Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 June 1943 — Page 9
Hoosier Vagabond
SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA (By Wireless). — Our.
%oldiers like Leopoldville fine, although they suffer from a monotony complex. For even a town of 50,000 has its limitations. Of an evening they can go into town, have a couple of beers at a sidewalk cafe, and then go to a movie. The army runs a truck back out to camp each night after the movie. The only prostitute in “Leo” was an anemic French mademoiselle who followed the worldwide custom in all lines of endeavor of upping the price about 300 per cent the moment Americans heave into view. But the colonel in charge beat her to it by
putting her place out of bounds
the instant they arrived. There ensued a long correspondence in which the mademoiselle was first insulted, then standing on her rights, then humble, then pleading, and as it' wound up, she got so utterly lonesome she finally wrote the colonel just to let the boys come in to sit and talk about the weather.
. The colonel still said no. The boys said she only.
weighed 85 pounds and was too ugly to talk to any- - "how. ~ Thus died the only vestige of a Sadie Thompson story that I've runonto in the tropics.
Big Hospital, Few Patients
WE HAD a big army hospital at “Leo.” It was ijlt to care for hundreds, but the most it ever had a few score patients. The staff was still hanging around when I was there, but they've moved along before now. An odd thing about it was that, due to the censorship of mail and the average American's complete lack of knowledge about Africa's size and climates, most of the nurses’ families back home thought they ‘were up in North Africa dodging bullets, when actually they were about 5000 miles from the war.
Forced Savings
(Lowell Nussbaum is on vacation. This is the first of six articles on the subject of compulsory lending to the government.) .
WASHINGTON, June 21.—Inflation is one of the greatest homefront dangers in wartime. If permitted to gather momentum, it can defeat us. This is the opinion of people who should know, both inside and outside the government. Randolph Paul, treasury general counsel, pictured the effects of inflation in this somber language: “To consumers, inflation means ruinous increases in the cost of living. It means ‘a shrinkage in the purchasing power of their current earnings and the . confiscation of much of their past savings. “Wartime inflation piles additional hardships on top of these evils. By increasing the cost of war it expands the public debt and intensifies the government’s revenue needs. “Morale is undermined. WY “In short, seeds of destruction are sown beneath e whole war effort.” These things are not new. But they are important now because we are in the midst of a year when the inflation threat will reach a peak.
: More Must Be Done :
THE PRESIDENT has moved, through the use of ¥arious controls to meet the threat. But much more will have to be done. , Income payments to individuals will total about $135,000,000,000 this year. Direct personal income-tax payments will cut this by about $15,000,000,000, leaving $120,000,000,000. This is the amount consumers will have to spend and to save.
England
LONDON, June 21 (By Wireless).—Proposals for Joint British-American citizenship are unfortunate and Quixotic. They are unfortunate because they needlessly arouse controversy and. antagonism to much more reasonable plans for international co- . operation. They are Quixotic because they rely on a mechanical plan, and ignore strong human factors which are important realities in the world of politics. It’s like proposing that, in order to have a peaceful neighborhood, all families must merge under a common roof, thus possibly provoking just the opposite ‘of neighborhood peace. One of my pleasant surprises on this visit to England is that I find an unexpectedly large mount of friendly spirit ahd true co-operation between the British and American forces, especially at the higher levels of the air forces. v It-is being demonstrated between the air forces here, and also I suppose in the North African theater, that the forces of two separate nations can function as a joint force in pooling their facilities, It is being demonstrated now, in action, that * there are enough reasonable human beings in higher positions in both nations and in both forces to make them, for all practical purposes, one force.
