Monday, September 20, 1943

The Charlotte News

Monday, September 20, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Fifth Army had seized the south side of the Bay of Naples, twelve miles from the city, by taking the heights of the Sorrento Peninsula. The capture brought Naples within range of Long Tom artillery guns.

Meanwhile, Italians took control of Sardinia from the Nazis.

General Mark Clark, becoming known as "the frontline general", took a tour through the central part of the front lines around Salerno and congratulated his men on a job well done.

Pietro Badoglio had broadcast to the Italian people on September 16, urging them to fight alongside the Allies against Germans, as well as against the few Italians who still fought on with the Germans. The speech sought to counter the impact of a recent speech by Mussolini who urged Italians to renew the fight for the Axis.

On the Russian front, the Red Army moved to within thirty miles of Smolensk and to within forty-two miles of Kiev, both key points of German defense on the Dneiper River.

An Allied fleet was reported proceeding up the west coast of Turkey in the Adriatic, fueling rumors that the Allies were about to invade the Balkans.

The Army and Navy Journal reported that unidentified high level interests were desirous of getting General Marshall out of Washington; hence the speculation on his being appointed commander-in-chief of the European forces. The Journal thought the prospect to hearken a drag on the war effort.

General Marshall testified before Congress that to defer the draft of fathers for three months until January 1, as proposed by the Wheeler Amendment, would seriously hamper the Army's war effort and throw a fighting force now seizing the offensive into reverse.

The Navy disclosed that its inventory of ships now numbered 14,072, as compared to three years earlier when the ships numbered only 1,076 of which only 383 were fighting vessels, making it the largest increase by any navy in history. Similarly, planes flown by the Navy now numbered more than 18,000 when three years earlier there were only 1,700.

The RAF reported that in the nine-day raid on Hamburg between July 24 and August 2, fully 7,840 tons of bombs were dropped, destroying 77 percent of the city while costing the Allies 87 bombers. The raids therefore dropped 60 times the tonnage in nine days which the Luftwaffe dropped on London during the entire Blitz of 1940-41, and a hundred times that dropped on Coventry.

On the editorial page, "In Italy" predicts that within days the first major offensive would begin against the Germans as they had begun falling back, in the pattern of North Africa and Sicily. The piece deduces from the fact that Rommel was in charge that the German plan again would be retreat, this time to the area north of the Po River Valley.

"Wheeler Again" berates Senator Burton Wheeler for his opposition to the draft of fathers, asserts that he had not reformed since his isolationist days before Pearl Harbor.

"A Boom Comes" reports on the sudden upsurge in desire for antiques, as fewer items of new furniture and glassware were being produced in the country. The piece questions whether the trend would ultimately cause a reverse effect after the war when modern wares became once again plentiful.

We have just one word for that coming age: plastic.

"The New Dole" finds the argument of Congressman Hare of South Carolina, that the states should not be forced to provide in taxes to the Federal Government more than they received, to be a product of faulty reasoning. Without the Federal Government, points out the piece, the South would have continued to languish far behind the nation in its development.

Tea Partiers of today take heed. This editorial is for your education and enlightenment. First ask yourself who is telling you all these wonderful new things pleasant to your ears. Who are these people? How much does the Limbeck make each year for spouting what you want to hear? Are these really your friends? Or are they simply charlatans seeking to take advantage of those desirous of hearing of the latest travelling road show miracle-cure patent medicine?

Colonel Frederick Palmer explains the strategies of both the Allies and the Germans in Italy. In the offensive at Salerno, the Fifth Army was now taking the role of the Eighth Army in Sicily, as it had slugged it out along the west coast at Catania for several weeks, while the Eighth Army was now occupying the role of the Seventh Army in Sicily, quickly winning more lightly defended ground to shore up the flank of the Fifith Army. The pursuit by part of the Eighth Army along the west coast of Italy up the Adriatic coincided with movements in the Aegean which promised ultimately a squeeze-play on the Balkans.

Meanwhile, Rommel was seeking to buy time to shore up his northern defenses, north of the Po Valley, while also seeking to shore up the Balkans, Greece, and Italian-occupied France to replace removed Italian defenders in those locations.

Raymond Clapper hails the first step about to be taken by the House in approving U.S. participation in a post-war United Nations organization, as sponsored by freshman Congressman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Mr. Clapper applauds the effort and hopes that the move would urge the Senate to do likewise.

The primary question was what form the organization would take. Many had plumped for a ban on Axis nations having planes, anti-aircraft guns, tanks, and other such weapons of modern warfare after the war. To enforce such a mandate would require weapons inspectors. Failure to abide by the terms would bring the sanction of economic quarantine on the offending nation. Continued failure to abide by the directive would bring force.

Mr. Clapper finds it imperative that the United States have membership in the organization if it were to have any hope of averting further world calamity, the lesson learned by the failure of the United States to participate in the League of Nations after World War I.

Thus it was, after a year of discussion of this notion following the President's first use of the term "United Nations" in February, 1942, that the first small steps were being made toward the founding of the United Nations organization as we know it.

Drew Pearson explores the deficiencies in Navy and Army intelligence, the failings of each being blamed for the slow victory at Salerno. Mr. Pearson says that one major fault in the services, as evidenced by the high turnover rate of directors, averaging in each service one per year since 1940, was the presence of aristocratic blood among the officers recruited, "cellophane commissions" as they had come to be called for their translucency while offering the blue-blood protection against the draft.

Well, you should see Cellophane Sam...

Before the landing at Salerno, military intelligence reported only skeletal defenses present at Naples, causing the landing force to be of medium strength. Marshal Badoglio warned General Eisenhower at the last minute that this intelligence was wrong and that the Nazis had two and a half divisions defending Naples, that they were lying in wait at Salerno with their guns trained on the beaches. This advice had caused Eisenhower to send immediate reinforcements. But had the proper intelligence been gathered in the first instance, offers Mr. Pearson, the landing would likely have been undertaken elsewhere, at a more lightly defended beachhead.

He next turns to the memoir being written by General MacArthur's ex-wife, Louise. In one episode she recounted how the general was striking a stance of perturbation at his wife's continuing to primp as the minutes ticked by beyond their scheduled dinner engagement. He stood insistently, Napoleonically, with his arms crossed. Louise demanded several times that he cease the posture or she would not proceed. Eventually, when he insisted on maintaining his demonstrative stance, she took her dressing mirror and cracked it over the general's head. Eventually they went to dinner.

Even more eventually, in 1928, they were divorced.

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