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Wilmington #tar North Carolina's Oldest Daily Newspaper Published Daily Except Sunday By The Wilmington Star-News R. B. Page, Owner and Publisher Entered as Second Class Matter at Wilming ton. N. C.. Pestoffice Under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879._ SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY CARRIER Payable Weekly Or in Advance Combi Time Star News nation 1 Week _$ 25 * 20 « 40 1 Month _ 1.10 .80 1.75 3 Months - 3-20 2.60 5.20 6 Months ........... 6:50 5.20 10.40 1 Year .. 13.00 10.40 20.80 News rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News BY MAIL: Payable Strictly in Advance Combi Time Star New* nation 1 Month .75 5 -50 i 90 3 Months ............ 2.00 1.50 2.75 6 Months ............ 4.00 3.00 5.50 1 Year .............. 8.00 8.00 10.00 News rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News_ MEMBER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS With confidence In our armed forces— with the unboundinf determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help ns God. —Roosevelt’s War Messafe. TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1944. Our Chief Aim To aid In every way the prosecution of the war to complete Victory. inuuuiu run. iuuai Worry never speeds the worker Never help to lift the load, Never cheers self or a neighbor Toiling o’er the weary road. Worry is a useless burden Weighted with distrust of God. ANON. -V A Weary Man Prime Minister Churchill’s Sunday after noon broadcast was chiefly notable for his defense of his ministry against its critics at home. He dwelt at length upon his four-year plan after the war for readjusting the armed services to civilian life, compulsory insur ance, government housing and demobilization in general. He spoke disparingly of his opponents and throughout lacked both his cus tomary eloquence and diplomacy. Concerning the war he had little to reveal or to inspire his hearers. The one point he made which embodies any special significance is that the war against the Japanese may be ended sooner than he had previously believed possible. Because of the great offensive of American, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Pacific and their penetration of the enemy’s island outposts, as well as the de terioration of Japanese shipping and air force, h foresees that the long struggle which a year ago he considered inevitable after Hit ler’s defeat may be materially shortened. This was his only prophetic assertion. Oth erwise he devoted the portion of his address dealing with the conflict to fully established and well known accomplishments of the Unit ed Nations. It was impossible to hear him without realizing that his mind—no less than his body was weary. The war has worn Mr. Churchill out. -V Tail of a Shirt Because of the manpower shortage and neavy wartime textile contracts, shirtmakers are having trouble obtaining sufficient ma terial to meet civilian needs for shirts. They hope the Office of Civilian Requirements will offer them relief as it recently did the knit ting industry by allocating yarns for civilian fabrication. Larger allocations are essential, they say, if the males of the specie are to be properly shirted. They might keep the trade supplied if they did away with shirt-tails altogether. This is not such a preposterous proposal as it may appear. Old men well remember that as boys they wore tailless shirtwaists with buttons ; near the nether end which fitted buttonholes in their knickerbockers. This had one charming advantage over present styles, in that boys were not con . tinually hiking up their pants as men who 1 preponderantly now wear belts are compelled to do. Furthermore, shirt-tails were not con tinually riding high, wide and handsome. Boys could even stoop without an embarrassing display, which a coatless belted man cannot escape. Someway manufacture of shirtwaists for men seems much better than some of the foolish rules emanating from the big shots in f Washington, such as forbidding bakers to slice bread and requiring tailors to leave cuffs off trousers, or even telling butchers how to cut meat. Victory Through Comics Having failed to stop Allied advances by customary, or even especially barbaric, meth ods the Japanese now propose to knock us out with comic strips. A Tokyo broadcast an nounces that the Japanese people are to have the “propaganda and enlightenment power” of their “funnies” utilized in bolstering the fighting spirit. The news was picked up by an American monitor. Tokyo is to establish a "greater east Asia comic strip study society” which will under take “a large drive to crush and bring the enemy, the United States and Britain, to their kmes.” We remember reading that the Chinese overcame an enemy by snaking up at night and hurling stink pots into his camp. But this is the first time we have heard of the conquering quality of Japanese humor. Put Savings To Work A. L. Wiggins, South Carolina banker, and president of the American Bankers