Friday, June 15, 1945

The Charlotte News

Friday, June 15, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 96th Infantry Division of the Tenth Army sought a final knockout punch of the roped Japanese along the cave line on the Yaeju-Dake escarpment, capturing Yaeju Peak, nicknamed "Big Apple", the highest promontory on the line, overlooking the enemy defensive plateau. The Seventh Division was still in the process of moving from the left flank to complete the process of sweeping the enemy from the plateau onto the slopes leading to the sea.

Marine Corsairs numbering 647, flying at low altitude, 50 to 100 feet, dropped 19,220 gallons of napalm on a ravine believed to be the headquarters of the Japanese and sent 465 rockets into caves where the top officers were thought to be quartered. The flames covered two acres of ground and was the largest incendiary raid of the Okinawa campaign, begun April 1.

Scores of the enemy committed suicide, others were shot by their own men as they sought to surrender, and some 700, mostly laborers, gave up to the Americans. Most of the remaining 10,000 enemy personnel were believed to be naval construction or anti-aircraft laborers.

A force of 520 B-29's struck Osaka and neighboring Amagasaki in Japan, dropping 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs through dense clouds, meeting little opposition, likely grounded for the poor weather.

The Chinese, having pursued the Japanese 175 miles from Foochow along the East China coast, had attacked Wenchow on the Wu River in Chekiang Province, 220 miles south of Shanghai. The Chinese also recaptured Ishan in Kwangsi Province, 43 miles west of Liuchow, site of a former U. S. airbase, following the Chinese having been driven from the key rail junction on June 11 after holding it for a day.

On Borneo, the Japanese abandoned Brunei City without a fight, virtually completing all major objectives of the Australian troops in northwest Borneo. Some Japanese remained dug-in on Labuan Island at the northwest entrance to Brunei Bay and commandos were less than a half mile from Timbalai airfield. Engineers, meanwhile, readied Labuan airfield for use in attacks against Singapore and Batavia, 500 miles away.

The Navy disclosed that on February 21, during the initial phases of the Iwo Jima campaign, begun February 19, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Saratoga had been severely damaged by seven direct hits, five of them from individual kamikaze raids. The Americans suffered 315 casualties, including 123 killed or missing. The Saratoga was the oldest surviving carrier of the fleet and, despite the heavy damage, had sailed into port in Puget Sound, Washington, on its own, and had now been returned to service. It had received the most varied type of damage of any ship since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Saratoga was eventually consigned in July, 1946 to being a guinea pig for the atomic bomb detonations in the vicinity of Bikini Atoll. The sturdy ship survived a blast on July 1 but foundered after a second blast on July 25.

In London, Labor Party leader Clement Atlee let slip that the Big Three meeting in July would take place in Berlin. The White House had no comment. Technically, the information was correct, though Potsdam is actually a suburb of Berlin.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson and General Eisenhower both issued statements indicating that they were in favor of a peacetime draft. General Eisenhower held a press conference in London and stated that it had been the combination and coordination of air, sea, and land power which had enabled the Normandy invasion to succeed. Many of the commanders had not believed such a huge amphibious operation possible.

The turning point in the European war, he said, came during December in the first few days of the Ardennes offensive when Von Rundstedt realized that he could not send his men at will through Allied positions. When they were subsequently beaten at the Eifel Mountains and in the industrialized Saar, the Germans realized that the war was lost, that they could not even effectively wage a defensive campaign.

A train wreck near Williamsport, Pa., killed at least 17 persons and injured another 32. A freight car of one train jumped the track and fell in front of an onrushing passenger train, causing six cars of the latter to derail at Milten.

The last of the still at large Nazi leaders, former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was captured while sleeping in the nude at a boarding house in Hamburg, to which he had fled April 30 from Berlin, presumably in clothes. He had registered under an assumed name, "Riese", and had been refused any help by acquaintances in the city from his days as a champagne seller 25 years earlier.

