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■Wilmington morning &tar North Carolina’s Oldest Daily Newspaper Published Daily Except Sunday By The Wilmington Star-New* At The Murchison Building K. B. Page, Owner and Publisher Telephone All Department* DIAL 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 Strictly in Advance Comblna Time Star News tion 1 Week ..| .25 8 20 * 35 1 Month . 1.10 .90 1.50 3 Months .. 8.25 2.60 4.55 6 Months . *.50 5.20 9.10 1 Year . 13.00 10.40 18.30 News rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-New* BY MAIL Payable Weekly Or In Advance Combine Time Star News tion 1 Month .$ -75 $ .50 $ .80 3 Months . 2 00 1.50 2.75 6 Months . 4.00 3.00 5.50 1 Year . 8.00 -8.60 10.00 News rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue or 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 exclusve use of all news stories appearing in The Wilmington Star. THURSDAY APRIL, 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. —Rooseveltv, War Message Our Chief Aim To aid in every way the prosecu tion of the war to complete vic tory. THOUGHT FOR TODAY Soul art thou sad again With the old sadness? Thou shalt be glad again With a new gladness When April sun and rain Mount to the teeming brain With the earth madness When from the mold again, Spurning disaster. Spring shoots unfold again, Follow thou faster Out of the drear domain Of dark defeat and pain, Praising the Master. Bliss Carmen. -V Make Them Pay Almost to a man Wilmington’s suburban dwellers conduct their business in Wilmington and derive their incomes in Wilmington. Al most to a woman, their wives do their shop ping and marketing in Wilmington. County residents’ automobiles are to be se6n parked all over the city. They use the streets at will. But not one of them pays a penny for maintaining these streets. They are excused even from the dollar license all Wilmington owners pay for having an auto. Naturally, they don’t want to be brought into the city, and never will as long as they can enjoy any municipal convenience or im provement without paying for it. But this does not excuse the city from finding ways to make them bear a fair share of the city’s running expenses and operating costs. For using city streets, some munici palities have imposed a special tax upon them. Suburbanites doing business in the city and traveling to and from their offices cr stores, when properly identified are re quired to pay for the privilege in an amount ranging up to $5 a year If this is a tip to the Wilmington council, that group cannot be blamed if it accepts it. -V You Can Escape Blame It is perhaps too much to expect that anoth er appeal for volunteers at the Filter Center will receive more attention than the many previous pleas made in these columns- But it is being made anyway, with the hope, faint though it be, that some men and women who could give the required time, will heed it in the interest of community security and for the benefit of the national war effort. The Filter Center, as so often pointed out, is the nerve center of this area’s defense. It is the Center which keeps track of all planes aloft, their service, route, probable destina tion and, so far as may be determined, their purpose too. In connection with the aircraft warning service, the Center has first word of planes entering what would be the Wil mington zone of danger in event of an enemy raid. First to know that peril lurks behind the clouds, it is the Center that would flash the word to the Control Room, which in turn would sound the signal and get its forces on the job. Without this service an enemy attack could lay Wilmington waste and spread de struction throughout southeastern North Caro lina before defending planes could get off the ground. Now, it may happen, and pray God it does, that no signal of actual •nemy attack will / ever have to be sounded. But if it should, and the Center were so poorly staffed—as it is now—that information necessary for re sistance and protection could not be trans mitted, the city would become a shambles, and the blame would rest upon citizens who had failed to enter this vital service. Of the thousands of Wilmington residents not engaged in any form of war or defense work there surely must be hundreds whose heads are heavy with remorse at night for their refusal to share in protecting their homes. Let them make peace with their con sciences by volunteering without further delay. -V Speeders And Loiterers All praise to Camp Davis authorities for their drive to stop fast driving among Army personnel. By confiscating gasoline ration books of offenders travel conditions will im prove in the Wilmington-Jacksonville area, particularly on Highway No. 17, where so many accidents have happened. Police authorities owe it to the military command to supplement the camp’s campaign