Saturday, February 17, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, February 17, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Tokyo radio indicated that American forces had invaded Iwo Jima by landing at 10:30 a.m. on two beaches on the southern shore of the island, one of which was Futatsune, both landings having been effected within a period of ten minutes. The report also contended, per the usual Domei propagandistic exaggerations, that five American ships, including a battleship, had been sunk and that the landings were repulsed.

The initial landings in fact had taken place for advance reconnaissance only, thus limited in the number of men deployed to members of an underwater demolition team. A bomb from a Japanese plane did hit the U.S.S. Blessman, killing 40 men, including 15 of the underwater demolition team, and injuring others, but no other damage or casualties occurred.

The broadcast further asserted that 200 American planes had attacked Hashijo Jima, 550 miles north of Iwo, in the Isu Islands.

Two Tokyo newspapers editorialized that the heavy bombardment of Tokyo by carrier-based planes from the Fifth Fleet, entering its second day, could be prefatory to a landing in the home islands.

The second day of raids included 1,500 American planes, which had proceeded to attack for five hours, still ongoing at the time of the report. The Fifth Fleet task force was parked 300 miles from the coast of Japan.

In Manila, a four-hour cease-fire to enable surrender of Japanese forces holed up in the southern part of the city, primarily in the Intramuros District, had gone unanswered by the Japanese; thus, American tank and artillery fire resumed.

General MacArthur announced that Bataan Peninsula to the north of Corregidor had been taken by the Americans with few casualties against light resistance. A landing force of the 38th Division came ashore at Mariveles Harbor on Thursday morning, covered by the Seventh Fleet, drove quickly northeast to effect joinder with the Sixth Division forces moving down the east side of the peninsula, the Sixth having captured Lamao. Only six shots were fired at the approaching convoy from Corregidor. Mariveles airdrome on Bataan was already being used by American planes.

Tokyo announced that seaborne troops had landed on Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay, the first time Americans had set foot on "The Rock" since its capture by the Japanese in May, 1942. The report stated that fierce battles were raging on the southern shores of the island. The big guns and anti-aircraft batteries of the Japanese had been knocked out in air attacks for over a week.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians moved from three sides within artillery range of Guben on the Niesse River, 50 miles southeast of Berlin, as well as to within 12 miles of Cottbus on the Spree River in the area of captured Forst, 47 miles from the capital. Moscow reported that the Germans were desperately committing all manner of civilians, including school teachers and policemen, to the defense of the Spree Forest, 40 miles from Berlin.

Artillery units were said to have approached to within 35 miles of Berlin from the southeast, about the same distance, 31 miles, as the closest reported approach from the east.

The Germans announced the fall to the Russians of Sagan on the Bober River, 35 miles southeast of Guben. The Russians had also penetrated Breslau in Silesia. Poznan in Poland was also reported by the Germans to have fallen to the Red Army.

The joinder announced by the Germans the day before between the forces of Marshal Ivan Konev and those of Marshal Gregory Zhukov, having reportedly occurred at Crossen on the Oder, 63 miles southeast of Berlin, had not yet been confirmed by Moscow.

Moscow announced that Russian troops had also taken Wormditt and Mehlsack in East Prussia.

On the Western Front, the Canadian First Army moved through mud and slime to gain 1.25 miles toward the Ruhr, clearing Asperden, entering Hassum, and moving to within a mile of Goch, cutting the main Goch-Calcar road at two points, taking Luisendorf.

The troops had cleared about three-fourths of Kleve forest.

The Scots, wielding flame-throwers, entered the Meuse River town of Afferden, seven miles southeast of Goch and five miles south of Gennep.

Otherwise along the front, mud brought action to a virtual standstill.

Fog and haze limited air cover along the front until mid-afternoon.

About 350 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 150 fighters, bombed the rail center at Frankfurt, dropping 1,200 tons of bombs.

The 1,700-plane strike of the day before, by the Fifteenth Air Force flying out of Italy, had targeted Regensburg and had destroyed several of the new German jet planes on the ground. The force had also hit a jet plane facility at Neuburg, 50 miles north of Munich, and Landsburg Field, 35 miles west of Munich.

More than a thousand American and British heavy bombers had struck from England the day before, hitting targets in western Germany.

During the prior four days, 7,000 American and British heavy bombers had participated in continuous assaults on the Reich, the most concerted bombing effort yet of the war, hitting 23 cities.

Wes Gallagher reports that many of the holes in the defense lines of the Nazis and resulting confusion and entanglements along the Western Front had been filled and stabilized during the previous three weeks for failure of the Allies to capitalize on the need of the Germans to transfer troops to the Eastern Front to meet the advance of the Russians against Berlin. Other than air attacks and the new Canadian First Army offensive, harassing of the German lines had been limited to local attacks.

