Saturday, April 14, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 14, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: As the nation said its farewells from Washington this date to President Roosevelt, while the funeral caisson bearing his remains made its way from Union Station to the White House for the private East Room ceremony, as described on the front page, the inside page, and extra pages, it stood, still shocked, largely oblivious to the passage of two grim anniversaries of events also bearing this strangely coincidental date, one having taken place in Washington at Ford's Theater on the night of April 14, 1865 at just past 10:00, and the other, in the icy waters southeast of Newfoundland, on the night of April 14, 1912, with the death of President Lincoln the following morning at about 7:30, with the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic, with 1,517 of its 2,223 passengers still aboard or already lost, two hours and thirty-four minutes after striking the iceberg at 11:46 p.m., 10:13 p.m. EST, thus at 2:20 a.m., Apparent Ship's Time.

On this centennial of that 1912 disaster, therefore, the most precise moment of time, for Eastern Daylight Time, at which the ship met its fatal junction is 11:13 p.m., its sinking then occurring at just before 1:47 a.m. EDT, not 1:20 a.m., as many resources have it, not taking into account the variance between Apparent Ship's Time, adjusted daily onboard each ship per the voyage, and time as recorded on land within the time zones.

Adjust your watches accordingly and make sure you have sufficient lifeboats this time around.

The striking of the iceberg, it should also be noted, took place almost at precisely the same moment on which, 47 years earlier, John Wilkes Booth had entered the box and shot President Lincoln at the point in the play where the line is uttered, "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old mantrap." Booth then jumped from the box, catching his bootspur in the fabric of the flag adorning it, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis," "Thus be it always to tyrants," the State motto of Virginia, some recounting also that he preceded that by saying, from within the box, "Revenge for the South."

Accounts varied as to the precise time of the shooting, between 10:00 and 10:30, but President Lincoln's personal physician stated that he arrived on the scene only after the President had been removed to the Petersen house across from 511 Tenth Street, where he died the next morning, and that he had arrived at about 10:15, suggesting the shooting to have occurred shortly after 10:00.

The body of President Roosevelt, drawn in the procession to the White House by six white horses, a seventh leading as the Riderless Horse, had arrived in Washington on this date at 9:50 a.m., Eastern War Time. Burial would take place at 10:00 a.m. Sunday in Hyde Park on the family estate by the Hudson.

Hundreds of thousands of mourners, estimates ranging to as high as 400,000, lined the streets of Washington along the caisson route, just as the people had lined, silently, all along the tracks north from Warm Springs during the day and night of Friday the 13th. Many of the people, men and women, openly wept.

Overhead, bombers swept the sky as a salute to the fallen Commander in Chief.

The military escort continued marching straight ahead down Pennsylvania Avenue, as the cortege turned onto the White House grounds.

The route took precisely 76 minutes to traverse, arriving at the White House at 11:14, the length of the slow progressing cortege itself taking 29 minutes from its van to the caisson to enter the grounds.

As in Warm Springs during the initial cortege to the train station, a soldier fainted at the White House entry, gashing his chin.

So quiet were the people gathered across the way in Lafayette Square that the sounds of the squirrels and birds could be plainly discerned.

Fala, following on a leash held by an attendant, pulled and tugged, whimpered, no doubt anxious to enter the House he had come to know so well as home, hopeful, insofar as we might impute the emotion to a pup, that he might find, instinctively, the familiar voice and touch that he had come also so well to know.

Outside, the Navy Band played a few bars of "Abide With Me", then the "Star Bangled Banner", as the casket was carried through the doors by the Honor Guard.

The casket was laid to rest on the bier within the East Room.

There, the simple service took place at 4:00, with only family and a few dignitaries present. The text of the funeral rites, the Episcopal Order for the Burial of the Dead, is reproduced on the pages.

After the casket had gone, many of the crowd in Lafayette Square rushed across Pennsylvania Avenue to the iron fence in front of the Executive Mansion to obtain a closer look.

The crowds along the route slowly began to disperse.

A peddler, who had hawked ribboned buttons bearing the President's likeness, folded up his stand, having sold only four.

Clouds began to gather overhead, masking what had been bright sunshine during the procession, that which had been called during the President's time in office at propitious moments, such as on election days, "Roosevelt weather".

The piece recounts words from the President's unfinished and undelivered speech which he had been on Thursday morning preparing for Jefferson Day, to have been delivered Friday night from Georgia Hall, the site of the Infantile Paralysis Foundation:

Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility. Today we can no more escape the consequences of German and Japanese aggression than we could avoid the consequences of attacks by the Barbary corsairs a century and a half before.