The chief architect of the Munich Pact was taken under guard in an RAF transport from the Lueneburg airfield at 12:30 p.m. to Supreme Allied Headquarters to be interrogated.

Von Ribbentrop would be convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg, including taking an active role in planning the war with Hitler and in encouraging the placement of Jews in concentration camps. He would be executed by hanging on October 16, 1946. His last words were, "I wish peace to the world."

On the editorial page, "Curious Deal" suggests a taint of political bribery involved in the $200,000 loan in 1939 to Elliott Roosevelt by the head of A & P, John Hartford, and forgiveness of the debt for $4,000 in 1942. The loan had been secured by some dubious stocks and was for an investment in a money-losing business venture. Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones had convinced Mr. Hartford to work out the forgiveness.

A & P had been the target of some trust-busting activity of the Justice Department during the time. The editorial does not indicate, however, that any lenience was shown by the fact of this loan and forgiveness. But, it does find that the appearance of some funny business was certainly left in its wake, even if Mr. Hartford was able to write off the balance of the loan from his taxes and thereby save himself a bundle.

"Too Much Cash" finds the 26.5 billion dollars in circulation to be equivalent to $191 per person in the country. At the peak of the 1929 boom, capital in circulation was only a bit under five billion or $38 per person. In 1941, it had been $72, in 1943, $128, and in 1944, $163.

The experts were predicting that this excess spending money would be ruinous, would lead to runaway inflation after the war, that it was bubble money from the high war wages and changes in monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.

It was like being back in the bootleg days of the Roaring 20's, and unless things changed, the result would be just as bad as that at the Crash of October, 1929.

"There Is Light" observes the presence of lightning bugs or fireflies—for those in the Far West who haven't the foggiest of what they are, little bugs whose lower abdomens literally light up in the heat of summer evenings as they noiselessly ply the air. They are the only creatures which can generate light without heat, "insensible heat" as it was termed. They achieve it by oxidizing a substance in their cells.

One had wandered into the hall while the Charlotte Symphony was playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, departed when the orchestra got to Mendelssohn.

While it was said that they emitted the light by instinct, the piece begs to differ, suggesting that it was purely an effort in vanity to mock man for being inferior in his ability to produce such natural light from his abdomen. When man could achieve it, they would likely disappear and a precious source of marvel for the young would be lost, as well as a moral force in the lives of the elders who had never understood Photinus and Photuris.

"No Ready Answer" finds Italy still floundering nearly two years after liberation from Fascism in southern Italy. First, there had been the wholly unsatisfactory Badoglio Government with its Fascist taint. Then, it had been replaced by the Bonomi Government, Bonomi having been Mussolini's Minister of War. Now, Bonomi had resigned and the six political parties could not yet agree on a replacement, were still under the thumb of the notorious House of Savoy.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Walter Brehm of Ohio asking Representative Joseph Baldwin of New York whether, regardless of the passage of Bretton Woods, the likelihood did not exist that much of Europe would become Communist, as he found the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland already under Communist influence and likely finally to succumb.

Mr. Baldwin stated that he had been informed by reliable sources, such as one of the most distinguished bishops in the Church of England, following his return from a recent trip to Poland, that Eastern Europe would not become Communist, that it was absolute nonsense to suggest that it would.

Mr. Brehm stated that he trusted the word of his colleague.

Unfortunately, as time went on and anti-Russian fervor again kindled itself into the fuel for political fires to light under the half-witted of the country who constantly needed, as they still do, a bogey du jour on which to hang their frustrations, the pols who found necessitous such kindling to fire their political hustings, otherwise devoid of emotional substance to appeal to the half-wits, located their witch and lit it with dedicated assiduity.

Voila! The Cold War and the miracles which followed to conquer it.