Yet, the reorganization by the Germans had not led to reinforcement of the lines in great strength. Rough terrain in both Northern France and Southern Belgium was being employed to fight delaying actions. Similarly, the flooding of the Roer River and the threat of more flooding from the dams controlled originally by the Nazis was such a tactic. The latter action was the only significant defense to the Cologne plain, left largely unguarded by the presence of enemy troops.

As pointed out in other reports, the control of the dams allowed the Germans the capability of sending an 18-foot wall of water, especially from the largest dam, the Schwammanauel, onto the Cologne plain at will, thus potentially drowning any Allied troops entering the area. The Allies during the week had taken control of the Schwammanauel.

The strategy of the Allies typified the winter offensive, moving by one foot at a time, enabling the Germans to shift defenses as with a backfield in motion before the snap of the ball to meet changing offensive strategies.

In Italy, General Mark Clark, head of all Italian operations, gave warning to the people of Northern Italy that the area was about to be bombed relentlessly to seal off all possible escape routes to the north through the Brenner Pass by the 27 Nazi divisions maintaining the northern German front. He thus warned the citizenry to stay away from railroads, roads, bridges, and communications centers, which would naturally be targeted by the bombings.

The War Department denied the report circulating through Congress that German prisoners of war were receiving fancy treatment in camps in the United States, and asserted that the Government was adhering strictly to the Geneva Convention rules mandating that prisoners receive the same food as troops in base camps.

A Burlington Railroad conductor in Aurora, Illinois, had left $30,000 of his $100,000 estate for the beneficent purpose of helping juvenile boys and girls avoid delinquency.

Unfortunately, it had come too late for 15-year old Norman who had murdered his 5-year old niece, Sara Jane, in Dixon on December 20, and, in consequence of his guilty plea, received that huge sentence of 207 years in prison, a sentence we would guess, on appeal, was likely remitted to a lesser term based on the age of the defendant, his early admission of guilt, and the report of the psychiatrists that he was mentally ill.

It appeared to contrast sharply with the sentences in North Carolina for murder at the time, which averaged, after parole, two years, according to a News editorial earlier in the week.

The moral seemed to be that if you were upset with your five-year old niece, it was better to plan the act while she visited North Carolina.

That was then. Take no solace, youngster, for the present, should you have any such Leopold and Loeb type experience in mind.

Try to focus on the fact that you are not the only person on the planet and that others, likewise, have the same feelings as yourself, both physically and emotionally, and must be treated accordingly as you would wish to be treated yourself. Should you then cynically argue that you wish to die, then there are plenty of means to accomplish that without taking someone with you, a coward's way for sure.

In any event, do the world a favor, put on some headphones and your favorite non-violent music and go cruising for awhile, and the world will inevitably look a little better in the morning, perhaps even much better by next week or next month or next year. You never know. Give yourself a chance, at least.

On an inside page, you may learn what to expect in your new car after the war, looking astonishingly like the car which is sitting in your driveway all beat up, probably no longer running, if so, without tires, and, in any event, with little gas available by which to run it anyway. Maybe, that jalopy is still okay if you took the bus and streetcars during the previous three years. But it is starting to look dated, isn't it?

We shall take a wild guess and suggest that you need not expect any great styling change ahead in the automobiles of the future until the 1949 model rolls off the assembly lines. But, we could be wrong.

They will be, however, dream boats, well worth the wait, to dispense with those whale-backed models which hit the scene not long before the war forced the halting of production three full years ago.

Take it from us. Put your money down early and reserve yours. Supplies will be severely limited in the first months of production.

On the editorial page, "In Hot Water" reports of the controversy stirred by the new executive director of the cotton manufacturers for having stated that political pressure had resulted in the Office of Price Administration relenting on implementation of its textile price ceilings and programs to encourage low-priced garments, that this political pressure also would prevent an increase in Southern textile wages.

In response, War Mobilizer James Byrnes, OPA head Chester Bowles, Economic Stabilizer Fred Vinson, and War Production Board chair J. A. Krug, had issued harsh rebukes against the statement, stung by the suggestion that they would cave to political pressure.

Thus, having made already such powerful enemies in Washington, concludes the piece, it was difficult to understand how the new director of the manufacturers would maintain his role with any effectiveness.

"Signs of Doom" lists four events which sent signals that the Reich, indeed, was finished: three Nazi officials had been executed for merely admitting that the war was lost; Der Angriff, the Goebbels newspaper, was reported to be suspending publication the following day; Moscow and Paris reported that Himmler had ordered the destruction of all Nazi Party records and pay rolls; and, to top it all, the four-foot cane-brake rattlesnake at the North Carolina State Museum of History, which had, in April, 1943, been named "Hitler", had died after six months of ill health.