> Set Pattern for Peace Force
. YOU NEED go no further than this to find a _ pattern for the so-called international force to keep the peace. It need not be formally international, but a group functioning as the British and American forces function now under the combined chiefs of
staff. A year ago, in Africa, India and China, I found .pot too much mutual confidence. In fact, there “was much of the opposite—mistrust and general criticism. It was difficult to determine, by listening’ to the talk among Americans and British, who was “the enemy. Several of the American army sations I have
HYDE PARK, Sunday.—I have started my 10 days . ‘vacation. Miss Thompson and I reached Hyde Park * Friday evening. Yesterday was very largely given over to watching with amazement the preparation which goes into the production ‘of any theatrical performance. John Golden came before lunch to rehearse “The Army, : Play by Play.” Long before he _ was here, the soldier band arrived by a train which must have left
‘new York City somewhere around ‘5 o'clock in the morning. The cast
b
arrived and all of them found. rpenters and stage hands hard
at. work. These last had been up here; as far I could find out, for several days. : A little theater had suddenly and from. the
By Ernie Pyle
One Saturday night when I was there, the doctors and nurses gave a big farewell party for themselves and invited me. The early part of the evening was spent signing each other’s Short Snorter bills. Then finally it came to the point where I either had to get up and dance voluntarily or else be dragged bodily out onto the floor by a few husky nurses, so I slipped out the back door and ran home. The surgical and medical staff was largely from the Presbyterian hospital in New York. Lt; Col. william Casey of Portland, Me., was in command, and he spent most of his time worrying. about the prodigality of keeping surgeons who were $30,000-a-year men in civil life just sitting there 5000 miles from the nearest shooting, with nobody to operate on. But, as I say, they've moved since I was there. They were a grand bunch of Americans there at “Leo,” all sort of hanging closely together in desperation against ‘boredom and nothing-to-do and lonesomeness.
Like Living in a Vacuum
OUT AT the camp the few boys who are left do a little work on the roads and keep the camp utilities going, and that’s about all. The first night I was there ‘they asked me to come and sit with them at the post exchange, and they all stayed at camp just to pump me with questions about what it was like in Tunisia and the rest of Africa. Their attitude was that they would prefer to be up north in action, but since they weren't and had nothing to say about it, they guessed they weren't so badly off at that. None of them felt that the tropics were getting them or anything like that. ‘The boys amuse themselves by going on Sunday picnics into the bush, playing cards at the post exchange of an evening, taking lots of photographs, sending home ivory carvings, going to town to see the movies, and writing letters.
Their mail service is good, their food is all right}
their health is fine, and lifé in general for them is 0. k.—with the one important exception that after a while it just sort of gets like living in a vacuum.
By Marshall McNeil
But this year it is likely that not much more than $75,000,000,000 worth of goods and services will be available for consumers.to buy. That leaves roughly $45,000,000,000 which, as Mr. Paul says, “must be saved or taxed away if the cost
of living is to be safeguarded”—if, in other words, we
are to avoid uncontrolled inflation: There are two ways of draining off this surplus buying power. One is by taxation; the other by saving. The present congressional program does not call for consideration of a new tax bill until autumn. By withholding income-tax payments at the source, the new current-tax-collection bill will help sop up some of this purchasing power in the second half of this year. . Next year and the year after, existing tax laws will take up®a little more, as 25 per cent of 1942 taxes, unforgiven under the current-tax-collection measure, becomes payable. This will account for roughly $3,000,000,000 in those years.
President Mentions Savings
MEANWHILE, THE treasury will push its voluntary war-bond saving program. It will try harder and harder to get more individuals to buy more bonds. But the obstacles to extension of voluntary bond purchases are obvious. The current-tax-collection bill set up an important one in its 20 per cent withholding tax. The president himself, at his June 8 press conference, spoke of the possibility of compulsory savings as one way of helping close the inflationary gap. It was. the first time Mr. Roosevelt had let the words compulsory savings escape his lips with any degree of warmth. His statement, vague though it fs, has added to the general discussion here about abandon- | ment of the voluntary bond sales program, and substitution of a forced savings plan. Such a plan, supplementing higher taxes on income and outgo, would give important help in curbing the inflation threat.
By Raymond Clapper
visited in England have been provided for us by the British on a reciprocal lend-lease basis. If the R.A.F. had not turned over to us some of its facilities, including some of its best permanent stations, our air force would be seriously delayed in: getting its full strength into the air. Gen. Eaker and Air Marshal Harris are close friends. I have asked both the army air forces and the army service forces about some reported instances of the British holding out on equipment on us, but I am assured these reports are erroneous. For. instance, as to one secret device: which I had heard the British were withholding from our air forces, on the contrary it is being provided and is being used as a basis for important surprises still to ‘come in air tactics.
Don’t Need Joint Citizenship
ONE GROUP of American technicians that came
. over recently was skeptical about an offer the British
had made for using certain facilities here to manufacture an item needed by the American air forces. The American group, on arriving, asked what the British expected to get out of it. They checked the whole proposition with extreme suspicion because they feared that their own peacetime business might be affected, but they could find no post-war commercial motive and finaly concluded that the proposition was meant to help win the war more quickly, and recommended its acceptance. That is not to say there is no self-interest at work, because of .course there is, in every country, and the best bargain is one that both sides profit from. We may be sure the British will drive the best bargains they can, and so will everybody else, .including, I hope and expect, the Americans. ~~ But the British know they will never again be safe without the United States. We know in America that Britain is our most forward defense base in the Atlantic, just as the Pacific islands must be ih that direction. On the basis of such realities it ought to be possible to proceed, along with Russia and China, to build a mutual interest in preventing future aggression. But we don’t need Joint citizenship to do it.
