Friday, February 9, 1945

The Charlotte News

Friday, February 9, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a new Allied offensive, led by the Canadian First Army, had penetrated to within four miles of Kleve, northern terminus of the original Siegfried Line, and entered deeply through the Line at the Reichswald, dense fir forests, moving to within three miles of the Rhine in northwest Germany. Leuth was captured, as was Frasselt, the latter marking the longest gain of the day in the area, being eight miles from Goch. Goch and Kleve controlled twelve key roads. Tuthees, (to be distinguished from Terrible Touhy), on the main road from captured Kranenberg to Kleve, was taken. Zandpol, Niel, and Breedeweg were also liberated from the grip of the Nazis.

Eighty-five miles to the south, the First and Third Armies were continuing their drives into the Ruhr, with the First Army moving to within less than a mile of the Schwammenauel dam, within machinegun range said a late report, and the Third Army advancing to within a mile of Prum.

The French First Army eliminated the last of the resistance south of Strasbourg and established a hold on the west bank of the Rhine, which extended 90 miles.

At the center of the front, the Ninth and British Second Armies were deployed along the Roer River, ready to pour into the Cologne plain. The Ninth was within 12 miles of Muenchen Gladbach where the Ruhr runs west of the Rhine.

Some 1,300 American bombers, escorted by 850 fighters, attacked a synthetic oil facility at Lutzkendorf, a few miles southeast of Leipzig, while other heavy bombers struck armament and motor transport factories at Weimar, railroad yards at Magdeburg, and several other unnamed targets.

The raid encountered jet-propelled Luftwaffe fighters for the first time, traveling at speeds ranging from 400 to 600 miles per hour.

The night before, a thousand RAF bombers had attacked Politz, ten miles north of Stettin, while Mosquitos again hit Berlin.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians had moved along a 40-mile front to within 25 miles of Stettin, or even possibly as close as 19 miles, following capture of Roetz, Bernstein, Sammenthin, and a hundred other towns in the area. The taking of Stettin would potentially trap 20 to 30 German divisions.

Northwest of Kustrin, a heavy bombardment of artillery fire originating from Zaekerick and Zellin was being hurled at Wriesen, just 23 miles northeast of Berlin.

The First Ukrainian Army had launched a fresh offensive northwest of Breslau, out of the Maltsch bridgehead across the Oder, threatening the encirclement of Breslau and taking Parchwitz, 30 miles west-northwest of the city, carrying to a point near the east fringe of Liegnitz. The Army was within 40 miles of closing the escape gap from Breslau, capturing Kurtsch, twelve miles to the south.

German radio announced the hanging by the Nazis of the mayor of a small town between Berlin and Stettin, Koenigsberg, not to be confused with the capital of East Prussia. The mayor was executed for evacuating from the town without orders.

Hitler was reported present during the most recent American raid on Berlin, camped out in his bunker beneath the Reichstag. Before the raid was over, he was said to be evacuating Berlin for more pleasant climes.

In Manila, the 37th Infantry Division, assisting the Eleventh Airborne, crossed the Pasig River, near Malacanan Palace, in amphibious tanks, driving toward the dock section of the city, with enemy demolition charges being set in the Intramuros district where numerous Filipinos and Chinese residents were in danger of being trapped. Despite dampening rain falling unseasonably, heat from fires set in the district by the Japanese could be felt for blocks.

All four bridges across the river had been blown by the enemy.

In operations on the central Luzon plain, American forces had destroyed 200 enemy tanks, more than two-thirds of the Japanese Second Armored Division.

A report stated that the Big Three Conference was considering a Dutch demand for majority-rule on the proposed United Nations Security Council, in opposition to the Russian desire for a rule of mandatory unanimity.

Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew, in the absence of Secretary Stettinius, in Yalta, announced that the United States was dissatisfied with the level thus far of assurance from neutral nations that they would not admit Axis war criminals. The statement followed on an indication by Secretary Cordell Hull in September that the Government was seeking such assurances from neutral nations.

The isolationist Chicago Tribune of Robert McCormick published a story that the President had received from OSS director William Donovan a draft order to establish a "central intelligence service" to coordinate post-war intelligence work, superseding that performed by Federal police agencies, predominant among which were ONI, G-2, the FBI, Secret Service, and Internal Revenue, as well as the FCC.

The implication was not that CIS would have police powers, different from the OSS, essentially a wartime spy agency engaged on occasion in active military operations.

The Tribune further explained that the memorandum was top secret, with only fifteen copies having been produced originally, for the highest ranking Government and military officials, but that the newspaper had obtained it through unnamed sources. The proposed order would, said the article, provide "wholesale grant of power" to the new agency.