We, as Americans, do not choose to deny our responsibility.

Nor do we intend to abandon our determination that, within the lives of our children and our children's children, there will not be a third world war.

We seek peace—enduring peace. More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars—yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman, and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments....

Let me assure you that my hand is the steadier for the work that is to be done, that I move more firmly into the task, knowing that you—millions and millions of you—are joined with me in the resolve to make this work endure.

The work, my friends, is peace, more than an end of this war—an end to the beginning of all wars, yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples.

President Truman also had accompanied the funeral procession and entered the White House through the executive office side entrance.

The new President and his family would temporarily reside at Blair House, a half block away from the White House, normally the guest residence for visiting foreign heads of state—where he would be residing in 1950 during the reconstruction of the White House interior, when Puerto Rican nationalists would make an attempt on his life, November 1 of that year.

The President, with all of his new duties and need to bring himself up to date with occurrences, known only to his predecessor and the "assistant President", James Byrnes, with whom he was now consulting, as well as with former FDR adviser Harry Hopkins, had decided not to attend the San Francisco Conference, which would start April 25 without delay. Secretary of State Stettinius would officially head the United States delegation at the conference. President Roosevelt had planned only to attend the initial opening ceremony.

It was believed that there would be another Big Three meeting shortly on the heels of the Allied victory in Europe, now thought to be only days away. But with the first general election in Great Britain in a decade promised by Prime Minister Churchill to ensue immediately the European peace, and with the need of President Truman to be completely prepared for the meeting, it would not occur so soon.

Indications were that the meeting would need resolve the questions of German reparations and the assignment of prisoner labor to effect reconstruction of Europe, settlement of foreign refugee issues, and determination of the number of troops necessary to police each of the four zones of German occupation.

The President would instead arrange to meet for the first time with new British Prime Minister Clement Atlee and Premier Stalin at Potsdam in Germany in mid-July, just as the Trinity test of the atomic bomb would take place near Los Alamos, to plan the final phases of the Pacific war and finalize the post-war peace, in the wake of the United Nations Charter of June. That conference at Potsdam would adjourn August 2—you see.

On the Western Front, the Ninth Army had established a second bridgehead across the Elbe River at an undisclosed point, identified by the BBC as being fifteen miles southeast of Magdeburg at Barby. No fresh reports came of the Ninth Army contingents which had moved as close as 45 miles from Berlin along the flat Brandenburg plain. Dortmund had been captured within the Ruhr.

The Third Army and the First Army moved past Leipzig, flanking it, the Third advancing over the Mulde River, the Fourth Armored Division moving to within seven miles of Chemnitz, 88 miles from the Russian lines, the 90th Infantry advancing to within 18 miles of the Czech border, and 38 miles from Dresden.

The Ninth Armored Division of the First Army, moving to the south of Leipzig, had closed to within 55 miles of Berlin, following a 30 mile armored advance to within three miles of Dessau at the convergence of the Mulde and the Elbe.

Germany had essentially been bisected, with all communications lines severed from Berlin to the south, including the autobahn to Munich.

The British besieged Bremen and outflanked Hamburg, pushing 36 miles, to within 23 miles of the Elbe south of Hamburg.

The Seventh Army fought into Bamberg, 32 miles from Nuernberg, along the canal to the Danube.

Canadian forces captured the remainder of Arnhem in Holland.

On the Eastern Front, German reports had it that the Russians appeared poised for the final assault on Berlin, held up by a gradual spring thaw and resulting mud. Four armies, the First White Russian Army of Marshal Zhukov to the east, the Second and Third White Russian Armies to the north, and the First Ukrainian Army of Marshal Konev to the south, were at the ready to begin the final pincer drive, as the Western Allies steadily moved from the west, northwest, and southwest toward the capital.

The Japanese special envoy assigned to Washington just prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor, Saburo Kurusu, suggested from Tokyo that President Truman did not have the ability to lead and control the American people which his predecessor possessed, would thus experience problems, that it was presumably the new President's intention to fight to the bitter end, but so it was, also, with Japan.

Mr. Kurusu, fond of surprises, was in for a shocker within four months. His better lot, rather than making bold and absurd public statements at this juncture, would have been to read Daniel and Jonah, that which we glean the Missourian had amply done in the past, and would again.

