Newspapers / Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, … / June 27, 1942, edition 1 / Page 3
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ELECTRIC chair WANTED AT ONCE joUth Dakota Requests Loan Of Lethal Seat From Nebraska LINCOLN, June 26.— M —South nakota State's Attorney Frank S. i. it asked Attorney, General Wal p Johnson today if South Da kota might borrow Nebraska’s electric chair during the week of August 9. Tait informed Johnson that two wt), Dakota prisoners were under Heath sentence and that the war rarities board could not approve releasing materials for a new chair needed in South Dakota. Warden Neil Olsen at the Ne L,aSka penitentiary said the chair ,here isn’t in good shape. Built in 1515 it hasn’t been used since 1929. jait's request, however, will be submitted to the Nebraska board at Control, Johnson delcared. Clifford Hayes, 31, is under sen (ence t° die the week August s for the slaying of county Sheriff Melbourne B. Lewis at Milbank, j D., last year. Also under death sentence is Paul J. Sewell, 41, for .he slaying of Jens Jensen, young ‘armer. in 1941. Sewell’s execution i: set for the week of Nov. 15. The death sentences, first in South Dakota in 27 years, were imposed after the 1939 legislature enacted a capital punishment law, stipulated the electric chair as means of execution, but failed to appropriate money for a chair. 3 PEANUT GROWERS FLAY HENDERSON (Continued from Pare One) with Senator Josiah W. Bailey, rep resenative J. Bayard Clark and several other members of Congress present, four Tide Water area pea Jut cleaners presented figures to show that ceiling prices on pro ducts processed from peanuts re fect a price of $5.75 per hundred pounds on the raw product. II. F. Bond. Edenton buyer, de clared that Mr. Henderson ha d thus created a situation “in direct violation” of section 3-C of _ the price control act which prohibits price ceilings on farm products below basis, that would reflect a return to the farmers of 110 per cent of parity. The parity price on peanuts today, he added, is $7.30 per hundred pounds which means that under the price control law the growers should receive $8.03. "But Mr. Henderson’s price ceil ings in peanut butter and other products are so low,” he added "that peanut buyers are not in position to pay even 85 per cent of parity guaranteed under the gov ernment loan program.” The buy ers Mr. Bond continued “are sat isfied with their ceiling” but the processes “simply can’t pay on the basis of $8.03 per hundred pounds and continue to manufac ture peanut products.” North Carolina buyers present in addition to Mr. Bond were T. C. Bvrum, Edenton; J. N. Vann, Ohoskee, and J. 0. Askew, Har l'iellsville. A large group of interested growers and buyers from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and other pea nut-producing states joined in the protest. KING AND QUEEN SEE U, S. FORCES (Continued From Page One) moving target and ate roast beef h the enlisted men’s messhall. At the beginning of their day, Their Majesties reviewed part of {he armored force, watched the infantry swing past, and rode in bouncing tanks through pits and o'er bunkers while sirens wailed over the din of make-believe bat tle. Then the Kng and Queen were pen to a display of armored pees equipment, including me “lum and light tanks, armored tars> field hospitals, kitchens and • ill more secret weapons and oth w material. Queen Elizabeth asked weather browned Sergeant Reuben Krage, 1‘ Elyria, O., half a dozen sharp (options about his Howitzer, ft is a beautful weapon,” he replied. Later, he said “she was a ‘swell She talked like she knew “mething about guns. You would bot have known she was a Queen.” The Queen also questioned Lieut, •epett A. Dix, of Fort Lauder fs!e* Ela., about his gas mask and °"' it compared to the British model. Of mess Sesgea^t Irvin S. Daw on. of Benton, Ark., she inquired aether he carried a complete set , butcher knives into the field Tes, ma’am,” he answered, un ■owmgly using the form of a<5 pp direct to the Queen, r asked private Harry Kirby Lenior, N. C., how long it took “ snare a meal in field stoves. About an hour and a half for fly men on each range,” he •aid. 3 Weeks Old Chicks 5' * e h. At *”’a|l expense, will Produce 2-lb. fry /’ in 6 week*. end heavy 'asily raised; no "iodine or «pet tare needed v'd>> Rock*. Wo i*v' 2,400 of them P*ull ete ^ VfittTtrn8Qpplies’ *!**■ cloth feeders, RODDABDSH'S SEED STOHE South Front Dial 6030 Today and Tomorrow - BY WALTER LIPPMANN _ | The Cult Of Incompetence Of THE many lessons of the Libyan defeat the most important one we have to learn here in America is, as the Greek poet said long ago, that “if often hap pens that less depends upon the skill of the leader.” No doubt it is hard to judge the skill of the leader until he has been put to the test. Nevertheless this is just what we have to learn to do: the duration of the war certainly, the outcome of the war perhaps, will be determined by our ability to advance from thinking about quan tity to thinking about quality. In fact it may be said that the last and most dangerous strong hold of our complacency is in the notion that this war is going to be won by sheer weight of metal and manpower. We can^ learn* this from our successes as well as from our failures. The Battle of Britain was won by the qualitative superiority of the Royal Air Force in fighter planes, pilots, and tac tics for the special business of protecting Britain. The Battle of Midway was won because our forces were disposed and directed by staff work which was superior to that of the Japanese. Thus the enemy