts hampered operations in the Ukraine, particularly around Fastov and Zhitomir. But the Soviets continued to press toward Korosten, the rail junction on the Odessa-to-Leningrad and Kiev-to-Warsaw lines.

An eyewitness to the early days of Nazi occupation of Kiev in the fall of 1941, gave the account to Izvestia that German soldiers had rounded up the Jews of the city for three solid days and nights, marching them in a queue along Lvovskaya Street, forcing them to proceed to Babyl Yar gully. There, the men, women, and children were forced to strip naked and surrender all their worldly possessions, including rings and watches, to the Nazis who piled them in trucks. The Nazis then systematically executed them in front of the gully.

In Yugoslavia, the Partisans fighting under Tito launched a counter-offensive within Slovenia, breaking up the lines of the Germans who had begun their offensive October 12. Tito also claimed victories within the state of Herzegovina, while Germans admittedly made headway against outnumbered Partisan forces in both Croatia and Bosnia.

The British lost the island of Dodecanes island of Leros to the Germans, despite the earlier report of Greek guerilla forces thrusting the Germans back on the island. Added to the loss of Cos and Castelrosso during October, any remaining footholds of the British in the Dodecanese were tenuous.

The Lebanese were said to be amassing 20,000 troops, including Druse tribesmen, to fight their French occupiers. A few days earlier, the British had threatened to intervene in the conflict should order not quickly be restored in Lebanon by the French. The French were working through diplomatic channels to try to effect a resolution to the riots in the country, occurring since the dissolution the previous week of the Parliament and imprisonment of several officials by the French High Commissioner.

Contradicting the Navy supply chief, a spokesman for General MacArthur indicated that men and equipment were not reaching the Southwest Pacific in sufficient numbers and quantity to conduct a large-scale offensive operation against the Japanese. The spokesman said that the American forces in the Pacific were receiving but ten percent of the war supplies shipped overseas and had on hand only five percent of American military resources.

Speculation ran that the rumored conference to come between Stalin, FDR, and Churchill was to take place in Cairo.

Probably released as a deliberate red herring for enemy consumption, the conference would actually begin November 28 in Tehran.

Raymond Cronin, substituting in "A War Reporter's Notebook" column for Hal Boyle, reports of the civilian internment camps run by the Japanese in the Philippines, specifically Santo Tomas and Los Banos, wherein well-known American businessmen and women, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals had been reduced to performing menial labor, nevertheless adapting to their roles in the spirit of human survival.

And a piece from Los Angeles--perhaps by former News writer Cam Shipp, given its comment on "the silly season", a season often honored Homerically by The News--tells of a film studio in search of a cold city to thaw with some hot scenes and tempestuous romance in a new film with a hot star.

Perhaps it was an early trial run of "Some Like it Hot" or "The Seven Year Itch" or even "The Asphalt Jungle".

On the editorial page, "The Lid" finds prosaic the candidacy for the presidency just announced by Republican Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio. Perhaps, again, says the piece, the country might turn to the likes of a Warren G. Harding for president, one with a size 1 ½ hat, as with Governor Bricker. But not at this crucial juncture in history.

On the other hand, the editorial suggests Wendell Willkie as viable presidential timber.

"The Fathers" tells of the ready acceptance of life in the service by the newly drafted fathers of the country, predictive of their becoming effective soldiers in the same manner.

"Blind Justice" believes that the State was being made the victim of a ruse in falling for the need for medical attention claimed by convicted and sentenced bootleggers Paul and Carl Lippard, before they were sent to fulfill their sentence on the roads.

"Old Hand" reports that Bob Reynolds was about to begin a tour of the country lecturing on "Americanism" on behalf of America First, Inc. and Fascist Gerald L. K. Smith. The editorial predicts that Bob would be the America Firsters' candidate for the White House in 1944, that is the candidate of the Silver Shirts and Fascists of the country, not to mention the Nazis still in the underground.

Are you listening, Ms. Palin? America First wants YOU!

Now, they simply call it the Tea Party.

"One-Two" remarks on the bombing of Greek airdromes and Norwegian ports harboring warships of the Third Reich as being emblematic of a new turn in the war, one which promised bombing of the strategic outposts held by the Nazis since 1940 and 1941, not just France and Germany, where the heart of the industrial manufacture of weapons was taking place.

Samuel Grafton recommends that the Government recognize the legitimacy of long-time anti-Fascists Carlo Sforza and Benedetto Groce in Italy rather than trying to prop up the impotent Pietro Badoglio and King Victor Emanuele, neither of whom were recognized by the bulk of the Italian people as legitimate democratic leaders divorced from Mussolini. When Badoglio sought participation in his government by Count Sfroza and Sr. Groce, both declined.

Similarly, Charles De Gaulle was the legitimate leader of the Free French, not Henri Giraud, with whom the government of the United States had been heretofore most keen to dance since the assassination the previous Christmas of Admiral Jean Darlan.

Raymond Clapper again seeks to burst the bubble of critics of the food subsidy, arguing that instead of the critics’ claim of adding to the spiraling debt, in fact the subsidy, costing only the equivalent of three days of the cost of the war, would, by stemming inflation at the food market, actually lower the debt. It would, for instance, prevent the necessity for paying higher dependency allowances to families of servicemen by keeping food prices at present levels.

Drew Pearson reports that Republican Senator William Langer of North Dakota and Democratic Congressman John Tolan of California were co-sponsoring a bill to convert the congressional parking garage into a temporary living space for servicemen arriving at Union Station in Washington.

Upon inquiry, Senator Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia, wealthy apple orchard owner, stated that it would likely be too costly to convert the garage to living quarters.

But Mr. Pearson indicates to the contrary, that the garage would only need primarily cots from the Army’s vast store of same to make the conversion.

But what about the apple trees, so that the servicemen could occupy themselves in some worthy work for the Congress?

Mr. Pearson also relates of the extraordinary memory demonstrated at a recent press conference by Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. General Marshall had taken in turn one question each from twenty-one reporters, deferring answers to any of them until he had all twenty-one safely tucked into his memory bank. Then he began answering them, in order, remembering which reporter asked each question.

That, no doubt, the product of his insistence each day at the lunch hour on taking a fifteen-minute nap.

Remember?

Robert Lund, manufacturer of Listerine and Sugar Daddy--to St. Louis Republicans anyway--, met with Republican National Committee chair Harrison Spangler and other influential Republicans in an effort to stop the Willkie bandwagon for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination. It was believed that the Republicans had such a strong chance of winning that they no longer needed to field a progressive candidate.

Are you listening, Ms. Palin? The 1944 Republicans want YOU!

Back to silver standard,
And solid gold Palin…

A squib says that a new drug, dubbed F-substance, had been discovered recently and was well worth a bunch, had the benefits of penicillin but without the crunch, could be developed, rather than out of a non-random strain, from the fungi in the canopy of the ambient frame.

A doctor, conducting successful experiments with F-substance, stated that a hundred years of research into the drug lay ahead.

At least.

A letter writer, whose name unfortunately was clipped from the page in our haste to procure it one day last August, expounds as the proverbial "dreamer" of the ages, in response to The News editorial which reprinted and extolled the poem by Benjamin DeCasseres on the virtues of Private Enterprise.

Perchance.

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