Associ ation, issues a clear warning that if the peo ple’s reservoir of savings is not soon tapped j private enterprise it will be by govern ment. Addressing the savings conference of the Association in New York he declared failure to employ these funds would mean that they would become stagnant, and that the govern ment might undertake to use them for public works, houses, loans to business and even for operating costs of government. “On the other hand,” he added, “this back ing of savings may be energized through em ployment in the field of private'investment, private credit, and venture capital that will multiply business activity, increase national income, and add to purchasing power.” Responsibility, of course, rests, he said, with the owners of savings, and it is up to them to take risks if they choose. But if the owners leave their funds in savings banks the investments will devolve on the bankers. “There is where our responsibility begins,” he concluded. “Unless we, as bankers, have th- courage and the faith and the energy to employ these funds constructively, to create business, to provide employment, and to in crease the flow of goods to the consumers, we are inviting stagnation and economic strangulation.” It is one thing to maintain a cash reserve for domestic or business emergencies, but quite another to accumulate savings in ex cess of any probable emergency need. Such an excess becomes a drag and in proportion to its size a brake on the wheels of progress. Certainly capital at work is more valuable than stagnant capital. Mr. Wiggins’ remarks, intended primarily for bankers, deserve to be pondered by the people whose savings exceed their probable need. An additional reason for putting them to work through private enterprise is afford ed by his warning that if this is not done the government is only too likely to lay its heavy hand on them. We have had too many ex amples of the government’s predisposition to take what it wants in recent years, whether it has the constitutional right to do so or not, not to be apprehensive of its confiscation of savings too. "XT Pre-Induction Training It is the opinion of Maj. Ralph C. Wenrich, executive officer of tne Pre-Induction Training branch of the Army service forces, that boys of 16 and 17 should now be trained in some occupational skill in anticipation of their be ing called into the armed service during the next two years. One hundred thousand boys are reaching the age of 18 monthly, he said, and it is from their ranks that a substantial part of military forces will be drawn. Pre-inductjcin training, he said, “should cen ter upon the skills utilized in military occupa tions absorbing large numbers of men, those in which current shortages exist and those which require an extended period of time in which to obtain competence." Major Wenrich’s proposal has this in its fa.'or; the more future soldiers and naval men know in advance about the tasks they must perform, the less time will they have to devote to training in camps and special schools. The advantage of early training is well illustrated by the R .0. T. C., members of wh’>h have risen in rank quickly after being called up for service because they were al ready well grounded in the rudiments of mili tary service. —-V— Gasoline Deliveries Rise Gasoline is reported to be reaching the Eart coast at an average of 300,000 barrels daily in excess of prewar deliveries. The deputy petroleum director, Ralph K. Davies, has announced that last week deliveries averaged 6,700,960 barrels daily. This was well above the 1,710,000 barrels during the week of December 4 last. It is fair to assume, then, that no further need exists for curtailing civilian consump tion. Unless there is a sharp increase in the demand for military deliveries from this area it would appear that the supply problem is well in hand. If, however, war needs in crease and deliveries from other areas are not available, there can be no excuse for ci vilian complaint if rationing is tightened now that gasoline distributions have been placed on r.n equitable basis throughout the country. No motor vehicle operator could be justified in resisting additional reductions in his sup ply if it is shown, beyond peradventure of doubt, that what he would otherwise get is actually needed for military operations. --y Congressional Recess It probably seems strange to many persons that Congress can adjourn at this critical stage of the war and in face of the many troublesome domestic problems awaiting solu tion. The decision to recess from March 3C to April 12, however, can be viewed as a step in the public and the nation’s interest. There has been so much bickering, such heated arguments, of late, that it will be wise for the members to go home for a while and cool off. The course of legislation should be smoother when they come back refreshed. Another good reason for a recess is thai members will have opportunity to learn at first hand the attitude of their constituencies, both as to war politics and domestic