The Charlotte News
Monday, February 26, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the German defenses on the Rhine were rapidly deteriorating as the First Army drove to within 12 miles of Cologne. The Canadian First Army, opening a new offensive to the north, gained 3.5 miles through mud to reach the defense line before Hochwald. The line was the third defense line between the Rhine and Meuse and, if breached, would open the way to the Ruhr Valley.
Between these two Allied forces, the Ninth Army, including the 30th Division, drove to Erkelenz, with advance elements approaching Kaulhausen, within six miles of Muenchen Gladbach, capturing the villages of Wockerath, Bellinghove, Goltkrath, and Matzerath along the way, moving ten miles from the starting point of the drive at Linnich. The drive placed the Army within 19 miles of Duesseldorf. East of Juelich, the Ninth Army reached Titz. American casualties remained low. The Germans were said to be rushing reinforcements toward Cologne.
Both the First and Ninth Armies were within three miles of the Erft River, last natural water barrier before Cologne as the front broadened to 40 miles.
To the south, the Third Army had advanced seven miles to outflank Trier.
In the largest attack yet of the war on Berlin, 1,200 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 700 fighters, dropped 3,000 tons of bombs on the capital during the noon hour, hitting Schlesischer, Alexanderplatz, and the Berlin North railway stations. The raid, forming a train 150 miles long, was accomplished in three waves, 15 minutes apart, between 11:54 a.m. and 12:24. It was the first time that Allied bombers had attacked in a straight-line formation across Germany in daylight. It was the 37th major attack on Berlin, the 16th by the Eighth Air Force.
The RAF raided a synthetic oil plant at Dortmund during the early afternoon. RAF Mosquitos had attacked the capital the previous night, along with Erfurt and Western Front targets.
The Allies had flown 5,000 sorties on Sunday, not counting those of the Fifteenth Air Force which flew raids in Austria and Southern Germany, in support of the drive by the Russians.
Forty-six Luftwaffe planes were shot down in the action, 27 by the Americans and 19 by the British. Another 35 were destroyed on the ground. Four Allied medium and light bombers and 28 fighters were missing from the raids.
The Ninth Air Force disclosed having wrecked a plant at Solingen devoted to making power units for a new twin jet-engine German plane, the Arado 234.
On the Eastern Front, the Russians were conducting scouting operations as the First Ukrainian and First White Russian Armies were camped on the east side of the Oder and along the Spree, set to begin the final offensive against Berlin. It was believed by observers that the Allied raids on Berlin were prelude to the beginning of this last offensive.
The Russians were presently fighting for Breslau and, to the north, encountering strong enemy resistance in the areas of Koenigsberg and Danzig.
The Second White Russian Army of Marshal Constantin Rokossovsky had reached the area of Hammerstein in East Prussia, 51 miles from the Baltic, threatening to slice in two a 225-mile long German coastal corridor between Stettin and Elbing. The Army had gained ten miles since taking Brakenfeld the previous night. The Army also had captured Preussich-Friedland.
In Italy, the 10th Mountain Division of the Fifth Army, which had trained in the Rockies, consolidated gains in the area of captured Mount Belvedere, west of the Bologna-Pistola Highway, taking new high ground northeast and northwest of adjacent Mount Torraccia. Prisoners reported that German lines had suffered huge losses since January 12 from heavy Allied artillery barrages.
On Iwo Jima, the capture of Motoyama No. 2, the northern airfield, was imminent, as three Marine divisions drove north under heavy air and artillery support, capturing the east-west runway late on Sunday and enveloping two-thirds of the north-south runway, following a full day of heavy fighting. The Marines now held approximately half of the four square miles of the island.
An editor's note points out that Iwo was about half the geographic size at the time of the City of Charlotte.
The count of enemy dead on Iwo had reached 2,827 as of noon Sunday, 28 more than the previous day's announced count.
The Japanese were said to be starving of thirst and during the night were raiding American positions to obtain drinking water. Only a few warm-water sulfur springs provided water on Iwo. The previous supply of fresh water had come from rain captured in cisterns, but the cisterns apparently had been destroyed by American Navy guns. Many of the enemy dead had either empty canteens or no canteens at all.
Thousands of gallons of water had to be shipped from ship to shore to satiate the Marines as well. Bottles of water were being delivered in 55-gallon drums and, while bitter from chemicals, it was wet and potable.
Another carrier-based raid, supplemented by 200 B-29's from Saipan or Tinian, the largest B-29 force yet assembled, struck Honshu on Sunday, hitting Tokyo and Kobe. Tokyo radio stated that the raid consisted of 1,600 carrier planes and 165 B-29's, but later reduced the estimate of carrier planes to 600. All of the Superfortresses returned to base unharmed after dropping incendiary bombs through snowfall for two hours.
In
General MacArthur announced Saturday that the Intramuros sector, previously the last major point of hold-out within the city, had been overwhelmed by the 37th Infantry and First Cavalry Divisions, breaking through the walled fortress and taking it.
Most of the fighting now was east of Manila, along the Takahashi Line.