with an equally vigorous crusade to stop fast driving among civilians. The thirty-five-mile limit set as the maxi mum speed for motor vehicles for the dura tion has a double objective. One is to make the highways safer. The other is to conserve gasoline- Either is sufficient to merit volun tary compliance. Any driver who does not comply deserves to be punished. At the same time, it would be worth while to have a law against highway loiterers, who create as great a hazard of accident if traffic is heavy as speeders. Many states have such a law. North Carolina has not. Some enter prising candidate for the legislature would do well to make a note of the need and draft a bill for two years hence. Declaration of intention to introduce it at Raleigh might well be the means of his election. The hazard created by loiterers is to be seen on almost any highway in this vicinity, but particularly on the Carolina Beach high way and the extension of Front street when shifts are changing at the shipyard. An idler at the wheel, indifferent to the traffic situ ation, will blockade the road for, say, up to a hundred vehicles. One after another driver behind him will pull out a little to the left and step on the gas, hoping to get past and be on his way at a reasonable speed. With another line of traffic moving in the opposite direction, every driver who thus ventures, however timidly, to surey the road ahead, is liable to have his car collide with another. The consequences of such a collision could be fatal to both drivers and their passengers, besides tying up traffic at the spot indefinitely The loiterer in heavy traffic is a definite menace to safety. He deserves equal punish ment with the speeder. -V Ruml Plan Embalmed The House of Representatives has embalm ed the Ruml plan for income tax collection on the pay-as-you-earn basis. It appears prob able now that no reform will be effected in the method of collection and that Americans subject to income tax will continue to make their payments as heretofore with annual, semi-annual or quarterly checks to the Treas ury. If the vote which killed the Ruml plan had followed evidence that it would create a hard ship both for the Treasury and the people it might be excused. But, because it was the outcome of a knockdown and drag out party fight, determined strictly by partisan feeling and nothing else, it is to be condemned. As a consequence, the Treasury will lose millions of income tax money by failure to collect at the source. Tens of thousands of “floating” workers will escape the levy be tween quarter-days. The burden will fall more heavily upon the other Americans who stick on the job however hard the going. Furthermore, and of greater importance, the making of the Ruml plan a party issue, represents a broken pledge made unreservedly by members of both leading political parties following November’s elections. The pledge was that politics would be adjourned for the duration. Now, at the first real opportunity, both parties in the House violate that promise as if it were of no consequence. -V Spain’s Part The greatest possibility of delay in com pleting the conquest of north Africa seems not to be in Tunisia but in Spain. Rommel is on his way out—literally. He cannot hope to postpone overwhelming defeat much longer. With Montgomery driving from the rear, Patton hitting on his flank and the British navy closing in on the Gulf of Gabes and on Sfax; with Allied air power raining withering fire upon his troops and equipment he may save the remnant of his once great Afrika Korps only by surrender, and he is forbidden to quit by the Fuehrer. Extermina tion confronts Rommel and his forces. In the north, where von Arnim is holding Bizerte and Tunis, the 1st. British Army is at last making notable gains, though its pace is slower than that of Patton and Montgomery. Von Arnim cannot escape the same fate that awaits Rommel, nor very long postpone it. Eisenhower is driving like a sledgehammer all along the Tunisian front. But what is happening in Spain is potentially dangerous to the United Nations cause. Hitler is reported to have massed ten or twelve divisions on the northern Spanish frontier. Hitler’s emissaries are putting Gen eral Franco, the Spanish dictator, through the third degree. If he succumbs and is per suaded to pay for Nazi help in his own civil & war, these divisions will march across Spain upon Gibraltar. A campaign there would com plicate the situation in Africa and could be capable of delaying the Allied victory Because of aid extended to the people of Spain by the United States and Great Britain, it is widely believed that they have no sym pathy with the Nazis and that any concession to the Germans would meet stiff opposition from the native population. This might be important If the Spanish people had a voice in their government’s