Drew Pearson comments on the arrest of two Far East experts in the State Department and a Navy officer for allegedly passing out secret documents to journalists. The primary factor behind it had been the warring factions in China, Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist Government versus the Communists under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung in the north. Each of the three accused believed that the United States should be backing the Communists in China, that Chiang was an impotent puppet of his southern war lords. The same view had been held by General Joseph Stilwell, ousted from China the previous summer for his inability to get along any longer with Chiang.

Secretary of the American Embassy, John R. Davies, likewise held the view and was also ousted, at the request of Ambassador Patrick Hurley. John Service, another Embassy secretary, believed the same thing, had been ousted by Hurley, and was now one of those arrested.

General Al Wedemeyer had taken over command of American forces in China following General Stilwell's departure. Initially, he got along well with Ambassador Hurley, but tensions erupted when Wedmeyer one day in the fall received a harsh rebuke from General Marshall for allowing his military staff to upset Chinese relations between north and south.

It seems O.S.S. head William Donovan had been planning to visit China, wanting to talk to the northern Chinese because he, too, believed they were superior fighters to the southern Chinese troops of Chiang. General Robert McClure, Wedemeyer's chief of staff, had agreed to send two officers to northern China to examine operations. Foreign Minister T. V. Soong, now Premier, had objected to Hurley that the visit was complicating relations between north and south. Thus, Hurley sent a telegram to that effect to President Roosevelt and the rebuke to General Wedemeyer from General Marshall had followed.

General Wedemeyer straightened out the matter and informed General Marshall that Ambassador Hurley had known in advance of the trip by the two officers to northern China.

Not long thereafter, General McLure encountered Ambassador Hurley at a cocktail party and chided him for the protest to the President, to which remark Ambassador Hurley, a former Oklahoma cowpuncher, took offense, said that he had shot a man for less, and reared back to throw a punch, before friends intervened. The Chinese had witnessed the incident, however, and American prestige had suffered as a result.

Parenthetically, it was not the first time that the pugnacious Patrick Hurley had nearly become involved in a fight.

Not long afterward, Mr. Service and Mr. Davies were sent home by Ambassador Hurley.

The upshot of the whole imbroglio was that the Russians were now expected officially to recognize the Chinese Communists in the north as the rift between north and south had become an ever-widening gulf—of Tonkin.

Marquis Childs tells of the many Senators touring Europe, so many that it was difficult to achieve a quorum in the Senate in Washington. On a recent trip to Rome, Senator Albert Hawkes of New Jersey had put the uncomfortable question to an assemblage of G.I.'s at a Red Cross club, an appropriate venue, as to how many would like to continue the fight against the Soviet Union. Another Senator present quickly changed the uncomfortable subject.

Mr. Childs, having been to Italy himself during February, states that the G.I.'s longed only for home and so the importuning by the Senator, inviting further war, would have been to little avail.

Yet, the mere asking of the question by a United States Senator had damaged foreign policy, because the eyes and ears of the Kremlin were everywhere and reported these incidents back to Moscow. Such talk at the San Francisco Conference had been relayed to the Kremlin.

Mr. Childs asks Americans to look in the mirror and wonder how they might feel were it reported that a member of the Soviet Politburo had inquired of Russian troops whether they were ready to fight the Americans.

With the U. N. treaty to be formed shortly at San Francisco, the Bretton Woods proposal, and the extension of reciprocal trade agreements all soon to come before the Senate, it was a time for leadership, such as that being offered by Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, who remained steadfastly at their tasks on the floor.

About 18 Senators had been on the junket to Europe and soon would return home. The effort would be to keep them there, to do their jobs.

Samuel Grafton comments on the considerably improved relations of late with Russia, the most visible manifestation of which having been their assent to except from the unilateral veto rule on the Security Council mere discussion of issues raised by member nations of the U. N. General Assembly, the compromise having been facilitated by the talks between Harry Hopkins and Premier Stalin in Moscow.

The apparent rapprochement had come after a fiery period of bitter denunciation of the Soviets from some quarters of the press and in Congress. Representative Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut, for instance, had launched into a tirade against the Russians, only to be received very poorly by most of the people. Another reaction had been bitterness toward Americans who were friendly to the Russians. A third approach had been advocacy for drawing a line beyond which Russia could not go, the logical extension of which, he offers, always meant war.

