Tuesday, June 5, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, June 5, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Germany had been reduced to its size in 1937 by the joint occupation statement of the Big Four. That left Germany in the same status in which it had been before the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. The statement created four zones of occupation within Germany and provided for an inter-Allied government of Berlin.

General Eisenhower flew to Berlin for the first time this date to represent the United States in the first meeting of the Four-Power Allied Control Council to be held in the capital. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery represented Britain and Marshal Gregory Zhukov, Russia, while General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny represented France.

Prime Minister Churchill disclosed to Commons that an agreement had been reached at Tehran in latter 1943 to turn over shipping to Russia, equivalent to a portion of the shipping seized in the wake of Italy's surrender in September, 1943. The equivalent numbers of British and U.S. tonnage were delivered on temporary loan, pending disposition of the Italian ships by the peace conference. Half of the merchant vessels and all of the warships, except for the United States cruiser Milwaukee, were provided by Britain. It was presumed that the United States had supplied half of the merchant vessels. All of these ships were deemed unfit for service in the Pacific, according to Mr. Churchill.

The Prime Minister also denied the allegations of General De Gaulle that British agents had provoked the violence in Syria against the French troops. He responded to De Gaulle's proposal of a Big Five conference regarding the Levant States by reaffirming Britain's desire only to have a conference between France, the United States, and Britain, excluding Russia and China.

About 450 B-29's attacked Kobe in Japan with 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs, after traveling through snow, fog, and thunderheads to reach the target which was clear. The attack occurred on the anniversary of the very first B-29 raid of the war. Eight of the planes had failed to return. Returning pilots rated the results excellent, that the damage would exceed the eight square miles of destruction inflicted May 20 on Yokohama.

General Curtis LeMay reported that nearly 3.5 square miles of Osaka had been destroyed in the raid on that city the previous week.

On Okinawa, the Fourth Regiment of the Sixth Marines took half of Naha Airfield the day before, advancing from an 1,800-yard beachhead established on the southern shore of Naha Bay, following an amphibious landing which placed troops on three sides of the enemy garrison on Oroku Peninsula. Tenth Army troops advanced in the central and eastern areas, reaching the southern coast, advancing up to three miles.

Admiral Nimitz foresaw the end of the campaign within three or four days, provided the current pace could be maintained.

Vice-Admiral Marc Mitscher, commander of the Fast Carrier Task Force involved in the fighting for Okinawa, stated that the kamikaze menace to American shipping was daily being reduced. Only ten percent of the planes penetrated existing defenses, and only ten percent of those got through to a target vessel.

On Mindanao, the converging 31st and 24th Divisions made rapid progress, as the 24th Division advanced a thousand yards, in a convergent trap on Japanese troops.

On Luzon, the 37th Infantry Division made a slow advance into the Cagayan Valley.

In Athens, Greece, six members of the ELAS were sentenced to death and two others to life imprisonment for killing actress Helen Papadakis and 43 gendarmerie officers and men in the violence which had erupted the previous fall.

At graduation exercises at West Point, General Omar Bradley stated that America should retain a core of professional soldiers in peacetime and that a reserve force should be maintained.

In San Francisco, France announced that it reluctantly would side with the United States in a showdown with Russia regarding the Security Council veto issue, whether the veto would extend to matters of discussion before the Security Council such that any of the Big Five members could veto such discussion. The French representative stated that the 50 nations at the conference would vote 45 to 5 in favor of the U.S. position, the five in favor of the Soviet position favoring discussion-veto being Russia, White Russia, the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.

From Spokane, Washington, came a report that children had been discovered playing with two fragmentation bombs dropped by Japanese balloons. The bombs did not explode, though the children had removed a detonator from one and were playing with it.

A report from Lakeview, Ore., stated that on May 5, a woman and five children had been killed when such an explosive device detonated.

On the editorial page, "In One Swoop" finds money in circulation to be 26 billion dollars, five times that of 1932-33 when banks were failing and people were stowing their cash in mattresses. The Government was now tracking every bill of $50 denominations and higher to make sure its bearer had proper title to it. The reason was to track both black market transactions and income tax evasion. But the task, says the piece, would be formidable in attempting to trace so much money in circulation.

"A Hangover" questions whether military censorship would continue after the war, so much had the Government relied upon it to shape policy, quite apart from military concerns regarding security.

At present, it points out, censorship was obscuring almost everything occurring in Europe, even to the Elbe in the West. The Russians covered up everything in their sectors of occupation. The British had maintained censorship in Greece and Italy after the fighting had ceased.

Only recently had Supreme Allied Headquarters announced the end of censorship in Europe, except for troop movements to other theaters. But complaints were still being heard from journalists, that they were denied access to Nazi documents, barred from photographing Berchtesgaden following the picture taken of Hermann Goering and a Maj.-General John Dahlquist and Brigadier General Robert Stack sharing champagne. One writer had complained that journalists were required to question Julius Streicher through an American officer and were forbidden to inquire of the plight of Jews.

The piece finds this censorship unnecessary and a bad habit acquired during the war which had to be broken.

"OPA & Profits" reports on the findings of OPA administrator Chester Bowles that corporate profits before taxes were three and a half times in 1943 what they had been in 1939, and twice the amount after taxes, that 1944 profits were 2.5 percent higher than in 1943 before taxes and about the same after taxes, that earnings were somewhat lower in the first quarter of 1945 than in the same period of 1944, but profits of most industries subject to price control had risen based on increased production.

The prosperity had also been shared by small business, whose profits had doubled since 1939 and who possessed a greater share of the market.

Overall, the data appeared to support Mr. Bowles's ultimate claim that price controls during wartime had not harmed business.