decisions, or the armed strength to enforce their wishes. But they have neither voice nor strength, and must submit to the dictation of their rule, who became their ruler with the help of Nazis now encamped at their borders. Whether Hitler shall cross Spain or be re fused entry depends entirely on Franco. This is why the end of the African battle could be determined in Madrid rather than on the Tunisian coast, where Rommel and Von Arnim are being cut to pieces. -V Inside Washington By CHARLES P. STEWART There is one thing to be said for isolation ists, anyway. They express themselves in a fashion that can be clearly understood. Planners for post-war peace on into eternity have so many different schemes for guaran teeing it that they do not make sense. A perfect Babel of them broke out in Washing ton directly following Winston Churchill’s broadcast of his program—if it was coherent enough to be called a program. It is a complete waste of time to listen to congressional gabble ever since Churchill emitted that talk. In fact, it is worse than a waste, for the listener, poking into one of the chambers in the expectation of a bit of enlightenment, presently emerges in a state of mental confusion that he probably will not recover from before the outbreak of the next world conflict The gibberish is not between isolationists and advocates of some sort of an international federation to insure future peace forever after the Axis powers have been defeated. It is between conflicting groups of the peace folk themselves. It is not quite correct to speak of them even as groups. They do not split up as collectively as that. They classify as individuals, each. Believe me, they do not agree among themselves. The isolationists do classify as a group. Or perhaps I should refer to them as ex-isolation ists. Nobody admits that he is an isolation ist, now that the war is on. It was not very popular to be so called isolationist before hand, either. The early interventionists were fairly successful at stigmatising their opposi tion upon anti-patriotic grounds With Uncle Sam’s entrance into the strife, naturally all isolation sentiment evaporated immediately, for current purposes. It still lingers, however, as a consideration connected with post-war preparations of to day, and it certainly will break out afresh directly following the United Nations’ victory. Anyway, the former and now incipient iso lationists do not make much of a point of their isolationism as of the moment. They stick together and really constitute an actual group, but they do not say much about it, fearing to be suspected of lukewarmth toward Yankee war activity. On a congregational scale, the situation is curiously and ridiculously reminiscent of the one that prevailed on the Ford peace expedi tion, during World War I’s early days. Ford organized his party with 100 per cent peace purposes, as everybody was aware. It was a whole big shipload of pacifists of the most pronounced type—some of them pretty prominent. Candidly, many were a bit cranky. Having been on the list, I can say so. For the truth, is, personally I was not overly enthusiastic for that particular war. When we got into it, being rather past military age, I took a civilian’s hand, but, at the outset, I rated as an isolationist, I guess. Yet there were a few of us who were not ‘peacers,” as we named the sure-enough fa natics on the Ford cruise- Perhaps we were a dozen or 15 in number, as compared with “peacers” running up into the hundreds. Most ly we were newspapermen. Elmer Davis, our present OWI director, was included. S. S. McClure, the magazine man, was one of us. So was Emil Hurja, prominent among today’s Washingtonian Finns. In short, we were a middling aggressive bunch, though small. Well, before we were outside of Sandy Hook, those “peacers” fell to quarrelling among themselves. They all wanted peace, but they wanted it in different ways. We isolationists, though, were harmonious within our own ranks. The “peacers”’ hatreds were between them selves- We isolationists got along among our selves O. K. The pacifists could not, on their side. It is so now. Be a pacifist and scrapper. Or be a peace ful isolationist. Quotations We must avoid destructive, imperialistic and vindicative peace which will only lay the foundation for another war.—Alf M. Landon. * * * I ask no more of life than to be able to see the miserably resounding fall of the vulgar, intuitional fuehrer of Berlin and his whole bandrupt system — Czech President Edward Benes. * * * I think we are doing pretty well with a bunch of boys who are pitching all right. We are all trying. The morale of our forces is high—in fact, so high it scares me. —Lieut.