Thursday, December 2, 1943

The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 2, 1943

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Germans appeared to be in full retreat from their winter line in Italy and were in the process of abandoning Cassino on the road north to Rome. The Eighth Army was reported to be pushing the Germans back toward Pescara while continuing to gain ground across the Sangro River, having taken the entire Sangro Ridge.

A raid of Flying Fortresses, originating from North Africa, attacked the French port of Marseilles. It was the first such attack on the French port by Flying Fortresses of the 13th Air Force. The raid complemented the previous week’s raid on Toulon, which turned out to be one of the largest attacks ever undertaken against a naval base.

In Russia, the Germans counter-attacked along the 600-mile front, but the Red Army was reported to have held its ground and even gained some ground in White Russia and the Dneiper bend. American correspondents near the frontlines reported that the fighting proved more intense than at any other recent time, despite the muddy conditions of early winter.

In the Pacific, for the first time a seaborne attack was launched, on November 29-30, by naval forces under the command of Vice Admiral Thomas Kincaid, against Gasmata on New Britain and Madang on New Guinea, both many times previously hit by airborne attack.

The Navy announced that it had lost a small aircraft carrier to Japanese submarine attack during the offensive against the Gilbert Islands. The Liscome Bay was the only Allied ship lost in the operation. It was the first escort carrier lost during the war and the first carrier lost at all since the Hornet in late October, 1942 during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. In all, the U.S. Navy had lost to date in the war 131 ships, five of which had been carriers.

It was reported by the Associated Press, based on a reliable source, that the Cairo meeting between the British and American military staffs, led by General Eisenhower, had resulted in a long discussion on the opening of a second front. Discussion also took place anent the Balkans. It was deduced from this report that no final decision had yet been made on the time and whereabouts of the initiation of the second front, but that it would likely be the primary subject of discussion in the Tehran Conference between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.

Military observers in Washington tried to make sense of the fact that Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur did not attend the Cairo Conference, while Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Southeast Asia operations, was in attendance. It was believed generally that strategy would aim away from the Burma Road, inadequate for supplying China, and instead concentrate on taking Singapore, requiring the taking of Java, and the Philippines, as bases from which supplies could be shipped to China. But the fact that MacArthur and Nimitz, responsible for the Java and Philippines areas of operation, were not present proved counter-intuitive to these hypotheses.

Regardless of speculation, it was definitively stated by the Cairo Conference agreement that China, the U.S., and Great Britain would insure that Japan was stripped after the war of all its empire booty, including island possessions, taken in five wars dating to 1894, and that the war would be prosecuted by the three powers until there was unconditional surrender by the Japanese. Japan would be reduced to its home islands only.

Hal Boyle tells of the makeshift litters being used to bear the wounded, carried by mule, across the rugged terrain north of Venafro in Italy. It sometimes took three hours just to get the wounded men out of the battle zone, to begin the long trek down the circuitous paths to Army field hospitals, sometimes taking as long as ten hours total to reach relative safety. Most of the work took place in the dark as shelling during the daytime hampered operations.

Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to the United States, was scheduled to speak at both Duke and U.N.C. on this night, followed by a visit the next day to the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company of Wilmington. Whether part of his address would concern one unfortunate Miss Bailey, perhaps from nearabouts his bailiwick, was not stated.

On the editorial page, "One Victory" praises the Cairo Conference for its clear statement of intent with regard to Japan, that it would be stripped of its empire interests acquired since 1894 and that the war would be prosecuted to unconditional surrender. Out of the post-war world would emerge a strong China, says the piece, and a weakened Japan, unable again to wage war.

Now, predicts the editorial, a similar statement with regard to Germany would derive from the meeting between Churchill, FDR, and Stalin in Tehran.

"Who's Right?" examines statistics of arrests of prostitutes in Charlotte and the diseased among them, as provided by Mayor Baxter, when compared with the Army’s contention that high prostitution infested the area, the prostitutes riddled with venereal disease infecting soldiers stationed at Morris Field at the highest rate of any base in the country. The Mayor had proclaimed that with over 1,100 prostitutes arrested, some 300 of whom were infected with venereal disease, Charlotte had demonstrated that it was doing all that it could to eradicate the problem.