"Lender Jesse" remarks on the Atlanta Journal having performed research on the record of Jesse Jones as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It found that the Defense Plant Corporation had invested 640 million dollars in Mr. Jones's home state of Texas but only 4.279 million in Georgia, even a worse discrepancy when reduced to per capita figures, $103.37 in Texas against $1.44 in Georgia.

Texas had received 48 percent of all of the investment by DPC in the South while, in 1939, Texas held only a sixth of the population of the South and 10 percent of its industrial workers.

The editorial adds that, as revealed by Drew Pearson recently, Mr. Jones had delayed for several months the construction of a tin smelter to replace lost Malayan tin so that it could be located in Houston. The result was the severe tin shortage in the country, causing the need continually to collect scrap tin cans for war industry.

The piece concludes that, while these facts would not enable Henry Wallace to recover the lost powers of lending which were being divorced by Congress from Commerce, it did underscore that the fight against Mr. Wallace retaining these powers was not truly one based on lack of business acumen of Mr. Wallace versus Mr. Jones. It was rather that Mr. Jones had not stepped on anyone's toes in Washington during his tenure, whereas Mr. Wallace had made, as Mr. Pearson had recently suggested, only a half dozen friends in a dozen years of Government service.

"Driving Home" finds the assault by the Navy's Fifth Fleet on Tokyo to have been one of the most daring yet of the war. Correspondents had hailed the raids as something new and ominous with which Japan must contend henceforth in the war.

Parked 300 miles off the coast of Japan, the carrier forces had apparently not encountered any significant Japanese resistance.

It suggested that an invasion of the home islands of Japan might now be high on the list of imminent events, that the Allied command structure appeared to have determined finally to bypass the difficult fight for China and attack instead the jugular.

Of course, Fat Man and Little Boy, to be dropped August 6 and 9, avoided the prospect of that long and bloody fight to Tokyo, which would have otherwise ensued on both sides, not just for the Americans, and not just for Japanese soldiers but civilians, many more civilians inevitably to have died than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as terrible as that drastic action had to be finally to end this horrible war started by Japan and Germany in concert.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Representative John Rankin of Mississippi objecting to female members of the House being referred to as "gentlewomen", indicating that the House rules provided for no such reference. He had consistently used the good convention of addressing female members as "the lady from such and such a state", and yet the Record was, without exception, altered to say "gentlewoman".

He then opened Webster's to "gentlewoman" and found it defined as "a woman of good family or breeding" or "a woman who attends a lady of rank".

So, he concluded that the use of the convention was placing female members of the House below male members.

Mr. O'Neal of Kentucky interrupted to ask Mr. Rankin to read the definition of "lady", which request Mr. Rankin duly obliged: "A woman who looks after the domestic affairs of a family; the female head of a household; a woman having proprietary rights, [interrupted by laughter] rule or authority; a woman to whom obedience or homage is owed as a ruler or feudal superior; a feminine correlative of lord; lord or lady of high degree."

He thus determined that "lady" was in standard usage as the female counterpart to "gentleman" and thus should be the convention adopted.

Representative Earl Michener of Michigan interjected that some of the better orators of the chamber referred on occasion to female members as "the gentle lady", but, he asserted, there could be hardly such a thing.

Then, after due reminder by Representative John McCormack of Massachusetts that the remark sounded strange, Mr. Michener quickly corrected himself and agreed that it was an awkward way of putting forth the idea.

Drew Pearson reports of Governor Thomas Dewey's assessment of the 1948 presidential campaign with respect to Mr. Dewey's prospects, indicating that there would likely be several prominent Republicans, some back from the war, who would run, that, therefore, he had no illusions about the difficulty of again obtaining his party's nomination. He further stated that he did not intend to try to maintain his role as titular head of the party by making statements on every issue of national interest or delivering many speeches before the 1948 election cycle, that, further, he had no regrets as to the conduct of the 1944 campaign except that he believed he had, during the latter weeks of the campaign, criticized too much the lack of efficiency of administration of New Deal programs. Governor Dewey had revealed these thoughts at a private invitation-only dinner for selected correspondents.

Mr. Pearson next informs of General MacArthur having come face-to-face with a longstanding quip with regard to the Navy and Marines not getting credit for advance operations before the Army took all the credit. When inspecting a Marine battery on one of the Philippine islands, General MacArthur had suddenly become outraged by the presence of a sign which read: "With the help of God and a few Marines, MacArthur retakes the Philippines." The lieutenant standing next to the location became the object of a profanity-laced tirade.

Next, he tells of Administration officials being upset that OPA had provided a price hike to two chains of coal company stores, adding to the argument of John L. Lewis that coal prices had risen and therefore so should wages, with the present contract set for renewal April 1 and Mr. Lewis threatening another strike.

