The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 9, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, amid a blizzard with snowdrifts four to five feet deep, the snow lasting until noon, a tank battle had erupted three miles northeast of La Roche as the American "Hell on Wheels" Second Armored Division, under the command of General Ernest Harmon, fought for Samree along the severed main road of the Bulge. The battle continued to rage through 5:00 p.m. Capture of Samree would provide the Americans with control of the highway to Vielsalm, nine miles west of St. Vith.
The Germans were on the defensive all along the 30-mile northern flank of the Bulge line and seeking to hold open their only remaining road out of the pocket, that from St. Vith to Houffalize. The First Army had moved to within four miles of this road.
On the southern flank of the Bulge, German armor pushed the Third Army back a mile along a three-mile front west of Bastogne.
In northeastern France, in the Alsace Lorraine sector, the Germans made a half dozen attacks against the Seventh Army and the French forces, including a powerful drive against the French, south of Strasbourg from Colmar, but were halted at Rossfeld and Herbsheim, sixteen miles from Strasbourg.
General Omar Bradley stated that the thwarting of the Ardennes offensive at the Bulge may have severely reduced Germany's ability to continue its war effort, that the German Army was on the verge of collapse, but that much fighting still lay ahead.
Don Whitehead assesses why Von Rundstedt's offensive had failed. First, he was unable to swing north to capture Liege in Belgium. Second, he underestimated the fighting resolve of the American forces, especially that of the First Army on the northern flank. Had the Germans broken through the American lines, they could have likely captured Aachen by Christmas, enabling hitting of the First Army in the rear and the Ninth Army along its exposed southern flank. The bitter fighting to hold the towns of St. Vith and Bastogne had thrown Von Rundstedt's offensive critically off schedule, a derailing from which it never recovered. The German drive had backfired.
A report from a correspondent on the Seventh Army front told of the Germans who shot down two American heavy bombers over Frankfurt but wound up with 22 of their men captured and another eight killed. The crews of the two bombers had bailed out and, in the process of making their way back to American lines, captured and killed the Germans without suffering any casualties. The report details the various and sundry ways in which the feat was accomplished.
The Russians had stopped the German counter-attack northwest of Budapest after the enemy forces had reached to within 15 miles of the capital and their surrounded garrison of defenders. The Russians were within a seven-mile artillery range of Komaron, from which the Germans had launched their drive toward Budapest. The Germans were shifting their attempts at breakthrough to the west of the capital.
In the Philippines, there was still no confirmation of the ongoing landing of the Sixth Army at Lingayen Gulf on Luzon. Tokyo radio described the landing of 15,000 Americans as imminent. Two American convoys were reported headed for Lingayen, the first comprised of about 75 ships, the second, double that number.
Vice Admiral John S. McCain's Third Fleet sent bombers against Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands south of Japan. B-29's attacked both Formosa and Tokyo. The raid on Tokyo out of Saipan had been by a substantial force of the Superfortresses.
Meanwhile, it was reported that, for only the third time during the war, General MacArthur had met in the Philippines during the last week of December with Admiral Nimitz, signal of a major operation in the works. The second meeting had been with the President the previous July in Honolulu.
The President's call in his State of the Union message on Saturday for a National Service Act to draft manpower for war industries appeared to be gaining support within the Congress, including among Republicans.
The President sent to the Congress his annual budget message for the coming fiscal year of 1945-46, estimating that spending would be 83 billion dollars, give or take ten billion, depending on the length of the war. Seventy billion would be for the war. Spending during the current fiscal year was pegged at 100 billion, of which 89 billion was for the war.
Miners were back on the job in St. Charles, W. Va., after a work stoppage for the fact that the men could no longer purchase cigarettes at the company store. Permission was reinstated to purchase one pack per day and the men went back to work in the coal mines.
On the editorial page, "Wages & Hours" comments on the need of North Carolina for a wage and hours law because of its being one of the twelve leading industrial states of the country, that its average weekly wage was nevertheless lower than any other state except its immediate southern neighbor, that it was 43rd in per capita income, that some workers in the state earned as little as nine cents per hour, and that the average payment of weekly unemployment compensation was the lowest in the nation.
The State Commissioner of Labor had proposed a bill whereby the minimum wage would be established at a modest 30 cents per hour, excepting those with salaries of $40 per week or more. The bill also proposed overtime pay for work in excess of forty hours per week. A board would also be created with authority to raise the minimum wage up to 40 cents.
The notion had been proposed before and had not been passed. If it succeeded this time, it would not end North Carolina's disparity in wages with respect to the rest of the nation but would at least make a beginning at raising the living standards of the poorest citizens. It would also benefit employers and industry by its tendency to enable purchasing and would lighten the burden on public welfare.
"Not This Time" expresses doubt that the Congress would pass the President's recommended National Service Act, wonders whether the President, himself, was wholeheartedly behind it. More likely, he was raising the specter of it to encourage more voluntary compliance with the need for war industry workers.
The piece predicts, however, that, at the inception of the next war, such a service act would be instituted.
"Balance the Books" finds North Carolina lagging behind in its contribution to the fight against polio, having contributed $172,000 against $500,000 having been spent in the state by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
There had been a serious outbreak of polio, centered around Hickory, during the summer months, one which had gained national attention. But, says the editorial, that epidemic had apparently not registered sufficiently with the people of the state to encourage their full contribution.