"Train in Peace?" tells of the House committee on post-war military policy starting its hearings on the subject of a peacetime draft and military training. The Russians had announced the previous week that they were calling up 15 and 16-year olds in the largest peacetime conscription in the country's history, that military training would exceed that taking place during the war.

President Roosevelt had favored a peacetime draft. The conscription law had gone into effect fifteen months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The decision to do so or not had to be reached soon, says the piece, or the opportunity would be lost, as memories quickly would begin to fade following the end of the fighting in the Pacific.

In 1920, a peacetime conscription bill had been proposed but killed in the Senate with an amendment making it voluntary.

The editorial favors the move and that training be made compulsory.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative John Rankin of Mississippi engaging in a colloquy with Congressman Wright Patman of Texas regarding the food shortage. Mr. Rankin asserted that OPA had caused the black market which had led to shortages of meat. In the previous war, he stated, everyone had been treated equally and there were no shortages.

Mr. Patman responded that there had been no shortages in the prior war because everyone paid black market prices in the conventional market, without price controls. Sugar had been 35 cents per pound; now, it was maintained at 7 cents.

Representative John Lyle of Texas informed that he had been in the Army in Europe for two years and that they had been fed well, never suffered from any shortage. He had gained 22 pounds since November while in the service.

Mr. Patman added that the soldiers were consuming twice the calories of civilians. The food shipments to Russia for their troops had saved American lives. OPA, he concluded, had been doing a very good job.

Congresswoman Edith Rogers of Massachusetts felt compelled to chirp that Mr. Lyle's weight gain had been the result of eating too many potatoes and too much bread, not enough meat, with which Representative Clifford Hope of Kansas agreed.

Drew Pearson reveals the inside story on the B-29 attacks on Japanese cities, dropping the so-called "Goop Bomb", the jellified petroleum incendiary. Henry Kaiser's West Coast scientists had developed the explosive mixture by adding volatile magnesium dust to the oil of the bomb. The dust ignited as it came in contact with the air, producing a white-hot fire which no known fighting equipment could extinguish. The use of the bomb had generated the optimism about an early end to the Pacific war.

He next relates of the objection by the United States for having to pay tolls to pass men and supplies through the Suez Canal, 44 percent of which was controlled by the British and 52 percent by the Dutch. Though, ostensibly, the British portion was in the hands of a private company, it was actually under the control of the Government. The tolls ran into millions of dollars.

Former OPA administrator Leon Henderson lamented the fact that now Americans were getting back some of their ability to purchase goods deprived them during the war. His reason for sadness was that he wanted to be part of the effort of demobilization and reconversion so that the American public would not persist in thinking him such a heel for having taken away their goods during the early part of the war.

Finally, Mr. Pearson reports of a lawsuit proceeding in New York in which Standard Oil of New Jersey was seeking return from the Government of 2,000 patents which Standard had obtained from I. G. Farben of Germany just after the beginning of the war in 1939. Standard had deliberately withheld the patents from the market, expressly stating to Farben that it would do so even if the United States were to become involved in the war. The Justice Department had seized the patents.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Rome, suggests that with Italy now completely liberated, free elections should be held to replace the existing Bonomi Government. But setting up election machinery would prove difficult given that no election had been held in the country in more than twenty years.

The two leftist parties, the Socialists and Communists, were likely to effect coalition to try to reorganize the government under their leadership. But the Christian Democrats and the three other minor parties likely could frustrate such a move though the Communists were the best organized of the parties.

Women would be voting in Italy for the first time in history and would likely contribute their support primarily to the Christian Democrats and the Communists.

The Communists would likely benefit from the dissatisfaction over the slow purge by the Western Allies of Fascists. But the Christian Democrats would benefit from fear of terrorism and dictatorial rule which could follow on with Communism.

The party which would win would depend largely on economic developments and whether life in Italy could be tolerated during the ensuing fall and winter.

Efforts of the Allies to stifle political expression lent support to the most extreme radicals, as the followers of Tito. His move into Trieste, however, had strengthened temporarily the nationalist movement on the right.

Samuel Grafton discusses the inability of the West Coast shipyards to find 15,000 needed workers to repair damaged ships from the Pacific war. The workers were catching "'the next train back to Memphis'", back home to pre-war jobs before they would be taken by other workers or returning veterans.

In consequence, the Japanese were emboldened to inflict kamikaze raids on ships, believing that they would go unrepaired.

He relates that World War I had been an era of selfish individualism and profiteering, the worst of which had been avoided in World War II. It should not become so in the final phases of the war. The maintenance of price controls, the expenditure of Federal funds for unemployment compensation, the determination to stay on the job through the end of the Pacific war, would result in fewer ships left unrepaired and thus fewer men in the Pacific war having to dodge enemy planes.

Marquis Childs comments on the 70th birthday of Thomas Mann, now a citizen of the United States. He had been born in Luebeck, Germany, had fled the country with the coming of Hitler to power in 1933, but continued to work against Nazism from outside his native land.

Two of his most important works, Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, were published in Germany in the twenties. He had also published in that period Disorder and Early Sorrow, chronicling the disintegration of the traditional patterns of German life.

Now, he had just published the last of his series of five novels on the Biblical story of Joseph, this one titled Joseph, the Provider.

Mr. Childs had gone to Luebeck in 1933 and wanted to see the birthplace of Thomas Mann. The townspeople, who expressed their belief in Nazism, took Mr. Childs under their wing and reluctantly showed him the house of the renowned author. They had not liked his politics, but recognized his writing ability.

The United States, he reflects, should be proud that the writer had found a home in America and should learn from his writings that disinterest in the political affairs of the country could lead to the same form of chaos which became Nazi Germany.

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