has no monopoly of mili tary brains. Yet it is the fact that again and again it has been de monstrated that we are short of brains at the point where they are imperatively needed. It is the fact that we have not learned to take blunders seriously, or to insist that our leaders set anything like a suf ficiently high and stern standard of competence. If we ask how we are to detect mediocrity before it produces some whopping failure, the answer is that there are often, not always but' often, warnings. There have been storm signals flying for well over a year in Washington which raised the questions about the tanks and about artillery which have just been answered so un pleasantly in Libya. The layman, even if he is a high official, could not answer the questions. But the fact that they were asked by the kind of men who asked them should, if we were not so easy going in these affairs of life and death, have provoked relentless in quiry and the resolute insistence upon reinforcing the responsible experts. Thus while it is not possible for the general public or for the press to judge technical and professioanl problems, it is possible to take soundings which indicate reason ably well the quality of mind which is at work on these problems. The affair of the Sea Otter, about which some of us raised such a to-do some months ago, was a sounding of this kind. The history of that little affair was a warning which any layman could appre ciate, that long after Pearl Har bor something less than the best brains were making crucial deci sions in high places. For even if the Sea Otter had been no good at all, the muddled-headed man ner in which it was disposed of was a profoundly disturbing reve lation. One of the surest signs of me docrity is the use of soft publicity addressed to the people at home to cover hard facts that are quite well known to the enemy. The worst aspect of this publicity is that almost always it deceives the men who put it out, and thus it obstructs or puts off and discour ages the first-rate men who take the hard facts seriously and are capable of rising to them. This has been illustrated in the Navy Department “public rela tions” policy on the subject of the submarine campaign. There was one day for example when in order to fend off criticism, an official statement was issued showing that the number of ships sunk was an infinitesimal fraction of the num ber of voyages. This was like say ing that if five men living in one street make 300 trips to work a year, and only two of them are run over and killed, the accident rate for that group is as two is to 1,500—an infinitesimal fraction! I have been told that the author of that piece of publicity has been transferred. But I am afraid that there was a time when his su perior offcers enjoyed being bam boozled by him, and thus helped to feel that the situation was not really so bad as people believed. For soft publicity softens those who let it be given out. It has high symtomatic value that first-rate men are n ot in charge. For those who are gen uinely in the know there are much surer tests. Perhaps the chief reason why they are not applied sternly is that we have gotten along quite well in this country without having to insist upon the very highest standards of excellence in the public service. Honestly, a fair amount of indus try, some public spirit have seem ed good enough: we have pursued excellence elsewhere where the rewards were greater than In public life. Thus, when the fate of the na tion and the lives of millions are at stake, we find that our stan dards of judgment are soft and complacent. A man, known by ev ery one to be altogether inade quate to his task, can be indul gently tolerated just because he is where he is, and it is sueh an infernal nuisance to remove him and find some one better. The cult of incompetence is one of the fatal diseases of modern life: it will be the ruin of us if we do not look out. What is more this will not be the centruy of the common man, or in any event it will be a ghastly century, if we do not sober up from being drunk with quantity and set up for our selves standards of quality, where not the mass of things but ex cellence is the objective. (Note: In my column of March 31 reference was made to a dis patch by David Lawrence on the synthetic rubber situation. It has been asserted that readers may have interpreted my comments as a reflection on the journalistic in tegrity of Mr. Lawrence. I chal lenged his story of why America is without synthetic rubber. But if Mr. Lawrence or any one else took this to be a reflection on his journalistic integrity, I may say that it was not, and that no re flection was intended. W. L.) 313 ALLIEDVSHIPS SUNK IN ATLANTIC (Continued From Fife One) port despite a great hole in her side. Twenty-three crewmen survived the sinking of the small American merchantman, but five others were reported missing. The vessel was sunk by a large German subma rine in the Gulf of Mexico May 4. Survivors drifted for 55 hours on life rafts before they were rescued by a Panamanian ship. With half her starboard side torn away by an Axis torpedo, the sec ond American merchantman limp, ed into a Gulf coast port after a 12-day voyage across the Carib bean and the Gulf of Mexico. The Navy said the British ship was torpedoed and sunk off the east coast of South America about two weeks ago. Only two of a crew of 60 were reported lost. In the Caribbean area, 58 crew men from an Allied ship sunk June 12 still were missing after the ar rival of 20 survivors yesterday at Monte Cristy, the newspaper La Nacion at Cuidad Trujillo, Domin ican