Saturday, October 16, 1943

The Charlotte News

Saturday, October 16, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that French radio had indicated that the Germans were in retreat north of the Volturno River on the road to Rome after some of the most bitter fighting in the area. The German forces had destroyed all bridges, roads, and military installations in their wake. The Fifth Army had captured Caiazzo (spelled variously in the report Caizzo, Calazzo, and Cazzo), a mile north of the Volturno and ten miles northeast of captured Capua, and Amorosi, five miles from Caiazzo. The Army was now able to send heavy equipment and tanks across the river at several points. Forces also continued to force their way north of the Calore River, capturing Cerrato, and continuing to threaten the German flank.

The Eighth Army captured important road junctions at Vinchiaturo and Campobasso on the Adriatic coast.

Hal Boyle files a delayed report from October 7 on the pernicious problem of time-bombs besetting Naples since the evacuation by the Germans.

On the Russian front, as fighting continued around Kiev in the Ukraine, Germans were being forced to retreat from Melitopol on the Crimean plain to the south. Despite the German blowing of the Dneiper Dam in attempt to flood the advance of the Red Army, the Russians continued to press the issue, seeking to trap 100,000 retreating Nazis as they tried to reach the Crimea.

From the Pacific, General MacArthur reported that, in addition to the major air attack on Tuesday on the Japanese airbase and harbor facilities at Rabaul, Cape Hoskins and Cape Gloucester had been bombed heavily in recent days.

On the editorial page, "Long Haul" predicts a long period ahead for the elimination of the worst of the problems besetting the black community in Charlotte, that money and new physical facilities alone would not effect the desired resolution, that a sea change would have to occur through time, with responsibility for that change shouldered by the black community itself ultimately.

"Sales Tax?" answers its question in the affirmative, that unpopular or not, still a spare majority of the American people favored the ad valorem tax, and overwhelmingly so over the competing proposed increase in the withholding tax.

"Critic Willkie" suggests that Wendell Willkie's chastising of fellow Republicans in California for their too heavy tendency to attack personalities of the New Dealers and of the President's family and his playful statement that Churchill had come adoringly to America, much as any commoner seeking a pooling of investments might approach John D. Rockefeller, had diminished the putative 1944 presidential candidate's stature, making him less formidable in the eyes of ordinary Republicans than in the role of objective world traveler adopted in his One World, published in the spring.

The declaration of war by Italy on Germany, says Samuel Grafton, was simply another inevitable concomitant of the war, a condition by which Pietro Badoglio and King Emanuele were trapped, as surely as when they were puppets to Mussolini, then to the Germans--pinballs propelled by the bumpers of war, as it were. The acceptance of them by the Allies was equally a quirk of circumstance, determined by the occurrence of events, not by ideological considerations.

Mr. Grafton predicts that Badoglio would have to be overthrown for the problems inherent in his leadership, his former sympathy for the Fascist regime of Mussolini, ultimately to be solved.

Dorothy Thompson examines the old thesis in Europe that "interests never lie" when it comes to determining the type of government a particular nation tolerated and maintained. The smaller European nations in the war had two interests, she suggests: to be associated with the winner, and to have input to the construction of the peace. Ancillary to these two interests, to be aligned with the nations controlling the sea lanes was also of great importance. These interests would determine the type of government to which each nation gravitated.

Spain, in light of the surrender and declaration of war on Germany by Italy and the Allied-friendly behavior of late by Portugal in delivering for the duration the Azores to the British, had now caused Spain to turn from non-belligerent support of the Axis to strict neutrality in order to preserve its interests. Likewise, Argentina was being forced by events to lean more toward appeasing the Allies.

Such events, she says, indicated that the war was in its latter stages, with the Allies holding the winning hand.

Hitler had been unsuccessful in seeking to cuittle democracies to join the Axis. He had managed to obtain the support of the Vichy government in exchange for leaving a part of France for awhile unoccupied, but he had never won the hearts and minds of the people of France, had never overcome the underground resistance. Democracy was too well-entrenched. Italy, by contrast, joined the Allies out of expediency, after being defeated. Hitler's empire had never exceeded in reality the boundaries of countries which had already been controlled by Fascist regimes.

Drew Pearson, as with the piece in the editorial column, examines the new Wendell Willkie, a man no longer put on the stump by party hacks as a compromise candidate as in 1940, but appearing in 1943 to be in control of his own message, attacking his own party for sticking to old formulas, such as advocating decentralized government, attacking bureaucratic inefficiency, and supporting "free enterprise" in contrast to government control. He warned them that such adherence to tired slogans and old policies would no longer resonate with the American people, accustomed to benefits conferred by New Deal policies, that Republicans, rather than playing to the hilt the contrarian role, needed to admit the benefits to society of the President's program, should have embraced it long ago and gone further in enacting social programs along the same lines, that it was the role of big business "to pay for the elevation of humanity", impliedly meaning higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations in the proper spirit of noblesse oblige.

Are you listening, Ms. Palin?

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