On Corregidor, underground explosions were still being set off by Japanese marines committing mass suicide, preferable to surrender.
Representative Allen of Louisiana demonstrated for the House a Gestapo whip captured near Metz, made from the twisted tendons of a steer's leg, capable of beating a man to death. Mr. Allen stated that he did so to demonstrate the type of enemy which the Allies faced.
The UMW of John L. Lewis served the mandatory 30-day notice of intention to strike if the coal miners could not reach an agreement for higher wages with the bituminous coal mine owners by the March 31 expiration date of the present contract.
On the editorial page, "Judge Coroner" remarks that a 1941 study of Mecklenburg County crime and punishment had found that 10 of 40 homicide cases had never progressed beyond the coroner's jury, the killers released on the grounds of self-defense, justifiable homicide, or the like.
The editorial states the continuing policy of The News in disagreement with the practice of having coroner's juries determine whether a person accused of homicide would ultimately be charged and brought to trial for murder or manslaughter. The coroner was trained in medicine, not law. They were qualified to determine cause of death, but nothing more.
If the death was determined to be anything but by natural causes, the coroner was empowered to empanel a jury of six men to determine whether a charge of murder or manslaughter ought be brought or whether the homicide was justifiable. The solicitor could prosecute the case even if the accused were released, but, at least in Mecklenburg, as a practical matter, once a determination of justification was made, the solicitor went no further.
"In the Money" tells of the Post Office, after long decades in deficit, now rolling in profits from the wartime mail boom coupled with a rate increase. In 1944, it had registered a 38 million dollar profit, was estimated to pull 117 million in 1945, and 265 million in 1946.
In the meantime, rural postal routes were being combined and abolished, making it difficult for some remote areas to obtain their mail when automobile transportation was severely limited by gas and tire restrictions.
Thus, Congressman Plumley of Vermont wanted the Post Office investigated to determine why, in time of such profits, it was reducing service, especially at a time when men overseas, many of whom were from rural America, needed to be able to communicate with home.
"Opening Gun" tells of a Mecklenburg Assemblyman who was publicly predicting that Joe Blythe might become Governor of the State in 1952.
It was in contrast to the Assemblyman's lack of a public stand on the controversial proposed fireworks ban.
The editorial thus concludes, "Boom. Boom."
And, his candidate was shot right down, never became Governor.
Call him,
"Tomorrow's Here" reports that Pan American Airways had announced the purchase of fifteen Vultee Aircraft passenger planes, each capable of carrying 204 persons. The planes were to be used in travel across both oceans, Atlantic and Pacific.
The behemoths, it relates, would be twelve times the size of current twin-engined commercial planes, with a wingspan equal to the height of a 21-story building, twice that of a Liberator, would carry six engines, producing the power of 353 automobiles, would cruise at 342 miles per hour, would fly at 30,000 feet and have a range of 4,200 miles. From New York to London would take only nine hours. The planes were luxurious, double-decked, with nine double state-rooms.
They would be ready for production as soon as the war ended.
"Have you an itching foot?" asks the piece.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Representative Sam Dickstein of New York commenting on discrimination against Jewish students by the American Dental Association. He advocated that a student's racial or religious affiliation be maintained secret when applying, just as it was in Federal Civil Service examinations for government jobs.
The secretary of the American Dental Association had suggested that there be a government subsidy based on the racial origin of the candidates for admission to dental schools. The Congressman asserted that such a move would imperil freedom in the country and divide it by race and religion, that which Hitler wished for the United States.
Discrimination, he allowed, was of longstanding practice in colleges and professional schools, but passing anti-discrimination laws was not the way, he insisted, to remedy invidiously discriminatory practices. Rather, being ashamed of the fact was the better way. He wanted to remedy discrimination in medical school admissions, for instance, by having a national academy of medicine, similar to West Point and Annapolis.
Mr. Dickstein was fond, apparently, of trying to sound liberal while practicing, pretty much, the same old song.
In any event, we understand that he was even more exercised concerning the newest dental filling material to hit the market, Bondocane. It was the result of experiments conducted for several years, first with surfboard builders and then auto body repairmen, came as a plain grey paste which, upon the injection of a red activator as a catalytic agent to produce hardening, solidified into a substance capable of withstanding even sledgehammers. As with most such miraculous advances in the fields of science and medicine, the basic generic substance had acquired a trade name, Red Irish Setter, a cheaper variant of which was rumored ready to hit the dental market with a bang: Timahoe. Its questionable advertising slogan: "It will knock your teeth out." That had won favor with the company board over the runner-up: "Dentist of the dog that bit you." In third place: "Yo soy mi amigo; to alloy your toy ego." The fourth place contender had to do with incisiveness of incisors, but had not yet formed completely because the red activator had run out. The cops were now looking for him.
Burke Davis, Associate Editor, offers a by-lined piece on Henry Wallace, the immediately past Vice-President, former Secretary of Agriculture for nearly eight years, and now up for nomination as Secretary of Commerce, with his confirmation having been held up in the Senate by a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats unsettled by his progressivism, such that they first wanted a bill passed which would divorce the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and its lending powers from the direction of the Commerce Department, as it had been under former Secretary Jesse Jones.