By Eleanor Roosevelt
seermied to be a minor consideration. And yét I never knew young men who were not interested in eating, so I was relieved to find that Mr. Golden had sent for food in the middle of the day for these boys. I made Mr. Golden leave them for a few minutes of
- quiet, while he came to the house to lunch with us.
' Our neighbors, the people on my sister-in-law’s place and our place and a contingent of soldiers from the military police school, all enjoyed a repeat performance of “The Army, Play by’ Play,” and I think it was better than the first time I saw it last Monday - in New York City. I am glad I am not a producer, however, it takes so much patience and energy and real artistic temperament. The column which to me stands out as the most human and vivid story of the men in the African Sheatar is Ernie Byles. 1 would no miss thas cols every day if I I possibly i
Greco-Albanian front.
not even the Germans. It
the year. By stamping the
The airline official said, “Have you got permission from the air ministry to
make such a trip?” Reynolds showed him the pass. He looked at it and said, “That’s all right, only you need a stamp on it from the air ministry.” At the air ministry, a colonel inspected the paper and, seeing Ciano’s signature on it, plus the counterfeit renewal, said, “Most unusual, most unusual. But I guess Count Ciano knows what he’s doing.” He then stamped it, and half an hour later, Reynolds had the ticket in his pocket. Reynolds took off the next “morning. In Tirana, luck was with him, because Lorusso, head of the Albanian propaganda ministry, had left an hour before for the front, with a dozen Italian correspondents. Only Veronese was in the office. He just assumed that Reynolds’ papers must have been in order or otherwise he wouldn’t be there. ” ” »
Receives Military Pass
“BUT YOU MUST HAVE a military pass,” he said. “I'll get it for you right away.” Two hours later, he called on Reynolds with the pass, duly signed by Lt. Gen. Jacomoni. “I've .also arranged for you to go ‘to. Argirokastron, where the Italian army press headquarters are located, tomorrow.” At Argirokastron, Lorusso greeted Reynolds coldly. He couldn't believe that any foreign correspondent, let alone an American, could have received permission to come to the front. - Reynolds casually pulled out the Albanian permit signed by Jacomoni, and Lorusso broke into smiles and said, “Amico mio, how glad I am to see you. We're going to the Janina front tomorrow, and I have a place in my ‘car. for you.” The next day, .Reynolds entered Greek territory with Lorusso and was impressed by the small number of Italian soldiers in evidence. He found all the bridges blown: up and all strategic points on the ArgirokastronJanina road dynamited. All along the route were traffic jams, where the Italians had sent up
LLUNY EMPIRE
134 VIN LL AIA CN 1%
Greeks Trick Duce By Taking Money, Keeping Freedom
. VIII—GREECE NOT FOR SALE
THE GREEK WAR had been in progress barely one day when all the American correspondents in Rome began receiving instructions from New York to proceed to the But how to get there? Italians were not issuing passes for Albania to anyone,
The
looked well-nigh impossible.
On the third night of the war, Eleanor suddenly remembered. What she remembered was that Reynolds still had tucked away in a bureau drawer an old Albanian lascia-passare signed by Ciano. “If you doctor up that old permit you used on your last trip,” Eleanor said, “you could make it look like new.” We had some impressive rubber stamps in the U. P. office, bearing such words as Autorizzato and Valido, as well as a printing machine for reproducing any date of
old permit -with the Italian
phrase for “Authorized” and “Valid, October 31, 1940,” . Eleanor made it look quite fresh and awe-inspiring. The next day, Reynolds called at the office of the Ala Littoria airline and asked for a ticket to Tirana.
scores of truckloads of reinforce-
ments before the bridges and °
gaps had been repaired. Reynolds passed at least twelve villages, which he inspected with the Italian correspondents. They had all been evacuated except.’ for a few sick and aged. Even they were admirably surly. ” = ”
Couldn’t Reach Front
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to reach the front that night, owing to the traffic snarls, and the party returned to Argirokastron. After supper, the Italian correspondents sat down at their typewriters in an improvised press room. Lorusso announced, before they staried to type, that the theme of the day was that the populace of every Greek town through which the Italians passed had stayed behind and greeted the soldiers with flowers, bread, and wine, “The keynote tonight is the friendliness of the Greek people,” Lorusso said. “They greet us as liberators who are freeing them from a tyrannical government.” As Reynolds watched the Italian correspondents industriously type out such falsehoods, Lorusso came over and said, “You don’t seem to be writing anything tonight.” Reynolds said-he was going to write war stories only and he was waiting to get to the front.