In all likelihood, the document was deliberately released to the Tribune as a trial balloon to test, perhaps mollify Red-baiting, among conservatives, the opinions of whom had been exhibiting a paranoiac condition as the three heads of state met in secret somewhere in the Crimea.

Mrs. Murray B. Waddell gave birth to a baby girl while alone on a horse-drawn sleigh in Saint John, New Brunswick. She was conducting herself to the hospital at the time, her husband being in the service. She was planning to cross the ice of the Kennebecasis River to Saint John, having telephoned the doctor to meet her along the way. She then had no choice but to deliver her child herself. The doctor arrived an hour and a half after the baby and mother had returned home safe and sound.

We don't recommend this procedure for child-birth or to grab some quick notoriety. Try it deliberately and likely the sleigh would fall through the ice into the river. We thought we would provide that public service warning because in this day and age of unrestrained imaginations, coupled with extremely poor reading skills, too many pills and too much tv, you never know.

From Miami came a report that gambling was pervasive, vying with the days of the boom, you know, back then in the Twenties. Roulette, blackjack, chemin de fer, you know, and craps, all predominated, like. You could have a hole-in-the-wall with the gang or a dazzling emporium with carpet where "soup-and-fish clothes are one of the requirements for admission"—you know, like getting ready to be with de fishes or de soup kitchen, depending on whedder you left broke or with de mo' green stickin' out o' your pockets.

Solicitors to the establishments were handing out business cards on street corners, according to the Miami Herald. The lottery racket, it reported, including numbers houses and Bolita, you know, like pretty bowls full of dough, were thriving once again.

Frank Sinatra, according to a caption under a photograph, had been released from Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York, where he had gone to have a renewed physical to determine whether his previously declared 4-F status was still viable. He weighed in at 118 pounds, his "fighting weight". He was on his way back to California pending the report of his status.

All female teenage hearts were beating fast in trepidatious anticipation of the outcome of the examination.

A hundred and eighteen pounds? Don't get caught in a stiff wind there, friend, especially out on the Western Front.

By the way, how big were dose udder guys on de stage?

Boots? What about de boots? You don't like de boots?

Never mind, we've got to go converse with Elvis awhile, somedin about some fish he wanted to talk about wid us. He said he always wanted to open a craps establishment. Maybe you could help.

No, no. Down in Miami.

Alright, so, in honor of de newborn, why not reprise Christmas for an evening? As they say, you only live twice, ye know?

On the editorial page, "Of Divorce" informs that the North Carolina Legislature was not showing enthusiasm for liberalizing the divorce laws of the state to enable divorce after one year of separation. Opponents, who assailed the proposal as an attack on the institution of marriage, favored extending the two-year waiting period then mandated to three years. The longer the wait, the safer the institution, they argued.

The piece recalled a study some fifteen years earlier undertaken by H. L. Mencken, finding direct proportionality between cultural standards and divorce rates, that states with high indices of social, economic, and cultural achievement also were possessed of high divorce rates, as well the converse.

The editorial does not assert any opinion as to the meaning of those earlier findings by Mr. Mencken but informs that North Carolina, in 1940, had a low rate of divorce, one per thousand, while the national average was twice that rate. The rate of marriage in the same year had been 3.7 per thousand, with that rate falling from 7 per thousand between 1938 and 1940, while divorces had slightly increased during the interim.

It then provides further statistics and explains that South Carolina, with the most stringent divorce laws in the country, had a slightly higher divorce rate for males and lower for females than North Carolina.

So, it concludes that the proposed bill before the Legislature did not threaten the institution of marriage. Nationwide, the number of divorcees was 1.15 million compared to 60 million married people.

Only in Nevada was the divorce rate high, at 47 per thousand, because of catering to the divorce tourist trade.

It further points out that many states with more liberal divorce laws than that of North Carolina had no substantially higher divorce rate.

"Back to Reality" reports that Governor Gregg Cherry had told the Legislature that his policy would not be to spend money the State had not raised from revenue, consistent with the policy of Governor Broughton, his predecessor. The Legislature had requested 146 million dollars in appropriations against estimated revenues of 130 million. The Governor thus demanded trimming of sails.

The Legislature appeared willing to accommodate. The state had a tradition of desiring progress, but delimited by fiscal conservatism.

"The First Item" remarks that the primary concern before the Big Three Conference was the post-war governance of Germany, on which apparently there was general agreement by all parties. The rest of the matters, the territorial issues surrounding Poland, the Baltic States, the Balkans, the Russian desire for unanimity on the Security Council, were all to be considered as gravy.

