Newspaper Page Text
The Sunday Star-News Published Every Sunday By The Wilmington Star-News At The Murchison Building R. B. Page, Owner and Publisher Telephone All Departments DIAL 2-3311 Entered as Second Class Matter at Wilming ton, N. C., Postoffice Under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY CARRIER Payable Weekly Or In Advance Combina Time Star News tion 1 Week .$ .23 $ .20 $ .40 1 Month . 1.10 .90 1.75 3 Months . 3.25 2.60 5.20 New rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News BY MAIL Payable Strictly In Advance Combina Time Star News tion I Month ..$ .75 $ .50 $ .90 3 Months . 2.00 1.50 2.75 8 Months . 4.00 3.00 5.50 1 Year .. 8.00 6.00 10.00 1 Year . 13.00 10.40 20.80 6 Months .. 6.50 5.20 10.40 New rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News Card of Thanks charged for at the rate of 25 cents per line. Count five words to line. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Is entitled to the exclusive use of all news stories appearing in the Wilmington Star News. SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 1943 With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding de termination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God. —Roosevelt’s War Message Our Chief Aim To aid in every way the prosecu tion of the war to complete Vic tory. THOUGHT FOR TODAY “What are these wounds in thy hands, Lord Jesus— Hands that were else so fair? “Knowest thou not that the Lord who bought thee Ever that sign must bear? So must thy name on my palms be graven Making thee mine for aye; Only the hands that were pierced could lift thee Out of the miry clay, Lift thee, and carry, and hold, and lead thee Into the Promised Land; Safe I keep, and no man shall pluck thee Out of my wounded hand.” —ANNIE JOHNSON FLINT. -V More Power To Bowles Chester Bowles, new chief deputy adminis trator of the OPA talks more sense on ration ing than anybody has done since that pesti ferous office was set up to bewilder the people. We can only hope that at least some of the reforms he proposes are carried out. One of these is the reorganization of all OPA divisions, if that is necessary, to get a little common sense into the bureau and its rulings. Another is to tell the country more of the whys and wherefores of rationing. If he does these things, or even one of them, the people will shout his praises from the housetops. Among his observations which have strong appeal: “Rationing and price control must be explained over and over in factual language that anyone can understand” . . . “The Amer ican people will cheerfully accept regulations in wartime provided they really understand the need for them” . . . “OPA cannot be run solely from Washington.” And he is further quoted as believing: OPA regulations need to be made easy for businessmen to understand and live with. OPA must at all times stand up against pressures from industrial profiteers, farm produce speculators and everyone who wants a bigger share than his neighbor. , OPA will always imply that a citizen is right until he is proved wrong. All this is cheering. It remains to be seen whether he has the courage and the endurance to win on these lines. Washington, being what it is, will do its best to pin his ears down as it has for other good men. -V The Italian Navy It is noted that, however hot the fighting in Sicily, Allied bombers are not using the Italian navy as a target. One commentator says that “on the whole the Allies appear to have been almost as solicitous for the safety of the Italian navy as was Mussolini.’’ And the reason is obvious. While the Italians have made as poor a showing at sea as on land their warships have real value once they are manned with Allied crews. There is no knowing now how many war ships Italy still has, nor how battle-worthy they are. But it is to be assumed that under ;Allied command, and with such repairs as they need completed, they could play an im portant part in battles to come, either for combat service or as convoys for transports. And in any case their possession by the ene mies of the Axis would contribute to Allied mastery of the Mediterranean, which is stead ily becoming more vital in the ^Overthrow of Hitler. The report is that the Germans are demand ing the Italian fleet be moved to Toulon and Marseille and as Italy is still an Axis part ner the Italians may be forced to comply. We may be sure, however, that any general movement will bring down the fury of the Allied air force and every ship be destroyed. The Germans are no longer in position to enforce their demands upon Italy. That power has been transferred to the Allies. Rome^may delay and Badoglio may have to give way to a less vacillating premier, but it is still General Eisenhower, and not Hitler, who holds