Republic, reported. The paper said a Dominican coast guard cut. ter had picked up the survivors. The 11th Japanese submarine at tack on shipping off the North American west coast was disclosed by the Canadian navy with the safe j arrival of a merchantman at a west coast Canadian port after a “determined attack’ by a Japa nese undersea craft. Some damage to the ship was reported, but no lives were lost. 3 RAF BLASTSBREMEN WITH 1,000 PLANES (Continued From Pure One) one German fighter were de stroyed. It was the third of the great city-by-city annihilation raids, and indications were that the number of attackers exceeded the 1,130 which razed Cologne on May 30 and the 1,036 which devastated Essen two nights later. The Air Ministry announced that a single force of "more than 1,000 bombers” chose Bremen for their main blows while a second force of bombers and fighters made in tensive harassing attacks on Ger man airdromes in the Low coun tries. This latter force was believ ed to have been in the hundreds. Although the night’s total loss was 52 planes, highest in RAF history, informed persons s aid there was less than five per cent of the participating aricraft (thus indicating that more than 1,0 4 0 planes were used.) Heavy clouds marred observa tion of the results, but the Red glare of large fires reassured the bombardiers that Bremen had been hit hard. The city is the home of Des chimag Werke, which builds sub marines, and a Focke-Wulf fac tory, making sea-raiding Condor planes. In addition it has large shipyards, warehouses and o 11 refineries. An informed air source asserted the raid “dealt a very heavy blow” to German industry. SMALL TRACTORS CARRIED BY AIR (Continued from P»te One) control over every air transport activity of the nation, other than naval, within and without the United States, including priority rights for travel on commercal air liners. George said everything would be done to preserve the integrity of the commercial system, both do mstic and foreign, but added "we will militarize wherever militari zation is essential.” He pictured a globe-circling mili tary air transport system speed ing medical supplies, war equip ment and other needs vital to com bat operations to the world battle fronts, and swiftly shifting key per sonnel. Transport of air borne troops will not be undertaken by the com mand but will be handled by the carrier command of the army air force. Next time you need calomel take Calotabs, the Improved calomel compound tablets that make calo mel-taking pleasant. Sugar-coated, agreeable, prompt. and Not necessary to follow with salts or oastor oil. Use only as directed on label. RE-ELECT DAVID SINCLAIR YOUR DISTRICT SOLICITOR He Is Experienced, Able, Efficient The Superior Court Judges and Lawyers with whom he comes in close personal contact while in the discharge of his official duties are the best judges of his capabilities. He has been given the following endorsement by the members of the Bar of New Hanover County: "We, the undersigned members of the Bar of New Hanover County, wish to take this means of giving our wholehearted endorse ment to the candidacy of David Sinclair for re-election to the office of Solicitor of the Eighth Judicial District. During his term of office Mr. Sinclair has discharged the duties of this important position with great ability, zeal and energy. He is a fearless prosecutor, but in no sense a persecutor. He has always been fair to those whom he has been required to prosecute and at the same time he has always safe guarded the interest of the State. On his behalf we earnestly solicit the support of the voters of this District in the coming Primary. E. K. Bryan J. D. Carr W. B. Campbell George L. Peschau Glenn J. McClelland H. Winfield Smith Edgar L Yow William M. Bellamy George H. Howell Louis Goodman G. C. Mclntire J. H. Ferguson Clayton C. Holmes Jack Canady L. M. B. Rodgers R. M. Kermon Herbert McCIammy Elbert A. Brown Emmett H. Bellamy John D. Bellamy K. 0. Burgwin John A. Stevens Marsden Bellamy J. A. McNorton H. Edmund Rodgers W. L. Farmer Harriss Newman W. 0. Green J. C. Wessell, Jr. Robert D. Cronly, Jr. Aaron Goldberg W. A. Simon, Jr. W. K. Rhodes, Jr. Alan A. Marshall John T. Schiller Solomon B. Sternberger Chas. B. Newcomb J. Frank Hackler S. E. Loitin From ihe Bench ai ihe adjournment of the June, 1942, criminal term of New Hanover County Superior Court, Judge C. E. Thompson, who has pre sided in this District for the past six months, had this to say to Solicitor Sinclair: "I know of no Solicitor that can dispatch the Court's business as efficiently and promptly as you do." "If has been a pleasure to work with you." Judge J. Paul Frizzelle at a term of Court at which 116 cases were prosecuted, complimenting Solicitor Sinclair on his efficiency and the manner in which he dispatched business, stated in open Court: “Solicitor Sinclair is probably the fastest I have worked with throughout the State.” Judge Luther T. Hamilton, while holding a criminal term of Court in New Hanover County stated: “I have been favorably impressed with the skill and ability with which Solicitor Sinclair dispatched the business of his office.” The Voters of This District are Urged To Go To The Polls Saturday June 27 and Re-Elect DAVID SINCLAIR DISTRICT SOLICITOR He Is A Capable Honest Public Official (This advertisement paid for by friends of David Sinclair who are helping his re-eleotion as your District Solicitor.)
Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.)
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June 27, 1942, edition 1
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