Charlie Potatoes was Germany.

The piece takes issue with the premise of Drew Pearson's piece of the day, in which he posited that Britain and Russia were both more vulnerable and thus more amenable to compromise three to five years earlier, implicitly suggesting that the administration should earlier have extracted pledges from each country, with Roosevelt holding then the trump cards.

But, says the piece, Prime Minister Churchill had declared his intention to preserve the Empire early in his tenure, beginning in May, 1940, and so it begged the question of how FDR could have played such a so-called trump card to any advantage even then; likewise, Stalin had obtained through his prisoners from Germany and the Balkan states the core for counter-Nazi forces to be deployed upon liberation, and so it was unlikely also that he would have been susceptible to any such trump card played by the United States such that policy would have been dramatically altered.

"Famous 4-F's" sets forth the list of those from earlier world history who would not have qualified for military service under modern standards imposed by the United States Selective Service, as compiled by the late Dr. Logan Clendening. The list included: George Washington, for his false teeth; Von Bismarck, as overweight; Napoleon, for stomach ulcers; General Grant, for alcoholism; Julius Caesar, for epilepsy; Lord Nelson, with only one arm and one eye; and Kaiser Wilhelm, for his withered arm.

It suggests that the list may have enabled Selective Service to approach its task with greater zeal and fewer inhibitions.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Michigan Representative Clare Hoffman discussing the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, reading its text into the Record, that part which forbade the promise of any appointment or employment conditioned upon support of the candidate for public office.

He suggested that the President had possibly violated the Act by his own admission in his letter to Jesse Jones explaining why he wished Mr. Jones to step aside as Secretary of Commerce so that he could appoint in his stead former Vice-President Wallace. For the President had stated that he was making the appointment for Mr. Wallace's support and loyalty demonstrated during the campaign.

Mr. Hoffman stated that the only question left open was whether the President had so promised Mr. Wallace the position to obtain his support during the campaign. He then asks whether anyone would doubt that the President had been desirous of Mr. Wallace's public support following the convention. He doubted it not.

Of course, it had been reported by Drew Pearson in July, prior to the convention, that Mr. Wallace had given the President his complete approval of whatever decision the President wished to make with regard to his continuing in the second spot on the ticket, that he would provide his unreserved support regardless of the President's decision. He had so stated in June before he left on his trip for China and Russia, and again reaffirmed that position upon his return.

As usual, Mr. Hoffman was talking through his hat.

A piece on the page by Burke Davis indicates that the Statistical Abstract of the United States and Your City by E. L. Thorndike had shown in 1930 Charlotte to be one of the least desirable cities in which to live in the country. It ranked, in Mr. Thorndike's consideration of 300 cities over 30,000 population, at number 279. Pasadena had been first. Numerous Southern cities ranked above Charlotte. Little Rock, Raleigh, and Memphis were in the same standing. Winston-Salem, High Point, Wilmington, Knoxville, New Orleans, Columbia, and Charleston each ranked lower.

By 1940, Charlotte had gained 20 percent in population to reach 100,000, while several other cities had lost population.

Charlotte remained in 1940 deficient in dwellings, in adequacy of dwellings, in home ownership, in voting, ranking at or near the bottom of the list in each category. It did well in average education, 9.2 years, while spending less than most cities on education. It also beat many cities in rate of employment, had done only fair in manufacturing plants located in the city, but with good wages paid by the plants which were present.

The piece then presents a statistical table comparing various factors between Charlotte and randomly selected other cities.

Drew Pearson reports of the opinions of diplomats who had reviewed the agenda for the Yalta Conference, finds them of the belief that the world order and peace to come from the meeting would determine the ensuing fifty years and whether another world war would develop.

It was an astute observation. And, whatever we may think about the nuclear arms race and the Cold War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, preceded by the lesser known 1958 Taiwan Crisis, also nearly leading to nuclear confrontation, the planning, while not perfect, as no planning could be on a global scale, has prevented world war since 1945, not a bad record considering the prior thirty years and the several major wars in Europe preceding that time.

So, criticize the Big Three as you will, but they did a pretty damned good job, all three of them. You might not be here otherwise.

Mr. Pearson remarks of how British attitude had shifted in the previous five years since Winston Churchill had come to power, in May, 1940. Then, he would have given up practically anything to obtain American support; by this juncture, he was unwilling to assure the return even of Hong Kong to China.

Likewise, Josef Stalin would have given up about anything for an Allied peace plan three years earlier when his people and armies were under siege in Stalingrad. But now, he would not surrender the point on demand for unanimity of the Security Council to authorize use of force against an aggressor nation.