the whiphand over Italy. . -V Our Post-War Problem There is good reason to think that when the war is won, world trade will to a very large extent drift toward its old pattern. Na tions among the victors with rich colonial pos sessions will again set up machinery to con trol if not actually monopolize markets for commodities over which they formerly exer cised dominance. Rubber and quinine provide a fair example. Before the war they came principally from the Dutch East Indies. There is no reason to believe that any part of the former control of them will be voluntarily surrendered. It is more probable that The Netherlands, having been victimized by Hitler, will seek to impose even greater control over both as a means of recovery from the losses sustained during the war. They are cited not to direct disquieting at tention to Holland but to point a case and to note that after winning the war and the peace, nations now fighting the Axis and not having extensive colonies will still face the task of winning a place in the post-war world. Upon no nation will this fall heavier than the United States, which will have invested so much of its wealth and resources in vic tory that its struggle to hold a proper posi tion in affairs and commerce will call for great thrift, ingenuity, business sense and en terprise by its people and government. The United States is not in this war to gain a foot of ground or a dollar of profit. Literally, and despite the four freedoms, it is fighting for survival. It must be recog nized then, that its task will not be finished with the signing of a treaty of peace. Instead, its most difficult job will still lie ahead. Seek ing no gain in battle, having no imperial ambitions, this nation must not only solve the problem of self-support but the greater problem of participating more extensively than in the past in world trade, through which it may hope to discharge a part of its tremen dous national debt. It must not again be caught short, say, of rubber and quinine, because price levels at foreign supply sources are prohibitive. The return of peace will find the United States impoverished. Its mineral wealth, in cluding petroleum, will have been drained to near to the vanishing point. But it will still be in the best position among all the warring nations in arable soil, in shipping, in air power, and best of all it will not have lost a jot or tittle of its ingenuity and inventive genius. * Proper use of these, together with complete stoppage of the waste which has character ized its war effort and bureaucratic domin ation, will bring it out victorious in its great est post-war task. But it must understand that competition will be keener than at any time in its existence. A three hundred billion dollar national debt will call for complete revolution in the national economic life, start ing with the government and extending into every household. -V-_ Comes With Bad Grace Mid-westerners are getting hot under the collar at the prospect of having their gasoline ration cut to the point of equalization with that of Atlantic coasters. Instead they ought to be thankful they have had too much too long. Throughout the period of petroleum malad ministration during which Eastern consumers have been discriminated against, there has been no word from the Middle-west to en courage a square deal in gasoline, no sugges tion that all areas and consumers be treated alike, no appeal for fair play everywhere. On the contrary, the people of the Middle-west were content to get all they could and let the East walk. Now, with greater supplies reaching the Eastern seaboard and Secretary Ickes at last inclined to let Easterners out of the dog house, so to speak, our cousins out yonder are dou bling up their fists and hurling fighting words at us because we are to have part of the gasoline they have enjoyed so long. Their complaint comes with bad grace, and the situation thus created indicates how much better it would have been had gasoline ra tioning been equalized from the start. -V French Appointments The announcement that General Giraud has been given command of all French armed forces with General DeGaulle named perma nent president of the Committee of National Defense, seems to clear the atmosphere after a storrn that has lowered over the Allies for many months, at least for the present. The value of the arrangement will depend in chief measure on the cooperation these leaders are capable of achieving between the administration and the military. It is hoped that it will harmonize all elements in the French empire, something it can do only if Giraud is allowed to fight France’s battles without interference and heckling by DeGaulle. If there is some distrust of the outcome U is due to DeGaulle’* temperamental outbursts during the eight months of negotiations. It’s Not So Trivial What are we fighting for? One young person answered: “To get the sugar bowls back on restaurant tables." Sounds frivolous, doesn’t it? With the world in turmoil and matters of “great pith and moment” still to be settled, how can anyone’s mind focus on an inconvenience like this? Because, we believe, it is inconsistent with freedom for another to put sugar in our coffee or on our mush, and deny us the right to do it for ourselves. It is an infringement on our fundamental liberty. That’s what counts. Any abridgement of liberty, however trivial it may seem, is another good reason for defeating Hitler whc brought it about. Fair Enough (Editor's Note.