Friday, October 1, 1943

The Charlotte News

Friday, October 1, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reported the major news of the day, the fall of Naples, the greatest victory thus far for the Allies in the Battle for Italy. Victorious American and British troops entered the city at 8:00 a.m. and it was declared free of Germans.

President Roosevelt, upon receiving the news, told reporters that the next objective would be Rome. He was uncertain of the accuracy of reports that the Nazis would seek to make a stand at Rome. Reports indicated that the German forces were establishing a line twenty miles north of Naples, along the Volturno River. The President also assured that all steps would be taken to assure that non-military targets in Rome would not be damaged.

Amid complaints from soldiers and officers of the military occupation government in Italy, the Allied High Command announced that it would likely recognize the Badoglio Government and King Victor Emmanuel as holding legitimate sovereignty in Italy.

On the Russian front, the Battle for Kiev continued unabated as expectations were that Gomel to the north would fall into Soviet hands within hours.

It was announced that W. Averill Harriman would succeed Admiral William Standley as American Ambassador to Russia. Mr. Harriman would continue as Ambassador until 1946, then serve briefly as Ambassador to the Court of St. James before being appointed by President Truman as Secretary of Commerce, a position he would hold for a year and half, until April, 1948. He subsequently was elected to one term as Governor of New York, from 1955-59, and then served in the State Department in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations during the 1960’s, serving each as Ambassador-at-Large and as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. Mr. Harriman also would act as President Johnson's chief negotiator in the 1968 Paris Peace Talks seeking an end to the Vietnam War.

On the editorial page, "States' Wrongs" uses a statement by generally progressive Democratic Governor Ellis Arnall of Georgia, suggesting that unless states provided the government the people desired they would continue to look to the Federal government for answers, to underscore the repeated attempts by Southern governors to trumpet states' rights over centralized Federal government. The editorial finds the trend to be of a bygone era and one no longer likely to draw much public support in light of the clear tendency toward progress made especially in the South by way of Federal aid. A retreat to states' rights would lead the way only to a state of regression.

"Our Mystic" comments on the President's statement that 90 percent of the Washington political hierarchy were "damn good eggs" while about ten percent leaked rumors. The statement, made in the context of press inquiries on the correctness of rumors that General Marshall was to be transferred from Army Chief of Staff to either commander of all European forces or commander of all Allied forces worldwide, still fell, says the editorial, into a familiar Roosevelt pattern of conundrum, criticizing either the press or politicians while leaving the substantive question at issue in an unanswered and confused state. It concludes that while the President was a masterful practical politician, he sometimes fell woefully short of being a masterful public relations man.

"Penny Foolish" finds Delaware Republican Senator Buck to be not so pound wise by complaining of the steel pennies in circulation, if what he intended was to rouse the people against the decreased abstract value of their currency. For the pocketbook and relative buying power of the average person had not been so good in many a year and it was thus unlikely that such a campaign would have any political impact.

Dam bad dimes.

An editorial report comments on Russian sources quoted in the press saying that once Germany was vanquished, Russia would loan to the Western Allies Soviet bases from which to mount attacks on Japan while staying out of the fight itself unless Japan declared war on the Soviet Union. The piece adds parenthetically that Vladivostok was only 600 miles from Tokyo but was ringed by Japanese territory and could therefore prove as much a liability as an asset as a base from which to launch attacks.

It predicts that in the meantime, Sakhalin, part Japanese and part Russian territory, and the site of controversy in 1942 regarding the Japanese contest of claims by the Soviets in oil-rich territory on the peninsula, was the most likely potential flashpoint for disintegration of the fragile Soviet-Japanese mutual non-aggression treaty signed in April, 1941.

Raymond Clapper examines the cause for the high rate of absenteeism among women, especially mothers, in war industries, nine times higher than that of men, finds it the result of the time necessary for women and mothers to attend to the ordinary chores of the household, figuring out the complexities and vicissitudes of rationing coupons along the way. The simple solutions could be had in childcare centers and shops and stores, beauty parlors and barber shops, more proximal to the factory.

Drew Pearson praises Judge Fred Vinson, future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, for a job well done as chief of the Office of Economic Stabilization. Since his tenure began, food prices had gone down while farm income had considerably increased; the cost of living index had risen more slowly than the average wage to the working man.

He next reports, among his cornucopia of related factoids, that the Swiss response to German complaints re the failure to shoot down Allied planes headed for Milan and Turin consisted of a question: since the planes had passed first over occupied France, why didn’t the Nazis, themselves, shoot them down?

Mr. Pearson goes on to discuss the sleaze of the fire insurance industry, seeking a bill to exempt fire insurance companies from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Hartford, Connecticut had suddenly turned into the foremost bastion for states’ rights, to foster the notion that each state should have its own fire insurance laws, protective of monopolistic practices and consequently high rates. Payola to political bosses, some in prison, had greased the tracks along the way.

And, he further informs that the First Lady's favorite piece of music was "The Blue Danube" while the President's was "Home on the Range".

Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i>--</i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.