-Gen- George C. Kenney, allied air forces commander in southwest Pacific. * * * We still have a long and hard road to travel before our final goal is achieved, and our final goal is and must be the complete crushing of Hitlerite Germany. —Russian Ambassador to Britain Ivan Maisky. * * » I say it will take 15,000,000 Americans in uniform to do the job that needs to be done, for we have the only manpower left. —Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker. * * * I firmly believe that not until there is im posed on every man and woman the equal obligation to render service in the war effort will this country make the all-out war effort which is necessary and of which we are capable. —Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patter son. BEHIND THE “ATE” BALL! - ■■■ * Raymond Clapper Says: John L. Lewis Decides No Coed Strike In War By RAYMOND CLAPPER | WASHINGTON. — The reason there won’t be a big coal strike this year is that John L. Lewis has decided not to attempt one in the middle of a war. Recently the war has been win ning in Washington. That has not always been the case. Sometimes the war comes second—after some contractor gets his or some group gets its cut. But the war sometimes wins out, although we don’t hear as much abuot those instances as we might. For instance, the war won out over the farm bloc on one point —the question of whether the cost of living should be increased by tinkering the farm parity formula. That action, taken by the Senate in the interest of holding the cost of living steady and thus discour aging inflation, has helned to strengthen all hands in Washing ton that are interested in that. The restraint on the part of John L. Lewis is likewise a certain in dicator of the force that war’s de mands are coming to have here. That is the meaning of the news that the United Mine Workers and the Northern and Southern oper ators will not interrupt work on Wednesday, March 31, when their contract expires, although they are far from completing negotiations for a new contract. Dr. John Steel man, head of the U. S. Concili ation Service, brought the South ern operators around to complete the agreement against any strike this year. Two years ago Mr. Lewis took his miners out of the mines on less of an issue than he has raised this time. In fact there usually is a strike every two years when the bitumi nous contract expires, even if only for a few days as a kind of dem onstration of strength. The last time, in 1941, the mines were tied up during April. The chief con troversy was a wage differential between Northern and Southern mines. Then 50,000 miners were out over the issue of introducing the closed shop into the captive mines owned by the steel compa nies. Neither of these questions had the proportions that the current issue does—the demand for a wage increase of $2 a day. Rising liv ing costs sharpen that issue. But this year President Roose velt notified all parties that there must be no strike. Furthermore, there must be no break away from the wage ceilings set in the Littie Steel formula. This, is war, and the commander in chief can give the orders. That was bitter beer for Mr. Lewis. He could have neither his strike nor his wage increase. And that from the President against whom he turned with irrevocable hate after deciding that the Presi dent was showing no gratitude for the half - million - dollar cam paign contribution in 1936. How can a labor leader lead when he can’t offer his man either a raise or a strike’ Possibly Mr. Lewis will salvage a fair equivalent of a wage in crease. Coal miners have been paid only for the work they do after reach ing the face of the coal down in the mine. A court decision re cently held that iron-ore miners were entitled to be paid from the time they went through the com pany gates. If the time spent go ing down the shafts and through the tunnels to the face of the coal should be added in as pay time, then Mr. Lewis could show his miners a pay increase under an other name, with the hourly rates of pay remaining the same. That is the way out that is being con sidered. That is a compromise, to be sure. But the fact that there was no coal strike this year is bound to be of enormous influence in discouraging other strikes. The lead of Mr. Lewis and of the United Mine Workers is likely to be followed by many other labor groups. Had they been able to go througn with a strike, we would have seen a prairie fire of labor trouble. But when John L. Lewis, em bittered as he is, tough as he is, and desperate to regain his old spectacular place in labor’s van guard, decides not to strike but to keep on working while he ar gues, then no one else is likely to be headstrong enough to pull a strike. -V As Others Say It PAPER SCARCITY You have undoubtedly read of the advance in the price of white paper. This material on which your newspapers and magazines and other reading matter is printed has been advanced in price $4 a ton. You also have noticed