Monday, February 12, 1945

The Charlotte News

Monday, February 12, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page and inside page report that Kleve, birthplace of Henry VIII's "ugly-duckling" wife, Anne of Cleves, had been captured by the Canadian First Army, marking a twelve-mile advance since the beginning of the offensive five days earlier. British and Scotch troops of the Second Army, along with the Canadians, enlarged the Kleve sector, with a 17-mile front, from both north and south of the town, with the Armies moving beyond the Siegfried Line to the north. The Allies were within four miles of the Rhine in the north and 22 miles in the south, eight miles inside Germany, where patrols reached Kessel, northwest of Goch, and Hau, 5.5 miles north of Goch.

Captured German prisoners reported that Luftwaffe air cover had been grounded by Allied bombings of the oil depots at Emmerich on the Rhine, seven miles beyond Kleve. Many of those captured were middle-aged, between 40 and 55.

German paratroops shifted from Alsace fought with determination to halt the Canadian Army thrust toward the Rhine. Captured paratroops appeared, however, dazed and beaten down by the continuous Allied artillery and air bombardment. They expressed the belief that, with the Russians moving ever closer to Berlin, reported within 31 miles, the war was over anyway, and thus had lost much of their fighting resolve.

In Holland, on the Roer River, flooding by the Nazis via the dams prevented movement of the British Second Army and the First and Ninth U.S. Armies.

One hundred and fifteen miles to the south, the Third Army had taken half of Prum as the Germans appeared abandoning the town. Troops also took a block of buildings across the Saar River. Another unit took Haspelt, a mile inside Germany, opposite the northern tip of Luxembourg. The Echternach bridgehead was widened at both ends and Bollendorf was entered.

The Seventh Army, operating in Alsace, had nearly cleared the western anchor of the Moder River line, Oberhoffen, of enemy troops.

Further south, the French First Army, in clearing the Colmar salient, had destroyed 75 percent of the German Nineteenth Army.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians, moving at a pace of 15 to 27 miles per day in Silesia, had established two new bridgeheads across the Bober River at Bunzlau, 75 miles from Dresden.

To the north, the forces had broken through German defense lines twelve miles north of Sagan, 90 miles southeast of Berlin, 30 miles from the First White Russian Army's location, across the Oder south of Furstenberg. The breakthrough at Sagan menaced Sorau eight miles to the northwest.

The First White Russian Army had moved to within 15 miles of Stettin and were also menacing the rear of Stargard, strongpoint of Stettin's eastern defense line.

Frankfurt and Kustrin, the two mainstays of the German line protecting Berlin along the Oder, were steadily being worn down by Russian artillery fire. The First White Russian Army of Field Marshal Gregory Zhukov was said likely soon to begin a major assault on Berlin, as bridgebuilders were now being brought to the front to prepare for the forcing of the Oder.

In southwestern Poland, Bielsko, 27 miles south of Katowlee, had been captured.

In Italy, Fifth Army troops, having advanced to within 2.5 miles of Massa along the west coast of Italy, had been forced to withdraw a half mile, to a point a half mile south of Strettola, under enemy pressure. Due south of Massa, African-American troops of the 92nd Division, for three days, had repulsed several enemy counter-attacks a mile north of Fiume La Foce, and then retired to its south banks under heavy fire.

Further inland, the Germans were attempting determinedly to recapture Lama Di Sotto ridge in the Serchio Valley.

On the Eighth Army front on the Adriatic side, the Germans continued to dynamite the Senio River flood banks, which would allow, come spring thaw, the river to flood adjacent lands.

In Manila, fighting to the south of the Pasig continued house by house and street by street as that portion of the city was described to be in desolation, having been set on fire by the Japanese. From three sides, the 37th Infantry, the Eleventh Airborne, and First Cavalry Divisions were pushing the enemy away from the Pasig and toward the bay front, with no means of escape. The 37th had cleared Provisor Island, within the Pasig, of enemy contingents. From Provisor, the enemy had been sending artillery fire into the American bridgeheads across the river. All guns on Delta Island at the mouth of the river also appeared to have been eliminated.

B-29's hit Iwo Jima again, for the third time in three days. Another force struck the Nakajima aircraft plant on Ota, 49 miles southwest of Tokyo in the home islands. Tokyo reported a small raid of B-29's striking Tokyo and Yokohama. Berlin reported that a raid had occurred also against Nanking in China.