affairs. With this knowledge, and perhaps with great er appreciation of their stewardship, they car return to Capitol Hill with a clearer under standing of their duties and renewed deter mination to perform them in a workmanlike l^anner, without quarreling Japanese Good Imitators The Japanese are good imitators. They have displayed this characteristic innumerable times. A new example is offered by a radio cast from Tokyo relayed from Berlin. It proves that the German proficiency in lying has been adopted by Japanese propagandists. This radiocast said that Japanese troops in a heavy attack had occupied part of the American positions on Bougainville. A division and a half of American forces were declared under Japanese attack. Now comes the report of this action from Allied headquarters in which it is revealed that some 2,000 Japanese launched a suicide offensive at Torokina on Eougainville and were promptly thrown back with 300 dead. The American communique declares that American losses were four killed, forty-seven wounded and one missing. The Associated Press dispatch dealing with the action, in which the Japanese had claimed to have oc cupied part of our positions, says the enemy, abandoning his customary night attack, came up against our wire pillbox defenses in the afternoon, offering perfect targets for our machine guns and that by 1 o’clock the next day the fighting was over with the American perimeter in its original position. The true fact probably is that the campaign of attrition which the Allied forces under Gen eral. MacArthur is waging in the islands of the southwest Pacific has driven Japanese forces to desperation, and they are ready to die rather than go on without food or sup plies. But when Tokyo reports them occupy ing our positions it but proves its skill at imitating Herr Goebbels in Berlin. —- v Federal Employes Mount The Civil .Service Commission reports that the government had on its pay rolls 2,920,036 employes at the end of January, an increase of 8,224 over December. This is better than in June of last year when the toal of federal employes had moun ed to 3,002,453. It represents some decrease in most agencies, but in January there was an increase of 10,760 in the number of Navy Department workers, which could mean that the vigorous public protest which resulted in a general reduction in government em ployes is being forgotten and may have to be renewed to remind the bureaucrats that the people still have a voice, if not a loud one. in the affairs of their country. It would be tremendously helpful if bureau chiefs could be required to make a con scientious check of their working staffs and release the members thereof who are not performing essential duties. Other Surpluses By NEAL STANFORD Make ready for the deluge. Alreday the clouds are lowering and raindrops falling. Of course, we’re referring to the downpour of surplus war materials that is going to hit these United States when peace comes. It may not put a chicken in every pot, but it should provide a jeep for every garage, a GI pair of shoes for every adult male. That is the impression one gets after listen ing to William Clayton, surplus war materi als disposer, after reading Baruch and Han cock’s study, after scanning war-surplus ad vertisements in the papers. As Mrs. Baruch prophesied, there will literally be everything from ships to sealing wax to be disposed of after this war. A lot of things that costs millions will have no value after the war. For example, who wants a block-buster? Should the explosives the materials that went into it, be salvaged as scrap? That may cost more than the scrap is worth. Some surpluses, literally, may have to be dumped in the sea. Remember the as sorted artillery that covered the Nation’s municipal parks and courthouse lawns after the last war? This time it will be Grant and Sherman tanks, dive bombers, maybe a bazooka. Some people will profit out of this disposal of war surpluses despite Administrator Clay ton’s refusal to deal with speculators. But the average buyer of surplus goods won t make a killing. There will be few if any more of those chances to buy up Army batteries for $80 and resell them for $20,000. The un favorable publicity that deal and one or two others have received has Congress up in arms. Charges of fraud may yet come from such exposures. , Undoubtedly, you didn t get one of the 60 training planes the War Department recently offered for sale. Don’t sulk. There’ll be more, thousands more when this war is over. You even may not get one of the several hundred Army trucks now being disposed of. Don’t fret. After the war, Army trucks, jeeps, peeps, “ducks” “alligators” will be so common our guess is you’ll want a good old black sedan just to be different. In last Sunday’s paper we notice two ads: One blared forth in big headlines “War Sur plus Materials—Thousands of items for sale ready for immediate delivery. Write in! Phone in' Come in!” The second are more modestly screamed: “War Surplus Materials. ’ Do you need some