But viewed from the Army perspective, the number of arrests suggested that one in fifty Charlotte women were engaged in prostitution and over a fourth of those were infected. Not so good.

"The Stockings" urges generous giving to the annual Empty Stocking Fund sponsored by The News, established to provide toys and Christmas to the needy of the city and county. The piece indicates that the need extended even unto the homes from which soldiers had gone and were now fighting overseas.

Samuel Grafton cautions against the extension of any sympathy by the Allies to Marshal Petain based on his asserted split with Pierre Laval and advocacy for establishing a new French Republic with a new constitution. His motives appeared unclear, but were likely based only on an abiding desire to save his own hide in the aftermath of the war, especially now that it was clear that the Allies would win.

But to sympathize with Petain would strengthen Fascism. It would be better for the Allies not only to leave Fascism splintered in two in France, but to try to encourage further splits within the separate halves, further sapping the life out of the tree.

Dorothy Thompson relates of the peculiar importance of the bombing of Berlin to the destruction of Nazi Germany. Nazidom was characterized by complete centralization of government, all deriving from authority concentrated in Berlin. The individual states of Germany had been abolished; the traditional bureaucracy had been expanded. But all now gravitated around and obtained its authority from Berlin. Moreover, not only the political center of the country was in Berlin, but its economic, industrial, and scientific centers resided there. Over half of the 4.5 million inhabitants of the city, for instance, were workers.

Destroying Berlin was thus inevitably to destroy Nazi Germany.

Raymond Clapper places in his column the names of some of the leading men in the Office of Price Administration, charged with keeping prices regulated in the war economy to avoid crippling inflation. He states that about two-thirds of the Office was comprised of Republicans. Thus, it was ironic that Republicans on Capitol Hill were carping at the Office and seeking to ban food subsidies. Ultimately, says Mr. Clapper, the debate on food subsidies was about price control. And OPA had been singularly effective in maintaining price controls in a thankless environment since the war began for America.

As we have pointed out before, one of OPA's early number would go on to become President, though by now he was a member of the Navy's "Flying Boxcars" of the Pacific Air Transport Command, supplying operations on Rendova and Bougainville.

Drew Pearson suggests a method by which fathers might be yet saved from the draft. The feat might be accomplished in large part by the mere reduction in the number of sentries posted at various stations around the country, from guarding the homes of admirals to guarding the White House or the Commerce Building, the latter, says Mr. Pearson, possessing nothing of importance to guard save the aquarium in the basement.

He also suggests that Manpower Coordinator Paul McNutt might soon resign his post and instead quietly await on the sidelines the possibility of being tapped as vice-presidential nominee at the 1944 Democratic Convention. Out of the offices of government, and thus away from needing to provide unquestioning loyalty to FDR, he might stand such a chance, could have garnered the nomination instead of Henry Wallace had he been in that position in 1940.

Yet, it would not be so. The man from Missouri would replace Henry Wallace on the fourth Democratic ticket headed by FDR.

Otherwise, it might have been, at a time when America was set to drop the first atomic bombs to end the Pacific war, that the decision, instead of being vested in the hands of Harry Truman, would have rested on the shoulders of President McNutt.

The squib at the bottom of the column, incidentally, appears about 25 years ahead of its time.

The piece by the Reverend Herbert Spaugh reminds of this one and this one.

We told you. We have both.

Look in the aquarium in the basement of the Commerce Department Building for the answer.

Don't worry though. Nothing happens unusual in 2012, except the quadrennial recurrence of the presidential election in the United States, coinciding, as always, with Leap Year. (Probably a Masonic thing, having to do with the number 29, or 28 IF.) We read about it all in the third syllable of the fourteenth seat of the 891st quatrain, which goes: "He who thinks 2012 is mystical Mayan End of Days is like unto the Ass of Balaam in Big Valley."

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