In France, General De Gaulle paraded side by side with General Henri Giraud in Metz, indicating that the two had healed the former rift in their relationship, arising from competition for leadership of the Free French, the nod finally going to De Gaulle just before D-Day after he had been chosen as head of the Liberation Committee several months prior to that.

Following several weeks of negotiations, an agreement was signed between EAM leaders in Greece and Premier General Nicholas Plastiras. The terms included surrender of arms by the left-wing ELAS and the end of martial law, with some restriction on assembly and freedom of press remaining. It was unclear whether the agreement included EAM participation in the Government.

The President, having just completed the Yalta Conference during the weekend and now beginning his trip back to Washington, sent a message to Congress urging the approval of the Bretton Woods economic agreement of the prior July, which called for formation of a World Bank, with 9.1 billion dollars in initial assets of which 3.175 billion would be contributed by the United States, and an international monetary fund to lend money to countries after the war to rebuild their infrastructure and economies. The monetary fund would be established at 8.6 billion with the U.S. contributing 2.75 billion. He also favored legislation to limit trade cartels and enable the U.S. to loan money unilaterally to stimulate trade. The specific proposals are enumerated on the inside page.

From Phoenix, citizens registered protest to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, imploring investigation of an alleged escape from a German prisoner of war camp of 25 prisoners on Christmas Eve by digging, as claimed by the camp commander, a 200-foot tunnel through rock. The citizens found this explanation highly improbable given their knowledge of the terrain, and contended that the prisoners were roaming the streets at will, having instead simply walked off labor details, were stealing from the populace, even displaying openly Nazi swastikas.

So, too, however, even through decades after the war, did the New Mexico State University yearbook, albeit a backwards rotarian version, the yearbook being titled The Swastika, having been adopted years before the Nazi Party ever came to be. Thus, perhaps the "Germans" displaying the swastika were actually just college students from New Mexico State, in town on holiday. Or, perhaps in that the Nazis saw kindred spirit in the land and figured those of the neighboring state, therefore, would not mind the immigration and assimilation of ideas.

An editorial appearing in the College of William & Mary weekly publication, Flat Hat, advocating that, at some time in the future, blacks would attend the college and fraternize with its white students, even intermarry, had prompted censorship by the college as an alternative to complete suspension of publication of the newspaper.

Students protested the decision, while reserving opinion on the editorial itself, objecting, however, vehemently to the concept of press censorship. An assembly adopted a resolution officially voicing the protest and seeking to establish a college policy of free press.

The president of the college assured the students that they would receive a quick hearing from the executive board regarding their proposal.

The author of the editorial, a female student from Jackson, Michigan, did not attend the meeting. Her father asserted that he believed, when he read the editorial, that she was in some peril because of the subject matter and Southern locus of the college.

The executive board, comprised, we understand, of men wearing white robes with little encircled red crosses, and a peculiar tradition of also donning hoods for their opening ceremonies, was rumored likely to take a dim view of the students' concerns over this particular issue, while assuring that, generally, freedom of the press would be recognized and respected without question or limitation, provided that the opinion expressed did not favor such ludicrous notions as equality of rights with Negroes, or imply that such was inevitable--even on the day after tomorrow, not today or the following day, as the young woman's editorial had politely sought to cushion the blow to the Southern Honkies.

There was also rumored to be a move on by the executive board to establish an alternative campus newspaper, Pointy Head, and to rename the head position of the college "Grand Dragon", with the provost becoming "Grand Cyclops", and the campus henceforth known as the Klavern.

Also, we understand, on the board's agenda, was the issue of whether the young woman in question ought be suspended, perhaps hung.

That's your alma mater, Mr. Stewart, not ours.

On the editorial page, unfortunately, there is nothing of which we can report anew, for some confusion arising from the fact that three different days of the editorial pages were inadvertently labeled originally "February 10". The editorial page we presented Saturday is actually for this date. We wondered why the Dorman Smith was celebrating Lincoln's birthday two days early, but the page said it was Saturday, February 10. We also wondered at the absence of Dick Young, usually present on Saturdays of late.

So, bearing that in mind, you may read it again. It takes away somewhat from the putative coincidence between the mention by Marquis Childs of Captain Alfred Knopf, Jr., the son of Alfred and Blanche, and the publication date four years earlier of The Mind of the South. But, even so, it is close enough to be of interest, and is, as you can see, labeled February 10. It is not the first time The News has mislabeled the page, but it may be the first time it happened on three successive days of publication, as tomorrow's page is likewise labeled February 10.