On the editorial page, "A School Crisis" urges support of the 20-cent increase in local taxes to support the schools, most of it for teachers and janitors.

"Educational Tour" remarks on the discovery by Colonel Hayden Searl's armored forces of the Orhdruf concentration camp in Germany, exposing for the first time to Western eyes the true horrors of the Holocaust, yet to be revealed to their full extent.

Between 1,500 and 4,700 foreign workers impressed into Nazi slave labor had been murdered or died of starvation at this camp, only being used as an overflow facility.

Col. Searl rounded up 40 of the German civilians within the town of Ohrdruf and made them tour the camp to see what the SS had been doing within their midst. At first not accepting the reality of the scene as the handiwork of their compadres, gradually they came to realize what had occurred.

The piece urges that similar scenes be repeated throughout Germany every time one of the camps would be exposed, that there could be no denial of what had occurred under Nazism.

"He's Still Bob" discusses the continued activity of retired Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina, now living on a 1,500-acre farm in Maryland—whether close to Mr. Chambers's farm, we could not say.

But certainly close enough in attitude.

He was, reports the piece, running a pulpwood farm, but none yet had been produced, at least not of the ordinary variety.

And he continued to publish his nationalist-isolationist The National Record, successor to his moribund Vindicator of earlier years, but still providing the same anti-British, anti-Russian America First pulp.

The piece warns that his voice, though no longer at the helm of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, could still reach the fringe elements of society, the Bundists and other such groups, and thereby undermine the unity necessary to support the United Nations Organization.

"A Mutineer" expects the Senate committee investigating the food shortage in the country to issue a stern rebuke of the Office of Price Administration, not so much because of the meat shortage but because some Senators did not like the OPA. Senator Harlan Bushfield of South Dakota had said as much when he stated that he and his family would obtain meat regardless of OPA regulations.

Thousands of Americans would be in agreement, as evidenced by the black markets in meat. But, as a Senator, speaking out against regulations properly promulgated according to law by a Government agency, Senator Bushfield had brought no credit to himself, the Senate, or his home state.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska wondering aloud why the country could not obtain meat when it had ten million more head of cattle than in the period 1925-29.

The problem, he continued, appeared to be related to the fact that OPA head Chester Bowles had established price ceilings on hogs which had impeded the slaughter of animals of sufficient grade for the Government's military needs, concentrating the slaughter instead on the inferior grade animals, yielding meat only for sausage, hamburger, canned meats, and other processed products. That information, he relates, had been brought forth in a lawsuit against Mr. Bowles by the Armour Company.

Drew Pearson, writing now after news of the President's death, tells of the resentment regarding the alleged coddling of German prisoners of war having been stimulated even more by the publication of pictures of the starving American soldiers, just liberated from German prison camps, and the publication also of pictures of the bodies of the dead from Ohrdruf.

In the House, members angrily denounced the treatment, especially as Americans treated with German prisoners beyond that required by the Geneva Convention. The rationale for the good treatment had been to encourage good treatment of American prisoners by the Germans.

He next relates of the scramble by the big oil companies to obtain in war surplus property the two pipelines constructed to carry oil to the Eastern seaboard during the war to make up for the lack of oil tankers needed at the battle fronts, the Big Inch and Big Little Inch, consisting of a total of 2,729 miles of pipe which carried half a billion barrels of oil daily. After the war, it was anticipated that the pipe would be used to carry natural gas and that the oil companies would revert to the tankers to transport the oil from Texas to the East Coast. But there was competition in the form of coal and artificial gas which would seek to block the mass transport of natural gas to the East.

The Big Inch was operated by Standard Oil of New Jersey, Shell, Atlantic, Gulf, Pan-American, Texaco, Consolidated, Socony, and Tidewater. The White House retained control of the property, without needing Congressional or Surplus War Property Board approval as to who would wind up with ownership of it. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation would make the determination and RFC contracts with the oil companies were maintained in secret during the war, despite that other war contracts were not so maintained. The location of the pipes themselves was not secret and so Mr. Pearson suggests that no rationale properly existed for this condition.

He next turns to the Russian criticism recently of Switzerland, which had been used by the Nazis as a refuge for war booty. One of the reasons for barring neutrals from San Francisco was the status of Switzerland as such and the desire by the Russians for the ouster of its President, Dr. Eduard Von Steiger, perceived by the Soviets as pro-Nazi. They based the evaluation on the fact that Dr. Von Steiger, while head of the Swiss justice and police ministries, had cooperated with the Nazi demand to close down a Russian radio transmitter established by a Russian general in Geneva to observe Nazi operations there. Dr. Von Steiger had not only cooperated but sought to use the captured transmitter to send false messages back to Moscow, was frustrated in the attempt only by the escape of the Russian general to the Balkans where he was able to relay to Moscow the fact of the capture of the transmitter.