- ® ” ®
Hold Hour Picnic
THE NEXT DAY, however, Lorusso insisted on conducting a . tour of Ciamuria, just across the Albanian frontier. But owing to a two-hour picnic lunch, the party did not reach farther than Konispoli, inside the Albanian frontier. Outside of the fact that “a good time was had by all,” the whole trip was pointless.
When they returned to the press headquarters in Argirokastron, Lorusso informed the Italian correspondents that the theme of the day was: “The heroism of the Albanians.” “You might mention how, when these Albanians were wounded, they all cried ‘Viva Il Duce.’” The next morning, fortunately, Lorusso was called back to Tirana. It was welcome news to the Italian correspondents, who
Tirana, capital of Albania. Reynolds Packard, co-author, reached Tirana on a counterfeit pass. From there he went to the Hghiing lines to learn the full hypocrisy of II Duce’s claims about the Albanian
resistance.
These Albanian soldiers are Epica] of those the Italians met in their farcical conquest. The Talia propaganda chief told reporters, “You might mention how, when these Albanians are wounded, thoy:a " Sh
cried ‘Viva Il Duce.’”
all wanted to see some fighting. Immediately, a trip without Lorusso was ju bilantly organized to the Janina sector. As the party approached the front, Reynolds was again baffled by the lack of soldiers on all sides. There were only groups of a few hundreds each gathered here and there. The number of soldiers was even less as they . came within range of Greek artillery fire, which got. heavier as the afternoon wore on, and. all the correspondents had to seek cover in roadside ditches. 2 8 =
Keep on Running
REYNOLDS COULD SEE three soldiers with white flower pot fezzes running to the rear. They were shouting something in Albanian, Reynolds asked the Italian correspondent next to him what they were saying. The Italian replied, “They're crazy. They say tHe Greeks are coming.” He jumped up and tried to intercept them. He knocked down the leading one, saying in Italian:
“You pigs of misery, it’s only *
artillery fire. Get back to your posts.” They just kept on run‘ning. ’ The trip was a revelation. It showed that the Italians had launched an attack without adequate preparation. . The entire advance had been stopped by a bit of artillery fire and a few machine guns
It seemed ridiculous that Mussolini would have attempted to invade a country like Greece without bringing up at least several
By VICTOR GORDON LIENNOX Copyr sight, 1943, by The Indianapolis Times The Chicago Daily News, Inc. LONDON, June 21—Field Marshall Sir Archibald P. Wavell, Britain’s foremost soldier - statesman and No. 1 military trouble shooter, who has been designated as the next viceroy of India; will be the first Britisher to hold this post whose reputation has been built up in the military sphere. His choice creates an interesting precedent, but Wavell is not an ordinary soldier and it would be wrong to deduce from this choice that Britain is brandishing a military big stick toward India. It is perfecfly possible, on the contrary, that Wavell will pursue a more liberal policy than deemed feasible by the present viceroy, the Marquess of Linlithgow, who will retire in October after a much-ex-tended term which began in 1936. ‘Field Marshall’ for Life Wavell will now terminate his military career, although he will retain the title of “field marshall” for life. He will be elevated to the peer-
$80,000 a year. Sir Archibald is revered by the British as one of their best “allrounders,” although the fates de-
Wavell, 1st Soldier to Be India Viceroy, Is Expected to Follow a Liberal Policy
liant campaign, carried out with a mere handful of troops, when the British first cleared the Italians out of East Africa and routed Marshal Rudolfo Graziani’'s overwhelmingly larger forces from Libya during the winter of 1940.
During that period, when Wavell commanded all the Middle Eastern area, he had plenty of opportunity to display statesmanlike gifts when handling the most difficult tribal questions in Abyssinia, Somaliland and throughout Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Arabia, as well as politico-military questions of the highest delicacy. Wavell, who is. 60 years old, minus one eye, which he lost in the last war, is a keen sportsman and a fine polo player, with an adventurous spirit and a touch of the gambler. He is a considerable man of letters, deeply read, and wields a fine pen, as proved by his “Life of Allenby,” another fine British soldier, with whom Wavell served
age and have his salary tripled to, in the Middle East in the last war.