So, here is Saturday's editorial page, replete with Dick Young, absent Abraham Lincoln.

As we grab pages from the microfilm as quickly as possible, averaging thirty seconds or less per page during that process, and as we grabbed these pages in August, 2010, it is difficult to keep things straight when the dates are this badly misstated.

We did not do this deliberately, we assure.

And because we have inextricably interwoven this day's editorial page with the front page of Saturday, we are not going to change it.

We note that an editorial appears on Saturday, Charles R. Austin, stating that an aging linotype operator for The News had passed away. Perhaps that explains the problem, that someone new was setting the type.

So, that said, since we only normally get one day off per week, and have not a day's break had from that routine since the first week of October, we are going to take half the day off this date and perhaps will add something tomorrow for Saturday, since it is already quite late as it is.

Thus, if this space is not further filled with enlarged titles by late afternoon Tuesday, following of course the tradition of nineteenth century London afternoon newspapers, as we have most of the time during this project followed, you may assume that this abbreviated note is the only note you are going to get on this part of the page, that is for Saturday.

In that event, good night and good luck.

But, if you've a mind to have a go, it is to be found now below Her Majesty.

Happy Birthday, Abe—the middle name, incidentally, of both Alfred A. Knopf and Alfred, Jr. So, there you are. Mr. Knopf, fils, passed away at age 90, three years ago on Valentine's Day, which it is now in 2012. So there you are again.

Below, we present, for your perusal, consideration, and edification, the "ugly-duckling" wife of Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves, in portraiture by Hans Holbein, the Younger. "Ugly Anne", as the subjects sometimes apparently referred to her as she passed, distinguishing her from the beautiful and delectable Anne Boleyn, especially as portrayed in the movies, was the fourth of Henry's six wives, coming on the heels of Jane Seymour. Ugly Anne, unlike Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, who lost her head, died of natural causes at age 41.

Well, you would, too, if everyone snarled at you as the "ugly-duckling" wife of the King.

She died seventeen years following divorce from Shallow Hal, to make way for Catherine Howard, Number V, who died while imprisoned in the Tower of London.

In any event, you may determine your own opinion, as beauty is strictly, as they say, in the eye of the person not in the picture. It may have been a bad Hair Day.

We decided to go ahead and provide the usual summary of the editorial page from Saturday, after all, despite the discovery in the wee hours of this morning of the problem already explained, and therefore finding us in no mood then to continue, having spent an hour figuring out the confusion, and finding the file which actually belonged to Saturday, displaced in an old set of files collected also in August, 2010, but of inferior quality, hence the dim print in part; then, when we went back to obtain the better grade of eggs, somehow managing to skip over the Saturday file, confused by the identical dates, thus winding up with only the inferior in this instance.

In any event, here it is:

"Second Verse", (same as the first), first referring to the letter from Johnston County Democrats published the prior week, condemning fellow Democrat, Senator Josiah W. Bailey, of betraying his constituents in his apparent effort to derail the nomination of Henry Wallace, then relates that the State Federation of Labor, in its journal, The Federationist, had called upon the Senator to resign. The latter editorial had reminded that Senator Bailey, himself, had, in 1928, called upon Senator Furnifold Simmons to set aside his mantle for having led a bolt from the Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith, based on Governor Smith's Catholicism.

The piece suggests that Senator Bailey would likely not treat with the proposal of the Federationist, but it might at least, together with the letter from Johnston County Democrats, give him second verse as to whether North Carolina Democrats would actually have preferred Henry Wallace to have been confirmed with the lending powers of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, rather than having those powers divested from the purview of the Secretary of Commerce.

Vice-President Wallace, incidentally, was married but one time, not seven, nor to widows next door.

"One-Dollar Logic" again addresses the subject of Cecil B. DeMille having refused to pay a dollar to support the American Federation of Radio Artists, of which he was a member, in its efforts to defeat the California referendum, appearing on the ballot in November, seeking to outlaw the closed shop in union contracts with employers.

Mr. DeMille had gone to state court in California to protest the Union having then refused to allow him any further to conduct his radio show for which he received $100,000 per annum, though not at all a major portion of his income. He lost his court battle in the first round of proceedings, his complaint having been dismissed for failure to state a cause of action upon which relief could be granted, the Court ruling that the union had the right to levy the assessment.