—Tho Star snd the News accepts no responsibility for the personal views of Mr. Pegler, and often disagree with them as much as many of his readers. His articles serve the good purpose of making people think. BV WESTBROOK PEGLER NEW YORK.—I am not saying that in a war against a totalitarian power it is wrong to adopt, temporarily, in a free country, some of the devices wnich the enemy employs. I believe it is necessary and that just how far the free country must go in such imitation depends on the length and pressure of the emergency. In our country, however, some such measures were urea long before we rec ognized the inevitability of military war, against a foreign power. They were resorted to in tnat emergency which was described as the war on want, in the course of which, incidentally, a few conspicuous well-connect ed individuals of the ruling group seized op portunities presented by the emergency and pyramided their incomes and their fortunes to great heights. I have been frisking my books for some presentation of the methods of fascism in Germany to serve as a standard by which we may determine whether, in fighting fas cism, we have been going fascist and I sub mit for consideration some observations writ ten by Otto D. Tolischus, who was the corre spondent of the New York Times in Berlin, in his book, They Wanted War, published in 1940. I think this citation is pertinent to the discussion aroused by the remarks of Vice President Henry Wallace in Detroit last Sun day in the course of which he touched up as American fascists, some Americans who had turned against the new deal administration. It seemed to follow that anyone who had turned against the administration was fas cists in his view. I will point no parallels myself, but gome may present themselves to you as you read. Mr. Tolischus wrote that Hitler’s economic mobilization was the key to the whole na tionalist socialist economy and consisted of the total conscription of manpower, which Mrs. Roosevelt has earnestly proposed for us, thus far without success, and of its resources —“of capital and labor, producer and con sumer, of men, women and youth and their co-ordination in a system ruled not by eco nomic calculations but by iron discipline which still provides certain paternalistic ‘socialism’ for workers and leaves the limited profit mo tive to employers to spur their energies.” Mr. Tolischus said Hitler had created a gigantic trust devoted to total economic and military war and that those who would have opposed his methods were forced to adopt them in self-defense. When her rearmament began Germany was in an economic crisis with her industrial production down nearly 50 per cent and great unemployment. Our own state of affairs was very bad, too, about the time we entered the war on want. By bringing her idle production capacity and idle labor together through total con scription,” Hitler wiped out unemployment and created his war machine. To do this, he fixed prices on a cost plus basis, and limited profits by price control and the compulsory investment in government loans of all profits above 6 to 8 per cent. However, some profits remained as high as 14 per cent and the investments in the loans, of course, are theo retically sound and are not confiscations or taxes. Companies were made to invest their surpluses in war-essential enterprises and were forbidden to build non-essential plants or, if permitted to build them, had to yield them to government control. Another econom ic measure was the control of industry by the allotment of government orders for raw material and yet another was a limitation on the wages of the heads and directors of corporations. The wages of labor were fixed as of a certain date, subject to minor adjustments, workers were frozen to their jobs to prevent shifting, the right to strike was abolished and independent labor unions outside the labor front, a subsidiary of Hitler’s party were for bidden. Virtually all food was rationed, to the detriment of the living standard and the prices of farm products were fixed and