washers? Here are 80U, 000 pounds of them for sale. How about a tarpaulin — made from barrage balloons? Perhaps you’d like one of 2000 canvas gas mask bags—if you have a gas mask. 1 know you could use a new Talon zipper. The army s getting rid of 7000 feet of them. And so it goes. __, Time, in wartime is the essence.” That’s an impressive phrase. Actually time seems to be something of a war surplus here. For example: Monday i lis tened to War Surplus Disposer Clayton testi fy before the House Banking and Currency Committee. It wanted to know his name, what his job was, what he did, how he did it’ why he did it. The answer to practically all these questions were in the Baruch report or in the executive order setting up the War Surplus Administration. Still it was an inter esting and informative session. Mr. Clayton answered his critics in a sincere engaging manner. But then came Tuesday. On Tuesday Mr. Clayton appeared before the House Postwar Planning Committee. He told them what he did, 'how he di<f it, why he did it, for whom he did it. It was a repeat performance. It was a better performance, too. On the fifth or _ _. _ ___1 —~ g—**1 — ■ ‘ THE INSIDE STORY With Ernie Pyle Daily rrayer FOR SPEEDY VICTORY “How long, O Lord, how long?” We wait and work and yearn for the ending of this great struggle between the forces of unrighteous ness and the forces of justice and liberty and peace and brother hood. Wilt Thou not stretch forth Thine almighty hand, to bring speedy victory to the right? The issue is with Thee. Tljou, O King, art conqueror over all; let the heathen see Thy sword unsheath ed. We know that Thou art chas tening us and teaching us and pre paring us, because of our sins, national and personal-. But we throw ourselves at the feet of Thy mercy, pleading with Thee to shorten the time. Our hearts are wrung by the world’s wounds and woe. Give peace in our time, O God; give peace in our time. Grant us wisdom and courage to follow Thy leading in the new world that peace will bring unto us, that we may inherit Thy prom ises. Amen.—W. T. E. 40 & 8SP0NS0RS BOY SCOUT TROOP At the regular monthly meeting of Wilmington Voiture No. 245, For ty and Eight, Fun and Honor So ciety of the American Legion Mon day night at the Famous Grill sev eral matters of importance to the Voiture were discussed. The mem bership unanimously adopted a resolution to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop at Wrightsville Beach, to be known as Troop 24. The following members of the Forty and Eight were named by Chef de Gare J. Carl Seymour as a committee to serve with the Skipper, R. C. Malone of the S.S.S. Shangri-La.: W. J. Riley, chair, man, E. F. Troy, J. B. Edwards, J. R. Hollis and Lt. S. Bunn Frink of the U. S. Coast Guard. Arrange ments were also completed for the spring promenade and "Wreck” to be held in Wilmington April 29. The following members were ap pointed to perform important parts in the initiation ceremony: Geo. G. Avant, Conducteur, Judge John J. Burney, Carl W. Fulford, Dr. Jno. By ERNIE PYLE WITH THE ALLIED BEACH HEAD FORCES IN ITALY,—(by wireless)—When you get to Anzio you waste no time getting off the boat, for you have been feeling pretty much like a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery. But after a few hours in Anzio you wish you were back on the boat, for you could hardly describe being ashore as any haven of pep''~J’\ilness. As we came into the harbor, shells skipped the water within a hundred yards of us. On our first day ashore, a bomb exploded so r’^se to the place where I was sitting that a frag ment came through the window of the room next to mine. On our second evening ashore a screamer slammed into the hill so suddenly that it almost knocked us down with frienght. It smacked into the trees a short distance away. And on the third day ashore, an 88 went off within 20 yards of us. I wished I was in New York. When I write about my own oc casional association with shells and bombs, there is one thing I want you folks at home to be sure to get straight. And that is that the other correspondents are in the same boat—many of them much more so. You know about my own small experiences, because it’s my job to write about how these things sound and feel. But you don’t know what the other reporters go through, because it usually isn’t their job to write about them selves. There are correspondents here on the beachhead, and on the Cas sino front also, who have had doz ens of close shaves. I know of one correspondent who was knocked down four times by near misses on his first day here. Two correspondents, Reynolds Packard of the United Press and Homer Bigart of the New York Herald-Tribune, have been on the beachhead since D-day without a moment’s respite. They’ve become so veteran that they don’t even mention a hell striking 20 yards away. On this beachhead every inch of our territory is under German ar tillery fire. There is no rear area that is immune, as in most battle zones. They can reach us with their 88s, and they use