THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE SOLDIER VOTE—potentially a torrent of 10,000,000 or so ballots in the hands of the men and women in the nation's armed services—will be only an insignificant and indecisive...
...Dewey expressed annoyance at the question, and Mr...
...Reno's divorce total thus far in 1943 has smashed all previous records...
...The repeated failure of the President to keep the United States informed and his refusal to take Davis with him to report to the people at home confirmed the gloomy foreboding of many an American that the Administration is concealing more than it is revealing about the conduct of the war and the plans for the peace...
...Republicans sought repeatedly to amend the original measure which provided for a federal ballot which would dispense with the state requirements for registration, payment of poll taxes, etc...
...Guffey bitterly denounced the approved substitute bill as a scheme to "deprive" uniformed personnel of the right to vote...
...In a speech delivered Nov...
...There was growing feeling that while the Administration's suppression of facts about the war itself might be justified, in part, by the demands of military necessity, there was grave danger that the habit would be carried over to the field of post-war policy, thus fastening on the nation an anti-democratic policy of "secret covenants, secretly arrived at...
...Many a critical blunder has been kept from the public by an airtight suppression of the news on the grounds that it constituted information "vital to the enemy...
...It was to coordinate the handling of war news, to liberalize the release of information, and to break the brass hat monopoly of the facts that the Office of War Information was established with Elmer Davis as boss...
...Last week Mr...
...Notable among them were these: 1. Sen...
...That record shows no one can be sure what it will do next...
...Robert Taft, Ohio Republican, which would have prohibited political propaganda among the armed forces by officers and employes of the government unless equal printed space or broadcasting time were made available to both sides in the campaign...
...Stand by the President in his policies for world peace...
...A Gloomy Foreboding To the nation generally the whole affair was far more important than a matter- of newspaper scoops...
...How can we, when he doesn't stand still long enough...
...The 11 month total of 5,297 tops the 1931 record by 558...
...Bricker ignored it completely...
...And whenever Mr...
...Record...
...Alf London Sounds A Warning The concerted campaign by internationalists to deprive the country of an opportunity to vote on foreign policy by getting the Republican and Democratic Parties to present the same plank in their 1944 platform drew fire last week from Alf M. Landon, who was the Republican Presidential candidate in 1936...
...I want to cooperate with the military leaders...
...A coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats voted to junk a bill to permit the country's defenders in the field to vote on a ballot prepared by the federal government and administered by a bi-partisan electoral commission...
...John McCormack, Massachusetts Democrat and majority leader, characterized the substitute bill as "meaningless," and added: "It is all right to vote to send soldiers to die for their country, but it's all wrong to let them vote for the officials of their country—that's the effect of the Senate's action...
...It was torn by internal feuds...
...While Davis was protesting to the British for this break on the Cairo conference, Tass Agency, the official Russian news service, beat Mr...
...John Rankin, Mississippi Democrat, said passage of the substitute was "one of the greatest victories for states' rights and constitutional government in the history of this nation...
...Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kaishek...
...Bricker of Ohio, are frequently heard paying loud and loose lip-service to the proposition that Republicans take a more definite stand...
...But this and other "safeguards" against Administration manipulation of the soldier vote failed to win a majority of the Senate to the plan for a federal ballot for men and women in the field...
...Alben Barkley, Kentucky Democrat and Administration spokesman, joined in denouncing the Senate's decision, and on the other side of the Capitol, Rep...
...Davis and the American press with the announcement that the Messrs...
...If the Presidential election were held today and if soldiers could vote, the men and women in uniform would determine the outcome, since the two old parties are about even in strength, the Gallup Poll reported this week...
...War or no war," he said, "a definite Republican trend has set in, and the President will be able to sense this far more quickly than any of his advisers...
...Hopkins...
...Threatening to resign his post as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen...
...1. But more than 24 hours before this release date, Reuters, the British news agency, broke the story from Lisbon, Portugal, scooping Mr...
...It was denied access to many facts by the gold-braided bureaucrats...
...Willkie's secretary "could not locate" him, Mr...
...Often the releases of different government bureaus have been in conflict with each other...
...After a brave beginning, however, OWI ran into a mounting storm of criticism...
...For myself, I don't intend to try to run the Army...
...In its place it passed a substitute proposal which "recommends" to the states that they pass legislation to expedite soldier voting under the various state laws...
...It was accused of harboring Communists...
...An aroused bloc of Southern Democrats, who objected to the abandonment of the poll tax requirement, joined with Republicans to kill the original plan by a margin of 42 to 37 and to substitute their "states' rights" measure in its place...
...John L. McClellan, Arkansas Democrat, called Guffey's allegations untrue...
...30, the White House gave the nation's press an announcement of the "secret" conference in Cairo of the Messrs...
...Sen...
...E. M. Dirksen, Illinois, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President, asserting he would be neither a "stalking horse" nor a "favorite son...