mar kets were regulated to compel delivery of products to the control agencies. “Workers,” Tolischus wrote, “enjoy a ‘so cialism’ which improved working conditions through ‘beauty of work’ organizations, es tablished paid vacations for all, organized leisure and vacation recreation through ‘strength through joy’ organizations, provided labor courts for appeals against dismissal and honor courts for appeals against insults to workers’ honor.” For farmers, Hitler’s brand of fascism re duced interest rates and provided cheaper fertilizer anc other supplies and prices above those of the world market but below those which they might command in a free domes tic market in time of shortage. I recommend Mr. Tolischus’ book to Mr. Wallace and all others who denounce as fas cists those who have opposed portions or all of the new deal program from the beginning of the war on want to the present stage of the war on fascism and as well to those who have been so denounced. QUOTATIONS It is believed that the equipment of the American Army is superior to that of other armies. This is particularly true of Ameri can transportation, which has continued to stann up order almost inconceivable condi tions.—Lieut. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, Second Army commander in Tunisia. * * » That means I’ll have to upend the whole two weeks w’th my mother-in-law, so I think I’ll just stay at home. -New York physician refusing extra gasoline for vacation trip No satisfactory ail-avnthetic truck tires have been built as yet bv anyone. No satis factory all synthetic tubes have been built as yet by anyone.-J. p Sieberling. rubber manufacturer. “GENTLEMEN OF VERONA” --- Railways Shaky Link In Italian Defense Bombing of the rail yards at Rome hits a vital spot in the Ital ian transportation system which is playing an important role in Italy’s war strategy. "In the summer before the out break of the war, Italy had in all about 14,500 miles of rail, says the National Geographic Society. Nearly three-quarters of this mile age was state-owned, llany sec tions of the routes have been elec trified, with the result that power stations and power lines supply ing the necessary lifeblood of such transport have become outstand ing military objectives of Allied airmen. Coastal Lines Vulnerable Nature has marked the course and modified the character of the Italian railroad system in a way unfavorable to Italian defense. Because of the great mountain backbone of the Apennines, run ning the length of the “boot,” two of the three major trunk lines hug the eastern and western coasts. Fo-r long stretches they are vul nerable to Allied naval attack. Linked by steel along the west-1 ern coast are such important and already heavily-bombed ports as Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, and Reg gio Calabria, opposite Sicily. Cen tral Rome is less than 20 air miles from the sea. It is a rail junction of several main lines, from which a short spur runs to the little sea port of Anzio. On the eastern coast rails edge the shore from Rimini to Termoli. Pushing inland from the latter port, they return to the Adriatic to join the potential “invasion coast” ports of Barletta, Bari, and Brindisi. In the south, the often hit naval base of Taranto is situ ated on the largely coastal branch that connects the eastern and west ern railroads. For the entire length of the broad under-arch of the Italian boot, this minor line hugs the shore within sight of possible sea raiders. The Italian rail system is linked with that of Europe only by pas sage across the giant arc of the Civilian Defense Timetable New Hanover High School Room 107 at 8 P. M. FIRE DEFENSE A Monday, July 26 and every two weeks thereafter. GENERAL COURSE Tuesday, July 27 and every two weeks thereafter GAS DEFENSE B Wednesday, July 28 and every two weeks thereafter. FIRST AID 10 HOURS Beginning Monday night July 26, and continuing Wednesday nigh* July 28, Friday July 20, Monday August 2 and Tuesday, August 3, at First Christian church Third and Ann streets. A 8 P. M. Miss Louise Siler instructor. Anyone desiring to take course is asked to attend. TRAINING SCHEDULE FOR MAFFITT VILLAGE General Course Thursday, Juty 22. First Aid Beginning Friday, July 23. First Aid Monday, July 26. First Aid Tuesday, July 27. Fire Defense A Thursday, July 29. Alps. Entrances to and exits from Italy are thus routed over moun tain passes, through tunnels, and along rocky ledges where heavy bombs may bring disastrous land slides to block the roads and tun nel openings, or even shatter the roadbeds. Especially vulnerable to such attack is the coastal line that runs along the Italian Riviera. It clings to ledges, goes over many bridges and through literally doz ens of tunnels. Other susceptible spots are found in variuos moun tain regions of the Alps and in the Apennines, where innumerable engineering works were necessary to complete the rail network that holds Italy together. 