Ms. Luce's astounding grasp of history, not to mention simple arithmetic, incidentally, was so vast as to allow her to illuminate the nation in 1969, a year after the election of the 37th President, when she thought Herbert Hoover had been the 33rd President, and not to be identified only with having brought on the Great Depression. Her incomparable erudition is only surpassed by the Blonde who thinks Alexander Hamilton was President. At least Ms. Luce was foresighted enough in 1969 to realize that President Nixon was not destined to be a great President, even if the Blonde still apparently contests the contrary.

Of course, on the other hand, Ms. Luce probably thought that General Lee had been the 27th President, right after President Sherman.

A piece from Collier's by Carey Longmire tells of Dorothy Thompson's evangelical fervor as a columnist. He begins by imparting that Ms. Thompson, in 1934, had been ousted from Nazi Germany by Hitler because she had referred to him as "inconsequential" in one of her columns. It was, he posits, a mistake: "La Thompson, who combines the seeing eye of Cassandra and the appearance of Brunnehilde with the gusto of General Patton and the holy fire of a crusading apostle, waged a furious one-woman war against Hitler from that time on."

She had been a foreign correspondent from 1920 to 1933 in Berlin and Vienna, beginning her column in 1926. He recalls that in 1938, actually February of 1939, she had held her own personal demonstration at a Bundist rally in Madison Square Garden before being escorted from the hall by a police officer.

Yet, she also had waged a campaign of late against those who wanted alternately to Balkanize Germany or exterminate all of the German people. She held no more affinity for Josef Stalin than for Hitler, viewing the Russians as the primary impediment to European confederation except in a state in which Russia would be its centerpiece.

Ms. Thompson, age 51, had a dynamic personality and became the focal point of almost any social gathering which she attended. She once appeared at a party with a bandaged finger which, upon inquiry, she explained, as had also made the prints, she had obtained from a woman biting her after Ms. Thompson had scolded her for uttering anti-Semitic remarks and saluting Hitler outside a New York cafe.

She had campaigned fervently for President Roosevelt and had once appeared on the same stage with Clare Boothe Luce in a bitter radio exchange, during which Ms. Thompson stated that Ms. Luce had "torn herself loose from the Stork Club to serve her country." Ms. Luce responded that Ms. Thompson was "hysterical".

Yet, Ms. Thompson also had campaigned against FDR's 1937 court-packing plan, the plan to add assistant justices to the Supreme Court whenever a Justice would reach age 70, up to 15 total regular and assistant justices, fiercely denounced across the country as a power-grab by the President. She had also believed that his Government Reorganization Plan of the same time period, in 1938, was signal of a trend toward dictatorial power.

She was, at heart, a puritan, hated sin, and so attacked it wherever she found it, irrespective of source.

She awoke at 10:00 a.m., perused five newspapers, decided on her topic for the day and then requested her secretary to ring up various authorities in given fields to obtain their advice, began writing at 11:00 from the office in her New York City home on East 48th Street. Her columns were written quickly, sometimes in as little as 45 minutes.

We find that while Ms. Thompson was a keen observer of events and possessed an understanding of systemic processes and trends through history better than most of her comtemporaries who wrote daily columns, she also could be somewhat tedious and disjointed on occasion, perhaps the 45 minutes sometimes being not enough to put together a coherent flow of even less than a thousand words, as each of the columns on the editorial page were, with the exception of Drew Pearson, who usually held forth on several topics to greater length.

Yet, we find that all of them, especially in this most critical period of world history, the most critical eight years, from 1937 to 1945, of the Twentieth Century, performed remarkably under daily stress, when often to know what not to write was as important as what could and should be written, not knowing whether any one of them would survive this war. Several, including Raymond Clapper and Ernie Pyle, did not.

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