Allenby later became-an excellent
civil administrator * as’ ‘high com-'
missioner of He also has the gift of being liked. ie united X s agreed to
post in Malaya last fall, hoping that the combined British, American and Australian efforts could hold that “island barrier” he gained general respect and admiration. The people of India seemingly respect’ Wavell also. He has consistently paid the warmest tributes to India’s great war contributions and urged the Indian people to combine to oppose “Nazism with its godlessness, cruelty, lack. of faith and honor.” : Wavell has a close family link with the United States. His grandfather, Gen. Arthur Goodall Wavell, after the Napolionic war, took service in the new world for the king of Spain and later helped Mexico in its fight for independence. He secured hundreds of thousands of acres of land in northeast Texas in 1825, extending from the Red river southward to Sulphur river. This became known as “Wavell’s colony.” These colonists later de-
clared themselves free and joined|
the United States.
RARE METAL ALLOCATED
Perrocolumbium, used for alloying | with steel to make it more weldable, is produced from imported rare-
metal columbium ore, now completelo by the
hundred thousand troops. And yet Reynolds was convinced from what he saw that there could not have been more than 30,000 Italian troops on the Greek front. Eleanor, back in e, in the meantime had unearthed the real story, but couldn’t send it. ® x =
‘Wag Ciano’s Idea
THE GREEK INVASION was a Ciano idea. In collusion with Jacomoni, one of his favorite yes-men, Ciano had worked out a plan that appeared logical on paper. The plan that he submitted to the Duce was that the Greeks could be bought as easily as street peddlers. Mussolini checked with Grazzi, Italian Minister in Athens, who agreed that a lot of money and few troops would: be sufficient for an Italian parade into Athens. Members of the Chigi palace told Eleanor that Greek government leaders had accepted the bribe, but didn’t carry out their part of the bargain. One foreign office official said, “The Greeks accepted many millions of: lire and then used the money to fight us.” This and similar: statements may have been more Fascist alibis, but there was no doubt that Reynolds, as the only nonItalian correspondent in Greece with the Italian army at the beginning of the war, could see that Mussolini was counting on some sort of diplomatic coup for: the annexation of Greece. ' Certainly, he could never have expected to cohquer Greece with thirty thousand soldiers.
BRITISH STORIES MAY AID NAZIS
Press Reveals Movements oug Of the King, Churchill With Abandon.
LONDON, June 21 (CDN)—In a whole series of astonishing stories; which must be delighting Nazi bigwigs, the British press, totally disregarding basic security rules agreed upon as a‘ war measure, has been publishing details of the movements of prominent allied personages and commanders, How King George flew from Britain to North Africa and the fact that the King used the same Liberator which carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill’ on his re-
slackening of the sense of -re--in such matters which could ultimately greatly benefit the
allowed to continue unchecked.
Change Attitudes
IT WASN'T LONG before the tenacity of Greek resistance ‘and '° the ene reek raids into the Italian Ij made the Fascist fables abut Greek villagers and their gifts of bread, wine, and flowers, welcoming Italian: soldiers as “liberators” who were going. to ee the country from “British tyranny,” look absurd. _ The propagandists “foundered about uncertainly, looking for a way out, until Nov. 18, three weeks after the war started, when Mussolini made a speech from his Palazzo Venezia balcony and gave a new twist to the official Italian attitude toward the Greeks. Said the Duce: “After a long period of patience, we have finally torn the mask from a country guaranteed by Great Britain—our subtle enemy, Greece. One thing must be said, and it may surprise ea Italians who are not mentally living in our times. It is this: that the Greeks hate Italians as ‘they hate no other people.” It was significant that the Duce, contrary to his invariable Shean when declaring war, made speech about the Greek din until three weeks after -it -had started. It was the strongest: tangible evidence that the Fascists had tried to bribe the Greeks and believed that they had succeeded. The Duce couldn't risk speaking, about a secret political plot.
NEXT—Near Revolt in Italian Army.
neo Pt plat Feature “syndicate, Ine.) Force pilots is the statement pubs lished by the Daily Express, alleg= ing that German Focke-Wulf 1908 —fighter bombers which are carry ne out extensive sneak raid by it
is alleged that the German radio. now exhorting factory workers to
do better jobs because through 1 efficiency they are hazarding lives of German pilots, “4
HOLD EVERYTHING
enemy or handicap the allies if] L