So, it recommends consideration when the March of Dimes drive would begin during January.
The reason, incidentally, for the likeness of President Roosevelt on the dime is in honor of his effort at helping encourage the March of Dimes, FDR having been stricken with the disease in 1921.
"A Compromiser" comments on the desire being voiced by isolationist Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana to bring an end to the war, one he never favored, by eliminating the requirement of unconditional surrender for Germany.
The proposal, opines the piece, was dangerous, would give Hitler and his henchmen precisely the implied victory they had been seeking since D-Day, a compromised peace. Such a move would make Hitler a permanent hero to Germany. The peace thus achieved would be false, one which would soon come back to haunt the nation and the world.
His call strengthened the enemy resolve to fight on in the hope of just a such resolution.
"An Editorial Dictionary" lists several terms and their definitions for newspaper editors.
Sample: "Subversive doctrine—The idea, advanced mildly by a college professor, that the constitution means what it says, perhaps."
Well, enough said.
Drew Pearson discusses the waste of war food in warehouses for the fact of storing it too long. Despite warnings from officials of the War Food Administration, the food was rotting because of too much being placed in storage. Over eight million pounds of food remained from 1941.
The previous month, a WFA agent had to dispose of 2,300 pounds of dried eggs by tossing them into the sea because they had sat in a warehouse for two years, when spoliation took place after six months. The powdered eggs were rotten and smelled to high heaven. Nevertheless, the agent was remonstrated for his effort by other WFA officials. WFA had been seeking to sell the powder as animal feed.
The rotten eggs had been causing spoliation in other foodstuffs in the warehouses as well, including that going to private companies. Maggots and cockroaches were showing up in other food. And many of these eggs were not simply the powdered variety but whole eggs laying waste.
It was not only eggs causing the problem. Canned tomatoes were also going bad for being too long in storage. Beans and pork, likewise.
Mr. Pearson concludes that the WFA had done a good job with food production but warehousing had been its Achilles heel.
Dorothy Thompson asserts that three major errors had been committed diplomatically during the course of the war, which in combination, threatened the dissolution of the Allied coalition. First, the abandonment of the Atlantic Charter, second, the interpretation of "unconditional surrender", and third, the failure to produce a reasonable policy for post-war Europe, had all been the primary factors threatening the carefully interwoven alliance produced by the war.
Now, the British press, led by the Economist, was calling for enforcement of the British point of view on policy pertaining to the post-war environment, further complicating the issue.
Interpreting "unconditional surrender" as the dismemberment of Germany had forestalled the potential for anti-Nazi Germans to rise up from within to eliminate the Nazis and accept surrender. Those forces had been extant in Germany previously but, receiving no support from the Allies, they had been permitted to wither on the vine.
Likewise, no constructive plan had been advanced for post-war Europe, only its partition. And the call for the creation of a European federation, the only conceivable plan for Europe which would insure growth and stability, had received no support from the United States.
Samuel Grafton points out that the five-seat Democratic majority of the previous House had now been increased to fifty-three seats, suggesting that the Republicans might desire to step back and assess why they had slipped, and seek to remedy the slippage. Instead, they were starting the 79th Congress bent on the same attitude exhibited in the 78th. For starters, by joining with the Southern Democrats, the Republicans had managed to make permanent the Dies Committee.
And the change in numbers was only part of the story; there was also a change in character of the Congress. Such new faces as Helen Gahagan Douglas, a liberal and wife of actor Melvyn Douglas, Emily Taft Douglas of Illinois, replacing an isolationist she had defeated, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas and Senator Saltonstall of Massachusetts were both new liberal voices in the Senate, where no longer would be heard the isolationist echoes of Robert Rice Reynolds, replaced as chair of the Military Affairs Committee by Senator Thomas of Utah.
This new blood promised new changes in the way Congress would operate, changes for the better.
Mr. Grafton concludes by returning to his original point of the stubborn coalition between Republicans and recalcitrant Southern Democrats to re-establish and make permanent the Dies Committee, a harbinger of ill will during its tenure, apt to go after Communists while leaving Fascists alone, apt to whip up existing biases against the President. That counter-trend showed the tendency especially of the Republicans to continue their fascination with the past rather than with the future.
Marquis Childs also discusses the revival of and making permanent the Dies Committee, though its former chairman, Martin Dies, was now retired from the House. It represented a gesture of defiance by Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans to the Administration, especially its support of labor.
It was unclear who would become the new chairman. The decision would be left to the House Ways and Means Committee. The saving grace would likely come when the committee sought funding, that the House could protect the country against the sorts of wholesale abuses and excesses of the committee as it existed under the direction of Mr. Dies.
The old argument of the South that labor organizing would raise wages and thereby harm industry was falling by the boards, with such progressive influences as Governor Ellis Arnall of Georgia who was seeking in the Supreme Court to set aside discriminatory freight rates favored by the railroads, leading the way for a new sense of industrialism in the region brought on by the war.
Thus, the old pattern for which Mr. Dies had served as a champion, obscurantism, union organizing and freedom for the black man being viewed as the equivalent of communism, was passing by the way.
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