'Over the Alps come many of Italy’s essential raw materials for carrying on the war. That way must come any aid in men and supplies to help repel an invasion. Yet Italy is particularly poor in the necessary transport fuels of coal and oil. Now cut off from the normally large sources of coal from Great Britain, as well I as from oil once received from Soviet Russia and the Western Hemisphere, it depends almost en tirely on supplies from the Ger man-occupied coal-producing re gions of Europe. As a result, heavy shipments of coal from the north continually add to emergency con gestion of the Italian railway sys tem. Long before the Europe conflict loomed, Italy had begun the elec trification of its railway in order to make up for the fuel shortage. In 1922, some 500 miles of railway were operated by electricity. With plenty of water power available in its mountain districts, the country had raised that figure to more than 3,200 miles by 1939. An additional 200 miles were completed in 1939 40. Coal, however, remains a prob lem for most of the Italian rail ways. Also, in wartime, electrified lines may present an even greater handicap in case of bombing. For when power installations are put out of commission, the effects are felt not simply in the bombed area, but all along the line. -V New Ration Books Will Be Issued To Members Of U. S. Armed Forces WASHINGTON, July 31- UP) - The Office of Price Administra tion (OPA) announced today plans for making the new ration book No. 3 available to all members of American and Allied armed forces who need them. Special application blanks will be distributed by commanding of ficers about August 15. and appli cations will be mailed to a central office in Chicago. Inmates of Joilet (Illinois) prison will do the clerical processing of the applications. When civilians applied for the book recently, servicement were excluded specifically so that their applications could be handled sep arately and without duplication. -V CALLING The invasion of Sicily and the constant air attacks upon main land cities must be bad enough, but particularly maddening to the people of Italv must be those pep statements coming with increas ing frequency from their fascist bosses.—Charleston (S. C.l Even ing Post. As Others Say It STYLE NOTES Seemingly the small Victorian tidies on chair backs and dollies under things on tables are mak ing a comeback as millinery. — Aikansas Gazette. COINCIDENCE There is a nonpecuniary satis faction at times in the actions of financial statistics, possibly be cause our sem e of the orderly—so olten outraged in Wall Street — suddenly finds itself satisfied. Every one has noticed how often totals of figures arrange them selves according to patterns, as in 040,046, or 771,771. More than oc casionally a single number will dominate an entire series of cal culations, illogically but fascinat ingly. About three years ago the New York Curb Exchange pro vided one of these strange pat terns. The number of stocks which rose, cne number of stocks which fell and the number of stocks which were unchanged on that day were the same. Yesterday it re ported an equally strange coin cidence Its f'\ e most active stocks all moved one-fourth of a point, three up and two down. ANOTHER RECORD Another top record for North Carolina is its contribution of man power for the war effort. The Tar Heel state led all others of the Union in signing up 1,103 17-year clds for our Navy during the month of June. They are part of the flock of 2,998 taken in dur ing the six months period starting the first of the year. What it takes to give the Germans and Japs what they deserve these boys probably have it. More power "to ’em—and to our Navy—Raleigh Times. TntES PREFERRED It happened in Norfolk, Va. A man stole four tires from a car, but left a purse and diamond ring undisturbed on the front seat. He a.so left a note, “Roses are red. y'Piets are olue. We like your jewels—but your tires are new!”