Monday, January 31, 1944

The Charlotte News

Monday, January 31, 1944

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Fifth Army on the Cassino front in Italy penetrated German defenses north of the town, taking Monte Villa, a mile away, and Cairo, two miles away. Tanks and infantry crossed the Rapido River, deliberately flooded by the Nazis to re-route its course, and began clearing Nazi pillboxes with American infantry crouching behind the tracks of tank treads to avoid stepping on mines. The Germans still held Cassino, but the Allies had outflanked it. No confirmation appeared of Saturday’s report that the Nazis appeared to be evacuating Cassino to move troops into the Anzio-Nettuno sector.

In that sector to the northwest of Cassino, in the perimeter around Anzio, British and American troops with tank support fought a series of sharp engagements, enlarging the beachhead. The Germans meanwhile had established a defensive line through the Alban Hills, along the 26-mile rail line from Rome to Cisterna, utilizing haystacks, silos, farm buildings and villages for machinegun nests, tank and artillery cover. American Ranger forces were busy routing the Nazis out of these positions, fighting house to house, haystack by haystack, as detailed in an eyewitness report of the action by Reynolds Packard.

The anticipated invasion of the Marshall Islands had begun on Sunday morning with a concerted Navy attack on the islands, sinking fourteen Japanese vessels. Few details were yet available, but reports indicated that it could be inferred that an Allied amphibious landing force of infantry was also in the offing. What was touted as possibly the largest Navy task force in history was pounding the atolls of Kwajalein, Wotje, Roi, and Malcolap. Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that surface ships of the Navy had moved within ten to twenty miles of the islands.

The Japanese were reported to have lost between 546 and 717 planes in the Southwest Pacific during January, their worst month thus far in the war in terms of air losses. American losses were 97 planes. Two-thirds of the losses on both sides occurred over Rabaul on New Britain.

In reaction to the Army-Navy report of atrocities in Japanese prison camps and on the forced march from Bataan in April, 1942, the Government put forth a plan to emasculate Japan after the war by stripping it of all heavy industrial capability and disallowing any merchant fleet or air fleet. Japan would be permitted to have no ship over 1,000 tons. Agricultural activities, however, would not be restricted.

As part of the largest sustained bombing effort yet during the war, stretching over a period of four days, another large RAF raid had hit Berlin the night before, while American bombers struck during the day on Sunday at the Messerschmitt factory in Brunswick and on rail facilities at Hannover. The Americans alone had dropped 3,000 tons of bombs on targets during the weekend. Another American daylight raid on Monday again had hit targets on the coast of Northern France at Pas-de-Calais.

The Red Army continued to advance rapidly west of Leningrad, taking Kingisepp on the Gulf of Finland, gateway to the Baltic, about seventy miles west of Leningrad. Another force under the command of General Markian Popov moved to within less than 60 miles of Latvia along the Moscow-Riga railroad.

Swedish naval officials expressed fear that the Soviet advance toward Estonia might soon enable the Russians to establish a port on the Baltic at Baltisch Port, permitting them to cut off shipping between Sweden and both Germany and Finland. Germany relied heavily for its industry on Swedish iron ore.

Despite the fact that the Swedish Government during the previous summer had stopped permitting Nazi rail traffic of men and supplies to and from Norway across its borders, it appeared that at least some of the Swedish military preferred to remain uneasy befellows with Hitler when juxtaposed to Stalin, Russia presenting to the Swedish an historical threat.

Freshman Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, whose segregationist voice would be heard throughout his career in the Senate, into the late 1970's, stated, quite incongruously, that the President's proposal for the absentee ballot for soldiers threatened "white supremacy" in the South. "The boys from the South are fighting to maintain white supremacy," said Senator Eastland. He further indicated that a provision in the bill to allow local officials to pass on the validity of Federal ballots was "absolutely unconstitutional and utterly void", that the bill, by telling the states who could vote, unconstitutionally usurped States' Rights--notwithstanding the Fifteenth Amendment of which the Senator, no doubt, and those who put him in the Senate, took no judicial notice.

On which side these "boys", of whom the Senator spoke, were fighting was not elucidated by his honor, the Senator from the Great State of Mississippi.

--Now, look heya. These nigra boys ah good 'nough to fight faw us, and I do not undaestimate theya woyth in that regawd. But we also feed them and clothe them as they do the fightin', and that is quite enough. We cannot give these nigras the right to vote on an equal plane with good, decent white folk, simply because they happen to be able to take advantage of the American broad sense of lawgesse to allow them to pawticipate in fightin' faw the hona of theya great and free country. And, mo'ova, it is just plain unconstitutional nonsense and we shall not stand faw it in Mississippi, wheya ou' boys ah fighting faw white supremacy.

Sometimes, however, such as on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1963, (the same day, incidentally, on which the University of North Carolina beat Duke University in football, on a 42-yard field goal by Max Chapman, to win in Durham, 16 to 14), Senator Eastland had little problem with a little tell-tale interference with States' Rights, when the objective appeared to him to be in the right Cause.