that your favorite newspapers and magazines are having to reduce their size, because of the shortage in paper and because the government has ordered a cut in consumption. WPB says that another cut will be nec essary in a few months. We hope you don’t run short of reading mater, but if you do, the department of labor has a series of brochures just off the press telling about office work in vari ous cities This document for Richmond, Va., contains 61 pages; for Kansas City, Mo., 74 pages. In fact, tons of paper are used because practically all the cities in the country are covered on this one subject alone. The information contained in them is out of date, but that makes no difference to the government. The records were made for 1940, before war industries flooded many The Literary Guidepost By JOHN SELBY “Beware of Parents,” by George Jean Nathan; (Farrar Rinehart: $2). Early in his writing career George Jean Nathan did some work with H. L. Mencken, and his style never has recovered What Mr. Nath.never has seen is the fact that such a ■ style de pends wholly on the choice of eye arresting words. Mr. Mencken al ways had this gift; Mr. Nathan oftener than not has merely used three words where one might have done as well. He is publishing today one of the few books he has written which does not hang wholly on the stage. “Beware of Parents” is one of those books a good publisher, a practised writer and enough tea, shall we say, can produce M.uch of it is funny; Mr. Nathan is a bachelor and proud of it. He main tains that spinsters and bachelors are more likely to be right about bringing up children than married men and women. But there are a few unfortunate things in the book, just the same. One of them is unbelievable in a man of 61 years—Mr- Nathan ac of the cities discussed, but, what the heck! There are tens of thou sands of words in them and some complicated and intriguing tabu lations. If you need reading mat ter, here is your chance. It might put you to sleep and fill your thoughts with useless information, which won’t be a strain on your mind. This illustration of the publish ing activities of the labor depart ment is only a drop in the bucket if you understand the reams of paper, mountains of paper and tons of paper being consumed by the government. The hundreds with bureaus with their dictorial heads and sometimes contributing half-baked experts are pouring out printed words from presses all over the country. Senator Harry Flood Byrd, of Virginia, who is trying his best to curtail government expenditures not directly concerned with the winning of the war, has shown where millions of dollars of the taxpayers money has been and is being spent. He has tabulated long lists of publications,, useless and inconsequential, emanating from bureaus with thousands of federal employees. Many of the latter could be engaged in war work, and millions of dollars could be saved if their misplaced energies and frequently cracked ideas could be diverted to other channels. The advance in cost of white paper seemingly has had little or no effect on the size and number of government publications, despite the fact that this will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. The almost countless list of pub lications gotten out by the govern ment not only consume paper which could be used to better ad vantage, but also clog up the mails and the express and freight agen cies which could be used for trans porting war materials or printed matter pertaining to the prosecu tion of the war. But we suppose the people must know about office work in various cities in 1940 and about other equally useless things. The government found it neces sary to devise a way to curtail the size of letters to our fighting men all over the world from their home folks, such as the V-letter, but it apparently hasn’t found a way to cut down the size and num ber of circulars and pamphlets got ten out by the various and sundry bureaus in Washington and else where.—New Orleans States. -V It’s the Japanese sailor who goes down INTO the sea in ships. tually thinks the Broadway theater is good. That is his privilege; it is also the privilege of the reader to doubt the evidence Mr. Nathan submits. It includes such master pieces as Fred Stone being cata pulted to the stage, sneezing stage hands making imitation waves by walking under blue-painted canvas. And it is not fair to set up v scarecrow merely to knock him down again. In the course of his book Mr. Nathan quotes 273 saws which he says parents are worn to deliver, demolishing each with a few well (or less well) choser words. He pays off a grudge oi two at the same time, as witness No. 32: “Lucky at cards; unlucky in love.” “This,” goes on Mr. Nathan, "makes absolutely no sense what ever, and is worthy of the men tality of the kind of parents who believe in fortune-tellers, the great literary genius of Hervey Allen, and . ■ . The thoughtless reader is likely to overlook the fact that nobody least of all Mr. Allen, has men tioned his “genius.” It’s just some thing Mr. Nathan set up to smack down- ...