Samuel Grafton reports that criticism had arisen in some quarters of the United States for the fact that the Yalta Conference had been held in the Soviet Union. Some newspapers attached a sinister purpose to the fact, suggesting it as connotative of U.S. and British subservience to Russian will.

Mr. Grafton suggests that such commentary made for an easy editorial and a half day off for its writer; likewise, when another conference would be held outside Russia—as it would at Potsdam in less than five months—, that event would provide another easy editorial day regarding geopolitics and psychological strategy in achieving results.

Another easy topic, he opined, was that the Yalta agreement had omitted mention of religious freedom. Those most cynical about the President's Four Freedoms, coined in the State of the Union Address of January, 1941 and which included freedom of worship, were the very same who stressed this omission. The isolationist editors appeared to keep the list of the Four in hand on their desks and whenever a conference failed to mention all of them, they were quick to point out the discrepancy. But if all four were mentioned, then they yelled "globaloney", the neologism coined by Representative Claire Boothe Luce in 1943.

Another primary line of attack on the agreement centered on the settlement of Polish territorial disputes without regard to the Atlantic Charter.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the need for France to rise above the shadows of defeat and resurrect itself, without so much stress on acquisition of territory as General De Gaulle seemed to be placing, especially on the acquisition of the Rhineland, a buffer region desired by France since Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV. He had also talked of having a fortified port for France at Dakar.

She points out that the Rhineland would not be any future assurance against attack from the east, and Dakar would protect French possessions in Africa only as against conceivable incursion by the United States or Britain, neither of which countries had threatened France for over a century.

She expresses the hope that France did not succumb to the same defeated-nation complex to which Germany fell victim after World War I.

Marquis Childs, now in Paris, also writes of the same notion, that France suffered from hurt dignity, complicated by the lack of invitation to the Yalta Conference. Although Harry Hopkins had stopped in Paris on his way to Rome to report to General De Gaulle in advance of the conference, he had told him little concrete of the prospects for the agreement reached and, in consequence, the French government knew only that which was being reported in the newspapers.

It had been hoped that a French representative might be invited to sit in on the last phase of the conference, but it had not occurred.

The insecurity of the French with regard to Germany after the war was the primary source of anxiety and had prompted General De Gaulle to deliver an angry speech the week before, critical of the fact of France's exclusion from Yalta. He had stated the intent of France not to be bound by the Big Three agreement, except to the extent its provisions insured the future security of France. He demanded that the Rhineland and the Ruhr be separated from Germany, and called for independence for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans.

General De Gaulle understood that there could be no peace in Europe for the long term without the inclusion of France at the peace table, and the fact had thus emboldened him to make such demands.

As pointed out the prior day by Dorothy Thompson, however, with General De Gaulle's open criticism in mind, the Big Three had set forth the carrot to the French of participation in the occupation of Germany, implicitly conditioned upon going along with the rest of the Yalta accord.

Dick Young tells of a friend, an attorney, with whom he sometimes discussed matters at Jack's Lunch over beer. On this occasion, the attorney told him not to cuss the fools of the world because they enabled the rest to succeed, that there were plenty of suckers willing to part with their money. Mr. Young thought the message rang of a sermon from the pulpit.

Of course, while casting no aspersions on the attorney or Mr. Young, Germans in 1923 thought the same of Mr. Hitler's harangues delivered over beer in similar cafes in Munich, much along the same lines of beer-induced philosophical meanderings, fraught with plentiful moral objection to the speaker's intended plans.

The attorney seems to have consulted with Mr. Fields--or should we say Mr. Whipsnade?--and thought the moving picture was a treatise on how to get ahead in the world.

Representations of scurrilous, though humorous, conduct in cinema are actually for laughs, and, most often, reminders ironically of how we ought not to behave in real life, not the converse. That is why it is in the movie. It is an escape valve, not meant to be acted out in the various by-ways of life.

If, as a youngster, you had stayed home sick, deathly ill, on the verge of perishing of yellow fever, you would readily understand such things and remember them.

This just in to our desk: It presents a sad commentary on American life that once again we have a President disgracing the White House with audaciously open and notorious affairs. Don't propose to tell us that touch in a tender spot was innocent. For we know differently. That Happy Birthday film with the late Miss Marilyn Monroe, after all, proved conclusively to the nation and the world that President Kennedy was a philandering, no-good, womanizing scoundrel; ergo, so is another Democrat, as proved by these scandalous photographs transmitted worldwide, disgracing the nation. Awful, terrible thing. Impeachable. And in San Francisco.

We recommend it for immediate investigation by the House with an eye toward: "Article I: Allowing private parts to be fondled in public places by persons possibly of foreign origins."

Put a tail on him.

Forget it, Jake.



The Long and Winding Straight Highway from Barstow to Crossrow,
Christmas Eve, 2000; Be There.

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