The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 16, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the British Second Army attacked north of Sittard and Aachen near the Meuse River in Holland, while the Second Armored Division of the First Army captured Houffalize without opposition, substantially reducing the Bulge. The British attack was the first Allied offensive movement in the area since the beginning of the German Ardennes offensive one month earlier on December 16. The capture of Houffalize narrowed the Bulge, once extending forty miles, to fifteen miles west of the German frontier. About one-fifth of the territory, 400 square miles, of the original Bulge was still in German hands.
The Third and First Armies had linked up the previous day southeast of La Roche along the Ourthe River when one ski enthusiast said to another, "Nice day for
More than 600 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 650 fighters, flew through bad weather to hit targets at Magdeburg, an oil plant south of Berlin, at Dresden, and Dessau, with 2,000 tons of bombs dropped. Within four weeks, Dresden would become the object of some of the most concentrated bombing of the war, with the Allies dropping incendiary bombs which would serve virtually to engulf the entire city in flames. The targets this date, as a month hence, were its railyards. This strike was the second bombing attack on the Dresden yards, the first having occurred October 7.
The British Empire reported casualties of 1,043,534 from September, 1939 at the beginning of the war through November 30, 1944. The United Kingdom suffered 635,107 of those casualties; Canada, 78,985; Australia, 84,861; India, 152,597; New Zealand, 34,115; South Africa, 28,543; and other colonies, 28,946. Of the total, 282,162 had been killed, 386,374 wounded, 294,498 captured, and 80,580 missing.
Deep snow and poor visibility brought action in Italy to a virtual halt again.
The Russians, having launched their new winter offensive, had advanced 38 miles along a 75-mile wide front between Warsaw and Southern Poland to within 49 miles of German Silesia and 21 miles of Krakow. They had captured Schlossberg, 13 miles inside East Prussia.
On Luzon, the Sixth Army moved in motorized columns along circuitous mountain roads to within 98 road miles of Manila, encountering practically no opposition. The infantry had moved into Tarlac Province, capturing Camiling, gaining 30 miles since the landings at Lingayen Gulf a week earlier. The first major stand of the Japanese was being encountered near Baguio; Highway 3 from Baguio to Manila was a vital artery which the Japanese had to retain in order to continue supply to their headquarters at Baguio.
Carrier-based bombers of the Third Fleet bombed Hong Kong, Swatow, and Amoy along a 350-mile stretch of the China coast on Saturday, the first full-scale carrier raid of the war on these targets. Formosa was also hit.
The estimate of the ships which the Americans had knocked out in wrecking two Japanese convoys off Indo-China on Thursday had been increased from 25 sunk and 13 damaged to 41 sunk and 28 damaged.
Correspondent Dean Schedler tells the story of an American soldier who led two thousand Filipinos in the underground of the Philippines for nearly three years since the evacuation by the Americans in March and April, 1942. Captain Robert Lapham of Davenport, Iowa, had come out of the hills of Luzon after the American landings the previous week and imparted his story. He had begun with twenty men and six rifles. The most preoccupying desire, however, which he had of the moment was to obtain a new pair of American shoes.
British War Secretary Sir James Grigg stated that Supreme Allied Headquarters had denied doping the news to make reports paint a rosier picture of the Western Front than was truly extant. Laborite George Strauss had addressed a question in Commons as to whether Mr. Grigg was aware that censors at Supreme Allied Headquarters had been instructed to approve communications from the front which stated that Allied progress was good. Mr. Grigg responded that he had been assured that censorship was based solely on military security.
On the editorial page, "Wages of Sin" sets forth the take of the county in fines and forfeitures from criminal conduct, finds that crime does pay. The County Police had raked in $78,160 in fines and forfeitures for the county budget, based on 1,960 arrests during the prior year.
The city had collected $62,554 from 5,620 criminal cases and 5,582 traffic cases.
"Way of the Beast" discusses the massacre by the SS at Malmedy, shortly after the beginning of the Ardennes offensive, of the 150 American soldiers who had been German prisoners.
The news of the massacre had caused the American soldiers to want to repay in kind German prisoners.
Not long afterward, Berlin radio reported that the Americans had been violating the rules of war, some having been supposedly found in German uniforms, thus shot as spies, some shot while being driven from German lines.
But that was not the way of it, as the dead bodies lying side by side in a trench attested, having been preserved by the snow and sub-freezing temperatures.
The piece calls for retribution against such massacres and atrocities.
As we pointed out a couple weeks ago, the overly zealous efforts to interrogate the German officers responsible for the massacre enabled, ultimately, ensuing conviction of 73 of the 74 accused and sentence of 43 to death, all eventually to go free, after the death sentences were commuted following the war.
