Saturday, September 11, 1943

The Charlotte News

Saturday, September 11, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Fifth Army under the command of General Mark Clark had seized Salerno in soutwestern Italy amid resistance from German guns. No Italians were involved in the fight.

A delayed firsthand report from Don Whitehead of the Associated Press tells in detail of the Allied landing south of Salerno on Thursday, just as news had come of the armistice with Italy. The order was given by Admiral Andrew Cunningham of the Royal Navy, commander-in-chief of the landing force, not to fire unless fired upon. But as soon as ships began receiving fire from German coastal batteries, they began firing back.

Much of Italy's navy, at least five capital ships, had safely reached Malta, surrendering to the Allies. One destroyer was reported sunk by German planes.

Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt issued a joint statement promising to rid Italy of all German forces.

Berlin radio reported that King Emanuele and Pietro Badoglio, along with heir-apparent to the throne Count Umberto, had fled to Sicily after Rome’s reported surrender to the Germans.

In the Pacific, the Allies continued their assault on Lae, with the expectation that the Japanese, now surrounded, would soon collapse.

In Russia, the Germans continued their retreat all along a 400-mile front from the Sea of Azov to Bryansk. In the north, the Germans fell back from defensive positions near Novgorod Seversky on the Desna River, opening the way for the Red Army to encircle their next major Ukrainian target, Kiev.

On the editorial page, "The Same Bear" traces the history of Soviet unilateral peace treaties with Germany since a separate armistice in 1918 and speculates aloud from these facts whether Russia would repeat the performance on the excuse that the Western Allies had not yet fulfilled their commitment to open a second front.

"A Victory" celebrates the denial by a local judge of an attempt by property owners to obtain an injunction to block establishment of a separate park for African-Americans, the first park open to blacks in a community which was 35% black.

"Childishness" decries the abrasive attitude demonstrated by Congressman Mendel Rivers of South Carolina in contending that Secretary of Interior and Petroleum Coordinator Harold Ickes hated the South and thus was depriving the region of oil. The editorial defends Mr. Ickes on the point, that he was not responsible for genuine transportation issues which existed in bringing oil to the East, that, regardless, the offensive attitude exhibited by the Congressman was not conducive to effect the desired end, more oil for the East Coast.

"Single Standard" praises the decision to begin to arrest soldiers as aiders and abettors to prostitution when caught with prostitutes, historically in Charlotte the only part of the duo arrested when caught in flagrante delicto. The move was necessary, says the piece, to stem the spread of venereal disease.

Raymond Clapper, in the context of seeing an ad for the newest war bond drive indicating that it was “going to hurt”, reminds that it would not hurt nearly so much as that which the soldiers abroad suffered every day, not the dangers of fighting which Mr. Clapper contends did not exceed that which most Americans encountered on crowded streets and highways in the United States. The hurt that most of these men felt, he offers from observations made during his four-month tour of the battle fronts, was from homesickness, the lack of family, the lack of the simple amenities of the corner soda fountain. Both the young among them and the older, some of whom were about to become grandfathers, felt the same loss of ties, far more upsetting than the shrapnel.

And so it had to kept uppermost in the minds of those at home when they thought of buying war bonds what daily sacrifices of the simple comforts were being made by the soldier and for some lengthy period of time to come. Some soldiers Mr. Clapper had encountered in Iceland, for instance, already had been continuously on duty for two years.

Dorothy Thompson views the offer by Churchill to the United States of a permanent alliance to be both unique in British history, recognizing the significant new role on the world stage carved by the United States during the war, and one which would prove salutary to both countries. Each country, she continues, had practiced isolationism for the century prior to World War II; Britain, in “Splendid Isolation” had done so as a wary steward of the United States to enable its own unimpeded free trade while permitting the U.S. to develop as a nation. But this mutual isolationism was now outmoded and the bilateral agreement between the two nations should form the nucleus for a new United Nations organization after the war. The British would open to America a way to achieve alliance with Russia, America would afford Britain a way to ally with China.

Raymond Moley asserts that, historically, the view that America had enjoyed a de facto treaty with Britain since the War of 1812 was a distorted picture of history, that there had been many differences, differences resolved to the credit of both countries, but not the result of a de facto treaty. He sees the post-war world as being governed by the U.S., Britain, China, and Russia. For the U.S. and Britain to form such a bilateral pact might distract from the overall United Nations plan and lead to unease for Russia and China. Russia, he reminds, had joined in making the armistice with Italy. It could no longer be a two-country world.

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