The President's power to negotiate had thus, ironically, waned, even as the country's role in the war had substantially increased. His only appeal now could be to humanitarian objectives, principled stands, to avoid a return to nationalism and isolationism on the part of the nations of the world, which, if allowed to occur, would inexorably repeat the same disastrous consequences of World War I.

Mr. Pearson then lists the five main issues on the conference agenda: 1. Soviet participation in the war against Japan, as promised by Stalin at Tehran in November-December, 1943, to be in exchange for the Allied invasion of France; 2. The proposal by FDR for a compromise on Poland whereby the recently resigned Premier Mikolajczck, formerly of the London government-in-exile, would join the Lublin provisional government supported by the Russians, at which point both the U.S. and Great Britain would provide support for the Lublin Government; the proposal also by FDR that Russia withdraw some of its claims on territory in Eastern Poland as conciliatory to the Poles; 3. The U.S. determination to recognize Soviet claims on Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on the Baltic; 4. Solid agreement on strong punishment of Axis war criminals; and 5. FDR's proposal of a loan or credit of about six billion dollars for Russia to purchase American goods to restore its post-war economy.

Marquis Childs, at the Eighth Air Force Base in England, comments on the now commonplace thousand-plus plane raids of the Air Forces, which, three years earlier, had not yet begun, not until the groundbreaking Cologne and Essen raids of late May and June, 1942. He urges, however, the readers not to take such daily stories for granted for the enormous preparatory planning and organization required to conduct one of those raids.

He was with the 446th Bomber Group, commanded by Col. Troy Crawford, taking ultimate orders from Lt. General James Doolittle. When a raid was ordered, the ground crews first went to work, preparing the planes for the mission. The bombers remained outside on the field and so, during winter, working on the planes meant getting out into the cold, wet weather.

Beginning at 2:30 a.m., the crews were awakened and dressed for Arctic weather at high altitudes. By 4:00, they received their main briefing for the mission. It was serious business and nothing was taken for granted in terms of safety or freedom from ground flak, even at this late stage in the war. They were briefed on how to signal in case of having to bail in the face of enemy fire or weather issues.

Take-off occurred close to dawn, through a thin mist which prevented visibility of the airplanes on the field from the control tower. A searchlight placed a beam across the the runway to alert each pilot of his deadline for being in the air in order to clear the trees, not visible in the darkness and misting rain.

Once all the planes were airborne, they would join other forces taking off similarly from other airfields, to form the giant concerted armada routinely reported in the newspapers. They would return from the mission, usually minus some of their number, within six or seven hours. Sometimes 15,000 men participated as crews of these missions.

And in support, there were large ground crews, which depended on ships for supplies of gasoline, parts, and bombs, dependent in turn on America's war production.

Hal Boyle, with the 83rd Infantry Division in Belgium on January 24, tells of a T/Sgt. who thought he had been hit in the thigh by mortar fire. He smelled smoke after feeling heat and began furiously slapping at his pants leg. A piece of metal had hit a box of matches in his pocket and set his pants afire—honest.

"It was the hottest fight I had ever been in," he declared.

A S/Sgt. told of the limits to souvenir hunting. One night, he was sleeping in his foxhole when he heard a thud on the timbered dirt roof. Dismissing it, he went back to sleep. Next morning, he found an unexploded 88-mm. shell resting amid the logs. The native of Brooklyn decided that, despite his being the souvenir hound of his outfit, he would pass up this particular offering.

The 329th Infantry Regiment wanted to thank Herr Hitler for obliging them in getting their mail to them more quickly than by ordinary. A T/5 had captured a "'Volkswagon'"—it's like a little bug or something, you know, with buggy eyes and a weak Third Cylinder for want of a properly positioned oil cooler blocking the flow of air through the fan shroud to the cooling fins, one of those secret weapons of Hitler, sort of—described by Mr. Boyle as "Hitler's car of the future". Bet you wish you could get one.

Anyway, the love bug was painted by T/5 Berny Moffa, of NYC, olive drab with a white star, like a jeep. So now, Berny, riding in Herbie as a mail delivery vehicle, plowed through the snow to get the mail to the men.

A S/Sgt. reported that he was taking a load of fatigues to infantry troops in his jeep when an artillery barrage forced him to take shelter in a ditch. Then, after the attack, he resumed his delivery mission and got the fatigues to the troops.

But then complaints began for the fact that the pants were riddled with bullet holes.

"What can you do? Things are tough everywhere," said the native Long Islander.

Haven't we heard that last one before? Oh well. We'll ask Elvis, or Wally.

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