Tuesday, November 14, 1944

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 14, 1944

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, despite snow and bitter cold weather on the French front, the Fifth Division of the Third Army captured, without resistance, Fort L'Yser, a half mile northwest of Orny, and moved into the Hospital Forest to within 3.5 miles of Metz from the south along a nine-mile front. It was the fourth fort taken, L'Aisne having been taken the day before along with two satellite forts.

The Germans appeared possibly to be abandoning Metz, the most heavily fortified city within Western Europe, to avoid entrapment of its garrison forces. Lending to this speculation was the broadcast by Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt, German commander of the Western Front forces, that Metz had fulfilled its task while "front zone fortifications" were being prepared.

Troops on the left flank of the 70-mile front moved forward in their Moselle River bridgehead to within 1.5 miles of the German border near Luxembourg.

A Stockholm newspaper reported that as many as 1,200 men were believed to have gone down with the Tirpitz in Tromoso fjord in Norway when it was sunk on Sunday by the RAF. Some 800 had been rescued. The Germans were said to be preparing for a landing by the British in Norway in consequence of the sinking.

The same paper reported that rumors of Hitler's death were spreading through Berlin, fueled by the cancellation of all visits with the Fuehrer, including that of Tiso, the Slovak puppet president.

The Russians had driven into the important rail junction of Jaszbereny, 37 miles east of Budapest, and were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with its German defenders as they put up a strong defense consisting of Panther tanks and flame throwers, the strongest defense since Debrecen in October. This Russian offensive was part of a larger encircling movement on Budapest.

There was no further word of the Russian forces in the southern outskirts of the capital. A German broadcast reported that the Russians held a bridgehead on the Danube at Dunaharaszil, opposite Osepel Island, five miles to the south of the city.

In Italy, the Eighth Army, moving northwest from captured Forli, took San Tome, while other units crossed the Ghiaia Canal, south of Ravenna. Southwest of Forli, still other units crossed the Montone River at several points and moved into the foothills, facing heavy German opposition.

Polish troops, two miles west of Highway 67 leading to Forli, captured Bagnolo and cleared the enemy from Monte Casole.

Japanese radio broadcasts indicated that 499 American planes had attacked Manila, Cavite, and Clark Field the previous day, and another 400 sorties had been flown over Manila on this day. The raids were unconfirmed by American headquarters.

On Leyte, Japanese reinforcements were trapped at Limon by an American artillery barrage while infantry moved from three directions toward Ormoc. More than 600 Japanese soldiers had been killed in the trap on Breakneck Ridge near Ormoc Valley. Elements of the First Cavalry Division advanced three miles to capture Mt. Cabungaugan, overlooking the Ormoc battlefield.

General MacArthur stated that the Japanese had elements of five divisions, the 1st, 26th, 16th, 30th, and 102nd operating on Leyte in the area around Ormoc, a complement of about 60,000 troops. The General stated that the Americans had foiled the attempt by General Yamashita to engage a full-scale counter-attack by scattering his troops, forcing them into premature piecemeal commitments.

Sixth Army commander on Leyte, General Walter Krueger, as General MacArthur had the previous week, narrowly escaped death. He went to breakfast. During the meal, a Japanese air raid transpired. A Zero landed three bullets right where the General's head would have been in his tent.

Rear Admiral Robert Carney, head of Admiral Halsey's "dirty tricks department", officially his chief of staff, was awarded the Navy Cross for his role in the defeat of the Japanese Navy in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea, October 23 to 26. Admiral Carney was central to the development of the plans for the operations.

President Roosevelt announced that War Mobilizer James Byrnes would continue in that position until Germany was defeated. Former Justice Byrnes had stated that he did not want to continue in the job of reconversion after the war, that the person who would oversee the implementation of the recently passed reconversion bill would be in the job for at least two years.

Congress reconvened for the first time since September, prior to the election, and looked forward to business during the lameduck session. On the agenda was extension of the President's war powers, set to expire December 31, and assorted other bills of a minor nature. Vice-President-elect Harry Truman was on hand to greet his Senate colleagues and was warmly received.

A former Army officer, Robert Kaslow, consigned to the brig at Craig Field, Ala., for 30 years on court martial for various charges, including forgery, assault, and desertion, had escaped the guardhouse via a ventilator shaft, grabbed a trainer plane from the nearby airfield and began flying west. Close to New Orleans, he bailed out and the plane crashed. He bivouacked in the swamp where he landed, eventually got back to civilization. The FBI tracked him down in a hotel cocktail lounge.