everything from that on up. I don’t mean to suggest that they keep every foot of our territory drenched with shells all the time, for they certainly don’t. They are short of ammunition, for one thing. But they can reach us, and you never know where they’ll shoot next. You’re just as liable to get hit standing in the doorway of the villa where you sleep at night, as you are in a command post five miles out in the field. Some days they shell us hard, and some days hours will go by without a single shell coming over. Yet nobody is wholly safe and any body who says he has been around Anzio two days without having a shell hit within a hundred yards of him is just bragging. People who know the sounds of warfare intimately are puzzled and irritated by the sounds up here. For some reason, you can’t tell anything about anything. The Germans shoot shells of half a dozen sizes, each of which makes a different sound of explosion. You can’t gauge distance at all. One shell may land within your block and sound not much louder than a shotgun. Another landing a quar ter mile away makes the earth tremble as in an earathquake, and starts your heart to pounding. You can’t gauge direction, eith er. The 88 that hit within 20 yards of us didn’t make so much noise. I would have sworn it -was 200 yards away and in the opposite di rection. * Sometimes you hear them com ing, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you hear the shell whine after you’ve heard it ex plode. Sometimes you hear it whine and it never explodes. Some times the house trembles and shakes and you hear no explosion at all. But I’ve found one . thing here that’s just the same as anywhere else—and that’s that old weakness in the joints when they get to land ing close. I’ve been weak all over Tunisia and Sicily, and in parts of Italy, and I get weaker than ever up here. When the German raiders come over at night, and the sky lights up bright as day with flares, and ack-ack set up a turmoil and pretty soon you hear and feel the terrible power of exploding bombs —well, your elbows get flabby and you breathe in little short jerks and your chest feels empty and you’re too exicted to do anything but hope. _ The Literary Guidepost By JOHN SELBY “THE LOOM OF LANGUAG7,” Dy rreaencK uoamer; i.anceioi Hogben, editor (Norton; $3.75). Frederick Bodmer’s “The Loom of Language” is a huge book, heavy and hard to hold for read ing, but it is so exciting and so important that these considera tions are most unimportant. I have read a third of it, and skip ped along through the rest; if any body tells you he has read the book in a day he is speaking non sense. He is also on the stupid side, because the book is not in tended for quick reading, but for long (and, oddly, playful) thumb ing. Lancelot Hogben is the editor, which may account for the attrac. tive presentation, since Mr. Hog ben was the author of “Math ematics for the Million,” which did a good job of popularizing that science. Messrs. Bodmer and Hogben have tried to do more or less the same thing here, and their book will be more interesting than “Mathematics for the Million” to a great many people. “The Loom of Language” is about language, of course. It shows how it grew through his tory, and how its service as an agent of communication has af fected the world, and how the world has affected it. But this is only part of it. The book also shows how one may learn lan guages, and how dangerous and dull the usual system of language study is, because it is based on an unattainable ideal—perfection. They believe, for one thing, that it is not at all difficult to learn to read or speak a language, and not too difficult to understand a con versation — although this is the boost difficult department of the study. They even think it easy to pick up two languages at once, provided they are of the same family. That is, German and Dutch and Danish can be studied together with satisfying' result; so could French and Italian. This is a small part of what “The Loom of Language” does. The important thing is that through basic resemblances, through basic vocabularies and root resemblances and phonetic patterns most of the important world languages can be made tools in the hands of most fairly intellieent ueoDle. sixth try, he should be letter per fect. But so far only two House com mittees have had a chance at him. And there are Senate committees that want to know who he is. Can you see the potentialities now for spending time here in the capital? It wras John Hancock, co-author of the Baruch report, who, crying in the wilderness of hopeless causes, last week urged the stream lining of congressional committees. Very politely, Mr. Honcock sug gested to this came House Postwar Planning Committees interested in postwar plans coalesce. If that is too much to ask, at least all House committees could unite in hearing one man’s testimony, all Senate committees do likewise. Yes, war surpluses are tomor row’s problems, world surpluses today’s.