...Garwood, N. J., is a community of 5,000 people, swelled everyday by 3,000 commuters who work in its 23 war plants...
...Davis at home...
...Dropped...
...Last week when queried by Walter Reuther of the CIO on their stand on food subsidies Mr...
...Speaking to a group of Republican junior Senators, the Karisan said: "This Administration's record on foreign policies is as uncertain as on domestic policies...
...The peace, he said, "can be blown up as a great achievement only because everything in relation to the arrangement is so completely indefinite...
...Joseph Martin, surgeon of the Fifth Army, to expect to see far more cripples than were seen after the last war...
...GOP Stand...
...A modern version of Benjamin Franklin's advice is being urged on Britons by Sir Percy Hurd, who says that "by going to bed a half hour earlier each evening for the next two months, they may save enough fuel in the form of electricity and gas to remove all anxiety about the adequacy of supplies for munitions and the great offensive...
...Editors were sworn to secrecy, for the news was not to be announced until 7:30 p. m. Dec...
...Three GOP presidential hopefuls, Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey, and Gov...
...Deciding Vote...
...Early to Bed...
...On Tuesday, Nov...
...Bitter strife marked the lengthy debate...
...The Committee has received a full report from Pat-ton's superior officer, Gen...
...Sen...
...Burton K. Wheeler, Montana Democrat, expressed doubt that any Democrat could win the Presidency in 1944 and predicted that President Roosevelt will not be a candidate for reelection next year, regardless of the state of the war...
...We find in the field of foreign policy the same uncertainty that exists in the field of domestic policy and that was so destructive of pre-war business recovery...
...American families were warned last week by Col...
...Landon warned his Republican associates that their endorsement of the Moscow pact before obtaining "much more precise and definite information" on it would be "disastrous to the country...
...The brass hats in the War and Navy Departments have resented the people's demand for facts and have spoon-fed the nation only such crumbs of news they regarded as good for public consumption...
...Joseph F. Guffey, Pennsylvania Democrat, charged that Southern members of his own party had joined in an "unholy alliance" with Republicans to "deprive the armed forces of America of the right to vote...
...Davis and the American press again...
...Writing in'the current issue of American magazine, Harry Hopkins, White House assistant, declares we will be able to finance the war and postwar relief program for Europe and still pay the $300,000,000,000 debt in less than 50 years...
...New weapons, he explained, are increasing the number of maiming wounds, but new medical techniques keep the victims alive...
...25, but for some reason not made public until last week, Jan Christian Smuts, Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa and British War Cabinet member, advised that Great Britain strengthen her position in Western Europe lest she become a weak partner in the "trinity of powers"—Russia, United States, and Great Britain...
...Robert R. Reynolds, North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, announced last week that his Committee will make no further inquiry into Lt...
...I think it is outside our jurisdiction," Reynolds added, "and a military matter...
...Davis was in a towering rage, and so were most of the editors and newspaper men of Washington...
...He advised that Britain work with the smaller countries of Western Europe to put her on an equal footing with Russia and the United States in the post-war world...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE SOLDIER VOTE—potentially a torrent of 10,000,000 or so ballots in the hands of the men and women in the nation's armed services—will be only an insignificant and indecisive trickle in the 1944 election unless the United States Senate reverses the curious position it took last week...
...Dwight Eisenhower, and it will stand by that report, Reynolds said...
...Names And Notes In The News Outspoken...
...Draft...
...The soldiers," he asserted, "will have the same rights they always have had to vote, and if the states exert themselves as suggested in this bill, there is no reason why they can't provide adequate means for such balloting according to the state's own laws...
...Asserting that at the conclusion of the war three of the five great powers (France, Italy, and Germany) would have disappeared, Smuts declared that Russia, without Japan to check her, would be "mistress of the continent...
...Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were meeting at Teheran and that official announcements would be made later...
...Other Political Developments There were other political developments of the week...
...Roosevelt departed for a conference with foreign potentates, he conspicuously left Mr...
...Defending the action of the Senate, Rep...
...Some of the GOP amendments were adopted, including one by Sen...
...Last week Garwood's last doctor was taken by the Army...
...American Press Scooped Again The Roosevelt Administration's handling of war information has been widely and frequently denounced as a shocking mess...
...Clash On Soldier Vote Issue Feeling ran high during the Senate debate and the outcome widened the gulf between the two wings of the Democratic Party...
...3. Thomas W. Lamont, chairman of the board of J. P. Morgan & Company, wrote an article in the Saturday Review of Literature praising Wendell L. Will-kie's interventionist foreign policies and urging his Wall Street associate, who is seeking the GOP Presidential nomination, to present a constructive domestic policy in opposition to the Roosevelt Administration's program, or lack of one...
...Warning...
...2. Rep...
...George S. Patton's mistreatment of two Army privates...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 50