There was also
"In the Vise" correctly speculates that the current combined blows of the American and British to reduce the Bulge and the Russians undertaking their western push in Poland and East Prussia would inaugurate the final phase of the war. The German war machine, it predicts, could not sustain the combined efforts of both vast forces at once.
In June, as the Normandy invasion occurred, the Russians pulled up at the Vistula before Warsaw and began a long summer of stalemate in the northern portion of the front, in Poland and East Prussia, while they concentrated on Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania. Even a month earlier, as the Bulge began, there had been a lull in the action on the Eastern Front.
But no longer. Now, Germany would have to fight on two fronts at once and could not long sustain it.
"A New High" comments on the dramatic turnabout the week before for former isolationist Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, now supporting a world organization for preservation of peace by force if necessary, to keep Japan and Germany in check, to keep them from rearming. It bode well for the future, as it was a speech of logic, not emotion, which should set the tone against any repetition of the highly emotional appeals to nationalism put forth at the end of World War I in opposition to the League of Nations.
"Words of the Wise" includes one worth remembering as a verity, from H. L. Mencken: "With precious few exceptions, all the books on style in English are by writers quite unable to write."
If you wish to write washing-machine shop manuals, consult a style book. If you want to write, throw it on the fire.
Drew Pearson reports that in the dying embers of the 78th Congress just ended, the House committee investigating the Federal Communications Commission had wasted $110,000 of the taxpayers' money to support a five-man committee for two years, interrupting in the process many FCC officials' duties. At the end of its tenure, it reported no problems at the FCC.
The committee had been the personal engine of revenge for committee chair Eugene "Goober" Cox of Georgia, in his effort to retaliate against the Commission for having reported the Congressman to the Justice Department for his having received $2,500 from a Georgia radio station as a lobbying fee for his efforts on their behalf before the FCC. The Justice Department had recommended prosecution, at which point, suddenly, the FCC investigation by the committee was initiated. Eventually, the committee forced Mr. Cox from the chairmanship and replaced him with Congressman Lea of California, after which the clean bill of health was issued to the Commission.
He next reports of new Congressman William Gallagher of Minneapolis, a former street cleaner, having his bumptious troubles adjusting to his new role. He had received a call asking for his secretary from a caller stating that the White House was on the line. Mr. Gallagher hung up the phone gruffly, thinking it to be a practical joke, stated it so to the caller. Then the White House called again.
Next, he got lost in the Capitol, asked for directions from someone he addressed as "boy", got directions. It was Congressman Outland of California who never imparted to Congressman Gallagher that he, too, was a Representative.
Finally, Mr. Pearson tells of Secretary of State Stettinius apparently going forward with plans to have his new Assistant, Will Clayton, assume control of the Foreign Economic Administration from its current able director, Leo Crowley, that, even though during confirmation hearings in December, Mr. Stettinius had disavowed any intent so to do.
Dorothy Thompson addresses the idea that America's interests were served best by a free and independent Europe, not one bound up in spheres of influence between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. America was different from each of those countries and had no direct foothold in Europe on which to stake claim. It must therefore insist on a world organization in which all of the nations of Europe would be represented such that the Atlantic Charter principles, recognizing the right of free self-determination, and renouncing aggrandizement of territory, would thrive in the post-war environment.
She urges the President to remain firm in his commitment to the Charter principles and assured that the country would then stand firm behind him.
Samuel Grafton observes the erratic public opinion on the war, vacillating at times between considering the war a fight for national security of the United States, then, by turns, finding America thankless for Lend-Lease to the Allies, even urging that it be stopped to Russia, as a group had recently insisted. But, argues Mr. Grafton, one could not have it both ways: as a fight for national security and also a fight for which the Allies should bow to America and pay back Lend-Lease.
Liberals, too, mixed their arguments, sometimes pronouncing the war to be a people's war, other times declaring that it was not. They believed that the country must pull away from the Allies, to get tough with them, to force them into a world organization.
But that logic was flawed, says Mr. Grafton. America had to join with the Allies in the post-war world to get along with them, not by force, but because, mutually, America and the Allies would have to get along in the post-war world.
Marquis Childs reports that educators meeting in Atlantic City had expressed their dissent from the proposed universal military conscription after the war. Opposition particularly arose from small colleges, which, says Mr. Grafton, were often narrow and inadequate. Yet, they were a source of strength to free enterprise and typified individualism. The presidents of these small colleges were concerned that universal military service would divert young men out of high school into other pursuits than seeking higher education. They believed it would too greatly empower and centralize the government and would promote an atmosphere in the country rife with militarism.
General Marshall, as with General Washington, had warned that a large standing army in the United States could undermine democracy.
France had employed universal military service; yet, when tested in 1940 before the Wehrmacht, it crumbled. Thus, such measures by no means insured national security.
The educators had made a strong case against such universal military conscription in
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