And, speaking of Gus onboard the Lifeboat, Hal Boyle reports of the latest G.I. game to keep from going crazy, spending time on or flying "Floogle Street". The object of the high art was to say things which made no sense but caught the attention of those who shouldn’t have been listening to the conversation in the first instance.

He cites some interesting examples. One went this way: "Do you like cranberry sauce?" to which is responded, "I like swimming backwards better." Then, "You mean upside down?" "No, that's flying to keep the snow out of your eyes." "My girl has nice eyes." "I like cranberry sauce." And it goes on from there until all of the oysters on the platter have been eaten, both on top and bottom.

The Air Force employed a variant on the time-passing contest whereby two airmen would confront a newcomer to the outfit with a series of non-sequitur questions, each more absurd than the last, finally leaving the unsuspecting victim entranced by the onslaught and nowhere to turn but red in the squash tree down by the halo bin in the cocoanut field adjacent to the poppy machine.

On the editorial page, "Next Step" indicates that the State Hospital for the insane at Morganton, after the early 1942 expose by Tom Jimison, had made great strides, but still had a long way to go, the result of lack of adequate funding for more than superficial improvements while the war persisted. New facilities and expanded personnel, the piece indicates, would be needed when the war ended and funding for such projects would be released.

"Wild Plan" finds preposterous the position taken by Congressman Andrew May of Kentucky, favoring, in response to release of the Army-Navy report on the Japanese atrocities at Bataan and elsewhere in the Pacific, an immediate military strike on Tokyo by means of a huge naval armada sailing to the heart of Japanese waters. The Congressman had a year earlier foreseen that the war would end within weeks.

The plan, for obvious reasons, would have been suicidal and completely impracticable of implementation. The only reasonable strategy to follow was slowly to clean out the Japanese outposts before venturing toward the home islands.

"Dictator" tells of a Nebraska banker, who chaired a war bond committee, having used the tactic of coercively reporting to rationing boards and draft boards anyone who failed to purchase war bonds. The Treasury had called his hand on the practice and renounced it. The editorial supports Treasury in so doing.

"The Answer" agrees with the State Department's decision to cut off all further supply of American oil to Spain as a punitive measure for its continuing to deal favorably with Germany, sending soldiers to fight in Russia, employing spies against the Allies, harboring Italian ships, sending war materiel, and striking financial arrangements with the Nazis. All of this pattern signaled appropriate ostracism of Spain after the war.

Samuel Grafton criticizes those who were favoring an equal vote for all nations in a post-war United Nations organization. Small nations, the advocates argued, would then have an equivalent say to that of large nations. But the problem, says Mr. Grafton, was that such an arrangement would permit nations such as Argentina, a Fascist country, to have an equal say with the United States. Such a plan, he concludes, made no sense.

Drew Pearson reports that General Eisenhower had come to believe that the policy of avoiding General De Gaulle, that followed by the State Department, was a mistake. In preparation for the Allied cross-channel invasion, the General had realized that De Gaulle was the man whom the French preferred as their leader and that it would do a service to the cause of the invasion finally to embrace him.

The reason for the cold shoulder, suggests Mr. Pearson, was the same reason the State Department had chosen to deal with former Fascist sympathizers King Victor Emanuelle and Marshal Pietro Badoglio in Italy, the same reason it had chosen during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War to deal with Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a Fascist, that the personnel at State had been raised in rarefied environs and simply did not understand the desires of ordinary people.

He next turns to the problem of trying to take Rome without, in the process, destroying it and thereby falling into the German trap of lending to the enemy adverse propaganda to disseminate to the world: that the Allies destroyed the historic and holy city.

Mr. Pearson also indicates that U.S. visitors to Russia were returning with reports that the Russian people were war-weary and wished to have the war over as soon as possible.

Raymond Clapper, whose columns were now behind his actual station, accompanying the Navy to the Marshall Islands, where on Wednesday he would tragically meet his death, describes his time on New Guinea just prior to his spending three days on an LST en route to Cape Gloucester on New Britain. Before departure, he met a Red Cross worker who was establishing a canteen for men returning from Cape Gloucester. His coup had come when he was able to secure a Marine jungle knife from a lieutenant to give to his young son when he returned home.

The Reverend Herbert Spaugh offers that which sounds a little unusual as Biblical advice: live neither for yesterday nor tomorrow, but only for today. Anyway, it seems to go like this.

The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:—
"Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry.
"Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay! "
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:—
"Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there,
"And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone,
"But sinful pride has rule inside—ay, mightier than my own.
"Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his Priest and Whore;
"Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.
"Ye are neither spirit nor spirk," he said; "ye are neither book nor brute—
"Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
"But look that ye win to a worthier sin ere ye come back again.
"Get hence, the hearse is at your door—the grim black stallions wait—
"They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
"Go back to Earth with lip unsealed—go back with open eye,
"And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
"That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one,
"And . . . the God you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!"

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