The editorial supported the position taken by Mr. DeMille based on his protest of whether a man had a right to work, regardless of union closed-shop agreements. Because of the dim print, we are uncertain whether the "Mr. Arnold", to which the editorial refers, was former Assistant Attorney General and, by this time, D.C. Court of Appeals Judge, Thurman Arnold. In any event, the counter-argument of "Mr. Arnold", in the opinion of the editorial, that Mr. DeMille exhibited "hollow logic" and that refusing to abide union rules was cause to force him from union membership, was, itself, hollow logic. For at base was not the right of the union to levy an assessment on members but rather whether it could bar a man from employment for failing to abide union rules in protest of them. The piece views the union as having overstepped the bounds of reasonable power.

The case eventually made its way, almost three years later, to decision by the California Supreme Court, reported at 31 Cal.2d 139, which affirmed the lower court decision to dismiss the complaint. It reasoned, likewise, that the union, by its constitution, by-laws, and contract, could levy assessments.

That question resolved, it moved to the issue of whether Mr. DeMille's right to free speech was infringed by the action, based on the union allegedly not allowing him freely to voice his support for the right-to-work law and against the amendment to ban the closed shop.

But the Court found that there was no infringement because the union in no way conditioned the payment of a dollar for the opposition to the amendment on individual expression of opinion in favor of that position or against the amendment. Thus, reasoned the Court, Mr. DeMille was not coerced or limited in his individual expression on the issue.

Mr. DeMille felt strongly about the right-to-work issue after the experience and produced a short film on the subject in the 1950's.

The problem, of course, in practical experience, is that without the closed shop, the employer can selectively employ those who would indicate a desire not to join the union, thus inevitably driving the union from the company, enabling the employer to pay dirt wages and provide sub-standard conditions of employment generally.

Enter the NLRB, to resolve labor disputes and effect a balance between the right of collective bargaining by employees, as established by Federal statute, and the employer.

Enter the McLellan Rackets Committee, extant from 1957 to 1960, to clean up the unions, focusing eventually on the "loan" business out of the union pension fund of the Teamsters, as arranged with crime bosses by Jimmy Hoffa.

"A Liberation" applauds the action of the Legislature in proposing a bill which would allow local municipalities to collect at their discretion, without voter approval, up to five cents per hundred dollars in support of free public libraries.

It finds the bill especially salutary to prevent the sort of result occurring in Charlotte in 1939 when the library had to be closed for a year because the public turned down a half-cent tax for its support.

"Who's Guilty?" examines the case of Private Henry Weber, sentenced to die for refusing to bear arms in the Army, having been denied his request for alternative non-combat service, as briefly described in a photograph and caption of the prior week. He had been refused classification as a conscientious objector. So, he essentially had chosen the role of mutineer, leading to his court martial and sentence.

Under public pressure and reconsideration, the military tribunal had, however, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

The editorial wonders how the sentence appeared to readers in light of the sentences being handed out in France for AWOL soldiers, estimated to number between 8,000 and 18,000, and those convicted of black-marketeering, usually of cigarettes and other Government property, to make a killing in the civilian French market. The sentences in those cases ranged from a few years to life, and, in some of the black-marketeering cases, death.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has a member of Congress, (whose name is unfortunately hidden in the darkened print), explaining to his colleagues the dislike of veterans for the veteran's button available to all returning servicemen. He reported the experience of one veteran who encountered factory workers who made mock of his button for the fact that he appeared fit enough to be in the Army. They had said such things as, "How'd he get that thing, for regular attendance at a race track?" and "It's one of those production [indiscernible word] they give you for raising chickens." The veteran placed his button in his pocket and had not worn it since.

The member then urged that, since only 14,000 of the hundreds of thousands of returning veterans had requested the buttons, the commemorative sigil be made larger and more distinctive, in accordance with the wishes of the bulk of the veterans eligible to receive them.

Drew Pearson indicates that it had been a year since he had first revealed the problems with the Army not utilizing the quick-release parachute, causing in some cases death from slow release from the harness at landing in the complicated three-release system used by the Army. Although, orders had finally been issued to stock the Army with the single-release system, fulfillment of those orders had been slow, with the result that most troops in non-combat zones were still stuck with the three-release system, posing hazard of death in training exercises, as had befallen the soldiers at Camp Mackall when they were dragged in a river current by the still attached parachutes and drowned.

He reports that in a desert near Cairo recently, six men had died because of the slow release harness, being caught in a Sahara sandstorm packing 50 mph winds, dragging them as much as five miles. One of them who survived reported that he felt as though he were floating and could not see how far off the ground he was, eventually landing in a tree.