— Stars and Stripes (London, Eng.) good advice ^A husband writes Dorothy Dix that he feels like a stranger in Mr own home He really should drop ;n there oftener. Norfolk •Va.) Ledger Dispatch. BAD NEWS More bad news on the home front. Those ducky little $10,000 bibs are becoming scarce, ac cording to the treasury depart ment. Oh, well, the watermelon season is virtually over —Charles ton (S. C.) Evening Post. WHEN LADIES DISAGREE The three women members of the State Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners aie reported to have ‘ngaged in a knockdown and drag-out figot in their office in Raleigh this week. Somebody's makeup probably was mussed. — F ayetteville Observer. HOPE YET FOR MR. HOOVER Fifteen months after Pearl Har bor they found regular work for Barney Baruch, So stick around, Mr. Hoover, with your creden tials and leHeis of reference from three substantial citizens of your community. — Richmond (Va> limes-Dispatch AW, SHUCKS! Astrologers who claim to know l> stai gazing the date when the second front will ooen will main tain secrecy when they meet next v._eek at Harrogate. — London (Eng.) Sunday Chronicle Interpreting The War BY KIRKF, L. SIMPSOX The long awaited first , crack in the Nazi-FascJt a/1 arCt+ ,°Vir Europe *howed iZtJ in Italy this portentous war , 4 to hint at the dry-rot defe beginning everywhere to 2n= . its foundations. t>'a" >t /As sudde.i’y as Kaiser w, nelm’s bayonet-built hoiK, . cards began toppling about r. man ears a quarter century the sinister edifice Hitler aS°J Mussolini have reared in its in/"4 is rocking now with omei„/e, disaster. its junor architect Duce, has gone down in a heJ‘ long crash in Italy. carrvjne S’ him the whole Fascist win*/ babel of rumor of impending It ian and Balkan defection L nothing certain except the rZ cut fact that Hitlerized Germany is being isolated. y The day 13 close at hand she must fight alone an/ /en full weight of two-front war i8 pressing in upon her from */! and south. Per western defense are offering no security from 4 glo-American air attack that / ripping the industrial heart Z Germany to chreds, city by Cih plant by plant. No Pause Whatever its ultimate result tne po itical . pheaval in Italy th Z foretells her own and Nazi doom caused no moment's pause in nan and Anglo-American effm to crush Germany between the jaws of a colossal military vise The unconditional surrender terms set down for the foe allied councils at Casablanca many months ago were being re stated to Italy, collapsing like j punctured balloon, and to Ger many and o.ipan as well Thv the crash of Italy must bring with H not remotedly but soon a con verging Allied sea and air pou er to deal as sternly with Japan as witn foes in Europe is written for Tokyo’s war lords to read for themselves. That Casablanca pledge, like ve unconditional surrender demand is destined lo be implemented iu, sooner than Prime Minister Churchill and President Roose velt and theii military advisers could have deemed possible when they foregathered on French Afri can soil to map major strategic directives new bearing fruit around the globe. With or without her surrender Italy is already all but out of the war as an important factor. Thai means early ielease of Allied na va! strength and shipping from the Mediterranean for use else where in attack. It means by ev ery portent that the inching, slow rr-otion American-Austvalian of fensive in the upper Solomons and in western New Guinea is but a preliminary skirmish for tattles j to come in the Indian ocean-Paci- f lie theaters. And the southeastern sector of L the Japanese defense arc is being found vulnerable even now. Real ists in Tokyo can already see the doom of theiv fatal alliance with f 1he Axis in Europe. They can 'lead it in methodical America-: , sea and air bombardment of the:: !j lost legion on Kiska in the Aleu tians and in probing thrusts ;.' Japan's own island outposts. Tr.: roads to Jap.n itself are being , 1 certainiy prepared as was tv. J road to Italy Carolina i Bird-Lore THE HOl'SE WREN (By C. S. Brimley) For years we had been can the Carolina Wren, the “H** Wren” as it was the one coir in our lots and gardens and brew ing in anything that was W around that would hold a r,e" and it was rather funn; of it in northern books and article on birds as being a bird oi deep woods and thicket't around houses at all. In ^ase ,' the true House Wren of the bo* was known only to us as a ried transient that passed tnr * in the spring on its way nor , again in the fall on to its wintering ground south. However, in the -' f change came and how far ; | go no one knows. Hcu’e _ the genuine kind, grayer an - er than the Carolina '•Wei out a white stripe over tne ■ and with a shorter tail, ® breed in Salisbury and ed by Elmer Brown a Hoffman, since then -xe> ^ spread nearly all over though they may be aDs summer from the sout tion. but they arc present . . in all the larger towns of the State. Beaut Winston. Greensboro. Statesville, Charlotte, ju ., a few. Whether disappearance of the C. Ilf with its ringing “l dom” song from oui ■■■■,,.„ ■ gardens I do not k . ; the latter bird hat i its way farther n< • The House Wren lays 1. . -' es of eggs, but nest- 1 I same sort of situation-. 0 Mf cans, bird boxes, < handy receptacle, is particular. Let us n' p ’ ever, that the two spec 1 along together arid neit.nc. • ate the other, and so own neighborhood tiir have more than held tne