In Chicago, the Post Office sold twelve cartons of cigarettes for $106, 88.3 cents per pack. A total of 82 cartons were sold. The purchaser of the first twelve cartons, manager of a chain drug store, said that the packs would be sold at the legal ceiling price of 18.5 cents each. The Brooklyn Bridge would also be included in the deal, no doubt.

A newspaper reporter bought the next lot of a dozen cartons for $80. That was likely enough to see him through a week or two.

On the editorial page, "High Tide" remarks again of James Caesar Petrillo, head of the American Federation of Musicians, explaining that Mr. Petrillo had become one of the most powerful union heads by his having managed recently, following a two year fight, to get the three largest record companies to acquiesce in paying royalties to the union on every record produced.

The agreement, the first of its kind, which Mr. Petrillo had first sought in August, 1942, provided that the record companies would pay .25 to 5 cents per record to the union. When they initially had refused to accept, Mr. Petrillo banned the musicians from playing on the companies' records. The War Labor Board heard the matter and eventually certified it to the President for lifting of the ban. But Economic Stabilizer and future Chief Justice, Judge Fred Vinson, found that the musicians' union did not constitute a significant enough impact on the war to warrant intervention. The ban .

Columbia explained that they had acquiesced to the accord because the Government was unable or unwilling to enforce its orders to vitiate the ban. Now, the three companies would be forced to pay out four million dollars per year in royalties. And 105 other companies had not contested the royalty agreements and so their royalties were added to the three major companies' royalties collected by the union.

Caesar Petrillo, concludes the editorial, was beyond anyone's control. He could collect the sums and disburse them at will.

"An Upset" finds it unlikely that the remaining days of the 78th Congress, with 70 defeated Representatives and a dozen Senators, primarily isolationists, could do much damage to the country before their terms would expire in early January. They would content themselves with innocuous legislation, matters of extension of bills already passed and the like. Nevertheless, they were still around through Christmas, having returned for the first time since September.

The piece reminds that it was the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in early 1933, sponsored by former Senator George Norris of Nebraska, which had changed the dates of succession to office of both Congress and the President from early March to January, to avoid the formerly lengthy lameduck session, necessary during horse and buggy days.

"A Ceiling" comments on the scheduled doubling of social security taxes paid by employers and employees, and Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenburg's challenge to it on the ground that there was a six billion dollar surplus in the social security fund, between eight and twelve times the amount of estimated payouts to be made during the ensuing five years. The President supported the increase on the ground that it would be best for it to occur when business and employees could most easily afford it.

The editorial finds the reasoning of Senator Vandenburg more persuasive, that there was no reason to double taxes to support an already overly flush fund. And there was no reason to increase payouts at the present time. Future expansion of the program could be met by increased taxes at a future time.

Drew Pearson suggests that, while at the presidential level, the country had not accepted Governor Dewey's call for a change, it had at the Congressional level, sweeping out many isolationists.

Governor John Moses of North Dakota had defeated Senator Gerald Nye.

Brien McMahon had defeated Senator Danaher of Connecticut. Senator-elect McMahon, as Assistant Attorney General, had prosecuted those responsible for the Harlan County coal murders. He had also convicted an Arkansas sheriff for using black prisoners as his personal slaves.

Clyde R. Hoey had replaced North Carolina Senator Robert Rice Reynolds who did not run for re-election.

Governor Olin Johnston of South Carolina had replaced Senator Cotton Ed Smith, having defeated him in the Democratic primary.

Wayne Morse had replaced Oregon Senator Rufus Holman. Senator-elect Morse had once addressed a letter, while on the War Labor Board, to Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, beginning it with the sentence, "Your most recent communication serves only to strengthen and confirm my low opinion of you."

Cowboy singer Glen Taylor of Idaho had replaced Senator D. Worth Clark. Senator-elect Taylor had won without crooning.

In 1948, Senator Taylor would run as the vice-presidential nominee with former Vice-President Henry Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket, eventually polling about the same number of votes, 2.4% of those cast, as Strom Thurmond of the Dixiecrats on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

Governor Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts would be a new supporter for the President among the Republicans in the Senate.

The only new isolationist elected was Homer Capehart of Indiana, the Wurlitzer king.

Congressman Warren Magnuson of Washington would be another new supporter of the President in the Senate.

And Congressman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, a Rhodes Scholar and former president of the University of Arkansas, would likewise be an internationalist presence, supportive of the Administration, in his new role as Senator.