Mr. Pearson next informs that the Veterans' Administration was purchasing cheap artificial limbs, compared to those being purchased by the Army to be issued through the Medical Corps to veterans continuing in the service. The V.A. limbs were insubstantial, made of fiber, rather than willow or aluminum, and often broke, creating hardship for the veterans, especially in situations where they had walked a distance from a place of refuge. Even the initial Army-issued legs, however, were causing the same problems: these were temporary limbs, made of fiber, until the wounds of the men were sufficiently healed, and were prone to breakage.

Samuel Grafton discusses the desire of members of the American Bankers Association to kill the Bretton Woods proposal, made by 44 signatory nations in July, for a World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The ABA most objected to the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Grafton points out that the agreement had all the ingredients which the conservative interests were seeking, inclusion of the smaller countries in its embrace, a statement of principles, open diplomacy, and formal procedure. He imagines the fireworks stimulated in the United States should Russia or Britain derail a 44-nation pact, that it would be denounced as power politics. No less was true when the tables were turned.

The American public, he suggests, had to decide whether it wished to spend a few billion dollars to maintain stable trade in the world and help thereby to avoid the conditions which led to the stimuli economically for the coming to power of the Nazi Party and thus World War II. America, he urges, had been getting an international reputation for talking about "international principles" but, when getting down to cases, appeared to desire to cut and run from any action positively to implement those principles.

Marquis Childs, still in London, discusses the coldest winter in decades in England being complicated for lack of adequate coal, necessitating 60-degree temperatures being maintained in hotels and the like. Coal production had declined, he reports, steadily during the war, to the present level of 200 million tons. Coal would be important, as well, in the post-war economy and fiscal condition of Britain. It had been an important export to the Continent prior to the war, the market having been extinguished in 1940 by the fall of France and Belgium in the spring. At that point, thousands of Britons were taken from the mines and placed in military service.

But when the need arose for resumption of full-scale coal production, the Army did not want to release the trained soldiers back into civilian life and so a draft had to be implemented to obtain labor for the mines. The men were assigned by lottery, causing men educated at Eton to wind up digging coal, not their chosen profession, nor one in which they excelled.

Severe penalties were imposed on those trying to evade conscription for the mines, where there was little or no mechanization as in American mines, requiring the men to walk two to three miles per day just to get to where they would wield the pick by the sweat of their brows.

The reason for this lack of mechanization had come from the fear of mine owners that, if the mines were mechanized, there would be nationalization as desired by the unions, and thus private ownership lost.

A study of the mines had recommended that the colliery owners reckon with the fact that the industry constituted a public service, thus suggesting establishment of a board, the composition of which would include life-long miners, to govern the mines. But the unions appeared opposed to such a plan. So, the debate continued at a time when Britain could least afford such a luxury, stuck between desires on the one hand of the union for socialism and, on the other, of the mine owners for maintenance of private ownership.

Dorothy Thompson suggests that the first step to be accomplished by the Big Three at the conference in Yalta, this date of February 10 actually wrapping up proceedings, was to eliminate contradictions with respect to planning for occupation of Germany. A plan needed to be produced which did not involve an emotional reaction based on the war.

There were mutually exclusive goals from which choices had to be struck: de-industrialization and war reparations were incompatible; Germany, once de-industrialized, could not be used to rebuild Europe; truncating the size of Germany by redistribution of territory in East Prussia and cession of lands to Poland, with commensurate relocation of German populations in those territories, would also result in famine in the case of de-industrialization; all Germans could not be held equally liable for the war and also the Nazis punished specially or the Junker military caste system of East Prussia eliminated.

Under a proposed plan, Germany would be stripped of its most vital industries, brought under United Nations control, and then asked to produce for the benefit of the war victims.

Ms. Thompson opines that both ends could not be achieved: Germany could not both be punished in whole and expected then to lay the golden egg. And, even if the latter would be the option chosen, there still remained the argument over which nation would obtain the spoils and to what degree. Moreover, most of the nations of the world were not in need of free labor or industrial products, as they were most concerned about employing their own laborers and finding markets for their own goods after the war.

Dick Young, among other things, reports that he and Captain Littlejohn of the Charlotte Police Department were chatting with Police Chief Walter Anderson, when the latter suddenly reached into his desk drawer and produced two packages of cigarettes from Winston-Salem, the specific brand not being mentioned. They came as a welcome relief, says Mr. Young, for three days of shortage.

Whether he was seeing Mrs. Murphy in the trees by the end of those days three, he does not report.

Anyway, poor Ms. Parr.

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