The piece focuses on Mr. Wallace's 1934 book, Statesmanship and Religion, in which he had set forth his beliefs that religion had to hearken back to the wisdom of the Old Testament prophets in seeing to it that all citizens of the world were provided an equal share in the wealth of nations, that the Calvinistic philosophy of self-determined individualism had led to a dog-eat-dog mentality in the world which often made no room for either charity or the concepts of social and economic justice for all.
Mr. Wallace was a religious man in the truest sense of the word, not emotionally basing his belief system but rather premising it on reasoned practicality vis à vis the problems of the world.
His tract, says Mr. Davis, had predicted the New Deal philosophy as well as the Atlantic Charter philosophy. He negated the concept of the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor, and on a world-wide scale. Yet, he did not discount the importance of production and industry, but believed that they had to be controlled to prevent inevitable human greed.
He had observed that John Wesley had also discerned the contradiction by commenting that whenever riches have increased in societies, religiosity, by equal proportions, appeared to decrease. Thus, it was not possible for true religion to continue long, for as increased productivity, encouraged by Calvinism, was realized, religiosity inexorably would begin to wane in a society made more or less self-sufficient, no longer finding it necessary therefore to look to a deity for sustained daily provender, more the regimen of the agrarian-based society dependent on the elements for sustenance.
Mr. Davis finds Mr. Wallace unquestionably a good and decent man, but, nevertheless, was being debated in the Congress for his fitness to be a member of the fourth term Cabinet.
The Holy Rollers who so often wear their religion upon their sleeves in politics today ought carefully read Mr. Davis's piece on Mr. Wallace and take some heed of it.
The country, by and large, has, alas, become wise to the Pharisees among us.
Drew Pearson discusses the directive issued by FDR at the behest of the Army and Navy to the State Department to acquire, without fail, certain strategic military bases in Latin America for use after the war. Brazil had already assured the United States a base on the coast opposite Dakar and West Africa, fitting with the commitment made by Churchill to Roosevelt at Casablanca two years earlier to provide use of Dakar to the United States for a base.
Ecuador had also agreed to provide the United States a base in the Galapagos Islands, just off the Panama Canal. But the present Ecuadorian Government had become uneasy about the matter, especially for it having been negotiated for fifteen million dollars to provide Ecuador new roads.
Latin America generally was displeased with the level of coercion ongoing by the State Department to achieve these bases.
Among Mr. Pearson's "Capital Chaff" items of the day is the story told on OPA by its own deputy administrator, James G. Rogers. He had indicated: "Somehow or other, the OPA got out a regulation in which we included a price for live chickens without feathers."
Marquis Childs, at Ninth Army Headquarters in Holland, describes the gargantuan force at the front, not the imagined structured lines that most envisaged before seeing it in operation, but rather a seemingly disorganized, ubiquitous conglomerate of trucks and tanks and transport vehicles moving back and forth to the front, bringing wounded and battered vehicles and tanks to the rear, transporting fresh troops and reconditioned vehicles to the front, in unremitting procession.
On the other side of the lines, there were no vehicles moving because the Allied air forces kept the Germans off the roads except at night, striking with continual tactical bombing whenever weather at all permitted.
The task of driving the trucks and jeeps wore on the nerves of those assigned to the motor pool. A private who drove Mr. Childs around in a jeep was typical: eighteen months, seven days a week, he spent driving the jeep. He was "damned sick" of it, would rather be down in the mud clearing the roads, even if being a driver was relatively safe these days, with virtually no enemy strafing attacks any longer to be seen.
The vast amount of gas needed for these operations was being supplied by two pipelines, one for vehicles and one for airplanes.
"...[B]eing an infinitely small part of it for a moment, you feel like a bit of flotsam tossed on a flood that moves with a blind rush, without purpose or reason."
Incidentally, Warren Commission Exhibit Number 425, a letter to Ruth Hyde Paine's mother, dated October 14, 1963, beginning anent the desire for finding Lee Oswald employment, that which he obtained a few days subsequent at 411 Elm Street, says, at page 3, the following:
Yes, I've heard from Dad, who says he is to go on a 2 week trip to Britain to give his final report on the crop insurance business he was doing the past year x.
Yes, I've given up the idea of a trailer. It just doesn't make sense for me to put money that direction. If you come, it will have to be to the S E bedroom. I feel I need "mad-money". In this case I mean money to move east on if I decide to give up all hope for the marriage. I am presently very discouraged. I came back so hopeful + feel so dashed. Michael doesn't seem to want to include me in his future. For whatever reason, he hasn't taken us to see the land he bought. Last nite [sic] by phone I got directions from him and I went to day to see it without him. It's nice, wooded, and cosy [sic]. It does need everything – cleaning up, water, light, sewage, building – and Michael seems so slow to achieve his own aims. He seems to think he can do it all himself and really he has not the energy or the time. He has the money, but seems unwilling to delegate the work.
"By the Lord, this Love is as madd
It is all ineluctably recondite and chocked full of impenetrably cryptic arcana.
Framed Edition
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