Dorothy Thompson pays tribute to Field Marshal Sir John Dill, British commander who had died of anemia in Washington on November 4. He was a less stellar figure than Field Marshal Montgomery or General Eisenhower, but nevertheless had been central to the war effort. He had taken over as Chief of Staff of the British Army, May 26, 1940, just at the beginning of the evacuation of Dunkirk, succeeding Lord Gort, at a time when no one wanted the position. He came home from France to try to reshape an Army into a fighting force to win a war already apparently lost.

Field Marshal Dill had planned the strategy of deploying the British Army in Greece and in Egypt and the Middle East, leaving England less defended. Had their been an invasion, he might have been the goat of history. But had he not sent troops to the Middle East, the Suez Canal would have been lost, permitting potential joinder between the Germans and the Japanese.

He was, says Ms. Thompson, a nobleman who was a true hero of the war, one who should be celebrated in the histories long after it.

Marquis Childs relates that Governor Dewey had indicated his belief that he had lost the election because the war was still ongoing; and there was considerable evidence to support the belief, even if unprovable. The one clear thing to be discerned from the election, Mr. Childs opines, was that without Roosevelt at the helm, the Democrats would have lost.

At a press conference on Friday, the President had been asked whether he would be a candidate in 1948. He had laughed and did not answer. In all probability, however, with the war over by then, and at age 66, he would retire to Hyde Park. The way of the future for the Democrats was thus foggy.

For the present, both Democratic chair Robert Hannegan and CIO head Sidney Hillman could take the bows for orchestrating the victory. Mr. Hannegan had, via the President's personality, managed to effect a temporary alliance between the diverse interests of Northern labor and Southern conservatives. But without Roosevelt in the picture in 1948, that fragile coalition could easily dissolve. In the meantime, fence-mending would need take place.

And, of course, the predicted split in the party would occur with the walkout from the Democratic Convention of the Dixiecrats led by Strom Thurmond in 1948, in reaction to the introduction of the first major civil rights plank into a major party platform. The split, exacerbated by the fragmentation also of the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace, would nearly cost President Truman the election against Governor Dewey, who, by the election eve polls, appeared a shoo-in.

Samuel Grafton, in Akron, comments on the atmosphere following the election, that no one who had strongly supported Dewey considered the sky to be falling or the country to be threatened of imminent takeover by Communists, campaign rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.

Recently deceased Wendell Willkie had disavowed a statement he had made during the 1940 presidential campaign by saying, "That was just campaign oratory." It may have been, says Mr. Grafton, his profoundest comment on the American political process.

Mr. Willkie had lived for a decade in Akron from 1919. His fellow citizens did not regard him to be one of their leading citizens, one who they might appoint to a committee. He had been pretty quiet, never bought a car, rode the trolleys. His only political activity had been to take part in the campaign against the Klan in 1924, a campaign which ended the political strength of the Klan in Akron.

Mr. Grafton adds as a postscript that a Democratic Governor, Frank Lausche, had been elected the previous week, sweeping Akron. Governor Lausche was Catholic and the son of Slovenian parents. So, concludes Mr. Grafton, perhaps Mr. Willkie had left his stamp on Akron after all.

Hal Boyle, writing again from Germany on November 3, tells of one private who escaped death by joining ever so briefly the German Army. He and another private were on patrol at night beyond the Siegfried Line when, crawling along nearly to the German lines, they became aware of an enemy force heading in their direction. Trying to warn their own men, the two opened fire on the approaching Nazis. The American lines then became active and artillery exchanges followed.

During the melee, the two privates were separated. The one providing the narrative noticed that some of the Germans had no helmets and so he removed his own and hid it in the bushes with his rifle, out of ammunition. A German noncom. approached and spoke some German, to which the private responded, "Ja, ja," his only German. The noncom. then left the area. A few seconds afterward, American artillery fire pervaded the scene and the Germans retreated.

The private then crawled into a shell hole until the fire ceased and then made his way back to American lines. His biggest fear had been friendly fire.

The next morning he returned and retrieved his helmet and rifle.

Mr. Boyle then relates of a sergeant who was determined to deliver a load of socks to the American front via jeep. He was misdirected and wound up near the German lines. The enemy directed grenades and bullets at him. He turned and high-tailed it, busting-bronco style, in the other direction, eventually locating the American lines. He was unscathed but the socks were full of holes.

He had almost become the victim of a sockdologizing mantrap.

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