—Christian Science Mon Monitor. \ Interpreting The War By KIRKE L. SIMPSON Associated Press War Analyst Russian forces poised along the east bank of the Prut River and now holding the Kamenets-Podolsk key to the Cemauti gateway to the Siret Valley are aiming' the most deadly offensive blow of the war at German resources. They have aone more than rout enemy invaders from the southern Ukraine except for Nazi divisions virtually trapped in the Nikolaev Odessa pocket. They are aligned to pass definitely from an offen sive-defensive strategy to an ag. gressive offensive that could deal Hitler’s armies the most damag. ing blow yet struck at them by the United Nations war fellowship. The crucial front the Germans' must hold in Rumania if they are not to lose their most vital war resource. Rumanian oil, is the stretch of the Siret River above its junction with the Danube near Galati. The Prut and the Siret, en tering the Danube close to each other, afford the Nazi a water guarded defense line linking the Danube delta with Carpathians and Transylvanian Alps. The wide span ol open country from Galati north westward to the mountains and protected only by the Siret River is the vulnerable, sector of the Nazi indicated deployment to cover Plo esti and its vi+al oil installations. It seems clear that both the Prut and the Siret fronts have been Rus sian outflanked to the north and northeast, however, and that a con verging Russian mass attack to break through to Ploesti is now developing. Russian capture of Ka menets-P o d o 1 s k has definitely opened the way for a Red army surge down the Siret Valley snap ping the Lwow-Bucharest railway, last north - south communication line east of the Carpathian Moun tain wall in German hands. It hns also effectively covered the right flank of the Second Ukrainian Ar my southward on the Prut against any possible major German attack from the north. On the Prut the Russians were last reported less than 200 miles from Ploesti, the great Rumanian oil center from which pipe lines run to the Black Sea and to the Danube through the iron gate of the River Run. By every indication Russian strategy in the bitter fighting in the Ukraine and southeastern Po land has been aimed for weeks at isolating the upper sector of the Danube delta in Rumania for a crushing blow at Nazi oil re sources. Whether the attack also is to be pushed into the Carpathian passes now in sight of Russian troops and giving access to Hun gary and Czechoslovakia is open to doubt. Turkish reporis indicate the Ger mans are using their seizure of Hungarian roads and railroads to rush heavy forces southeastward for a desperate stand in the Dan ube delta. They are entirely cred ible in view of the imminent dan ger in which the Ploesti oil hub stands. Its loss or destruction by Russian bombers would be a crip pling blow to the whole German war effort afloat, aground or in the air. Rumanian oil not only pro vides the Nazis with the bulk of their high-tes* aviation fuel but with lubricants for all high-duty en gines and machinery. For that reason the impending Nazi-Russian battle of the Danube delta could be one of the decisive engagements of the war, the fore runner of German collapse. T. Hoggard, W. J. Riley. E. F. Troy, Max B. Register. J. B. Ed wards. Sheriff C. David Jones. Harry E. Fales, J. R. Hollis and Clarence Leon. Commander Westbrook of Wil mington Post. No. 10. American Legion, addressed a few brief re marks to the Voiture regarding membership of the Post and a res olution was approved pledging full support in enrolling members who have not as yet renewed their 1911 membership and are now listed as “delinquent.” The Post now has 526 members and when the drive is finished should have well over 600. Com mander Westbrook also thanked the Voiture for their efforts in so liciting funds for the purchase of the Bridgers home as a perma nent home for the American Le gion. As soon as this property is available to the Legion, the Fort? and Eight will be assigned quar ters for their future meetings. Mr. Seymour also commented on the purchase of the Legion home, stat ing that following former wars, pa triotic citizens would generously contribute funds to erect a monu ment coinmerating some outstand ing feat of a local hero, or some great victory. Usually such monu ments were a granite shaft in one form or another. What the Wil mington Post is striving for now is to create a living memorial to our boys and girls who are giving their life as a forefeit that their loved ones back home may be as sured freedom from the tyrant of the future. Also, that our boys and girls who are fortunate enough to return to their homeland, a place where they can always go for recreation and find comradship and a warm wel come. These boys and girls will appreciate this kind of a monu ment a thousand times more than a big block 6f stone in the street that very few people give more than a casual glance in passing The meetiiig was closed using the official ritual ceremony. -V About one-fourth of all the land in the Netherlands is belpw sea level.