We note that it is somewhat curious that Mr. Pearson makes no mention of the death of President Roosevelt while noting that President Truman was now in office. We shall see Monday whether he makes further mention of the passing of the President. It may be that either this column was being written Thursday night just as the news broke or that, as sometimes occurred, one of his columns was not printed in The News. Perhaps, he had dealt with the subject in a special column.

Dick Young, writing before the President's death, tells, among other things, of the fifteen Charlotte firemen who went to Memorial Hospital and provided assistance in transporting young polio patients to the Clyde Beatty Circus in town.

Marquis Childs suggests that the importance of President Roosevelt's death would be seen only in the long perspective of history. Even his most hating enemies had to see what his loss meant to the country, especially at the time when victory in the war was so close and hope beamed abroad the land for the new world to come.

"Let us say it now in this hour. Let us say, that the victory is his victory."

The President had brought action and resolve when the country, five years earlier, had been irresolute, mired in the isolationism of the past since World War I.

Mr. Childs draws the comparison to the death of President Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, eighty years to the days before the funeral and burial of President Roosevelt. The plans for the peace at that earlier time, the humane peace, were swept aside, in favor of a harsh peace to the South—and the sins of Reconstruction thus began, sins which had continued to plague the nation with division since.

He offers that Andrew Johnson, seen through the prism of time, had not been a wicked or stupid man, but one rather caught in forces beyond his control, the forces of partisanship which saw the Southern Democrat from Tennessee, the simple tailor with little formal education, as another Rebel, a rube from the wilderness.

"Surely we need not repeat this tragedy. Surely we can rise above partisanship in this hour of supreme need."

The natural and unassumed modesty which so characterized Harry Truman had now to be cast aside by him in favor of assertiveness, just as he had proved capable of doing during his chairmanship of the Senate Defense Investigating Committee, which had maintained vigilance over the armed forces, their supply and spending.

While little doubt existed in the military side of the equation, as President Truman would maintain the present personnel and leadership in the war, the real challenge would be in winning the peace. The new President might call upon men not previously sought for advice in this regard and achieve greater heights than had appeared evident in recent months.

Mr. Childs urges that it was for every American to meet the test of the hour, to support the new President in this challenge.

Samuel Grafton laments the passing of President Roosevelt with the theme that he had "held us together". He had come to the job in 1933 promising to reduce the budget, and there had been those who never forgave him for not keeping that promise. Only after his first period at the job, during those first critical Hundred Days, had he realized the other primary necessity, to construct and maintain unity within the land.

And to do that meant spending money, big money, billions on billions of dollars, and taxing the wealthy to pay for it. He did it with a smile and effervescence which annoyed many of those wealthy. But he did it, nevertheless, despite the feeling of betrayal by his own class. A billion spent on leaf-raking, though silly, was preferable to the concentration camps of Germany. He had the answers for stints of six months at a time, not decades.

When he had proposed Lend-Lease in 1940, it appeared that the country would split into discordant factions, paying out billions to foreign nations for aid, to Perfidious Albion, even to more perfidious Russia. But he had nevertheless maintained the unity and achieved Lend-Lease, in the end saving millions of American lives and, probably, freedom itself around the globe.

"He kept an equilibrium, maybe an uneasy, shifting one; but he kept it; he kept the ball rolling toward the great plain, where someday, at leisure, we may consider the questions of a hundred years."

There were those who thought he pitted class against class and thus sowed the seeds instead of disunity. But these were angry men, themselves not adept at establishing unity, mad that he had increased it to greater extent than ever before in the country's largely discordant history since the Founding.

He had accepted the wishes of the South the previous summer to place Harry Truman on the ticket instead of the incumbent Henry Wallace, and he accepted that desire for the reason of maintaining unity, not to achieve re-election for himself, which he genuinely would have preferred to push aside in favor of retirement to Hyde Park.

Now, President Truman had bequeathed to him by the late President and the circumstances of fate which attended his death this vital role to preserve the unity.

"He should say often to himself that when we don't know where we are going, we must go in a body."

Also played by C.P.O. Graham Jackson the previous morning, as the President's remains departed Warm Springs, was "Nearer My God to Thee".

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