__ Interpreting The War By GLENN BABB The respite which the Axis stand in Tunisia has given Hitler is rap idly running out. Doubtless he reads the signs that the period of grace may be shorter than he had calculated. There is every indi cation that his high command al ready is concerned primarily with the post-African phase. From his point of view there is little more that can be done about Rommel and von Arnim. They have their mission; to buy a few more pre cious weeks with the lives at their disposal. As their Tunisian foot hold shrinks their reinforcement or rescue becomes increasingly diffi cult; it remains to be seen whether the latter will be seriously at tempted. For Hitler’s command it is nec essary to get on with the next job, preparation for the shock of an Allied attack against the fortress of Europe itself. The immediate task is the stiffening of his Italian ally, not merely against the ac tual physical assault but against the war of nerves which the United Nations, with the initiative safely in their hands, seem to be carry ing on with telling effect. This, however, is merely one phase of the gigantic program of preparation which must cover all Europe’s coasts from the Turkish frontier around to the North Cape, except for the Iberian peninsula. It has been going on, of course, for a year or more without, how ever, any great urgency until the Allied landings in North Africa showed Hitler that his fortress ac tually was beleaguered. Now it is no longer safe to assume that the blow will not come tomorrow; it is not even safe to assume that it will wait until Tunisia is mopped up. Two months ago, according to Moscow’s accounts. Hitler felt free to remove 12 divisions from western Europe for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Perhaps this was intended partly as a gesture of contempt for the western Allies and their invasion plans. If so, the effect of the gesture was not lost on Moscow. But it is doubtful whether it can be repeated now. There is no doubt that Hitler has been able to do a lot in the way of giving Europe's soft under belly a protective shell in the five months since the African landings disclosed a new phase of United Nations strategy. From the Saloni ka region above the Dardanelles to the Spanish-French frontier it has been a winter of tremendous effort for the Axis in raising forti fications, placing new air fields, disposing troops, attempting to stamp out rebellion in the rear. But fixed fortifications, even air fields from which squadrons can shift rapidly from one menaced coast to another, are not enough to offset the advantage which the choice of battlegrounds gives. And that choice definitely rests now with the Allies- Hitler cannot be sure that the first trans-Mediter (Continued on Page Seven) -V Daily Prayet FOR STEADFASTNESS Save us from slumping, O Lord! Thou hast given us a glorious vi sion of a brave new world, to be won by service and sacrifice. May that vision not fade, that high pur post not fail, through these diffi cult days. Keep bright our ardor for. a new manner of life for all mankind. Let us not be enmeshed in the criticism and schemes of theorists; but enable us to hold fast to those ideals which Thou has taught us. Grant U3 the cour age to expel from our hearts all personal profit and prejudice and partisanship; and to seek un swervingly Thy goals and Thy glory. This we pray in the name of the unfaltering Christ. Amen. —W.T.E. -y Civilian Defense Timetable BASIC TRAINING COURSES New Hanover High school room 109, at 8 p. m. FIRE DEFENSE A Monday, April 5 and every two weeks thereafter GENERAL COURSE Tuesday, April 6 and every two weeks thereafter. GAS DEFENSE B Wednesday, April 7 and every two weeks thereafter. FIRST AID 10 HOURS Beginning Monday, April 5. Room 106, New Hanover High school. First lesson, Monday night; sec ond lesson, Tuesday night; third lesson, Wednesday night; fourth lesson, Thursday night; final les son, Friday night. FIRST AID 20 HOURS Beginning Tuesday, April 6, and each Tuesday night at St- Paul's Lutheran church, Sixth and Prin cess streets. Sunday School building at 8 p. m. Mrs. Bishop Willis, instruc tor. SPECIAL CLASSES Auxiliary Police course on Wed nesday nights, at Trailer Camp office. Sgt. Thomas B. Hughes, instructor. If you hear or observe anything suspicious in character report it promptly to: Wilmington Police, 5244. Wrightsville Beach Police, 7504. Carolina Beach Police, 2231. Carolina Beach Clerk, 2001. Captain of the Port, 2-2278. County Defense Council, 3123. . Sheriff, 4252.
Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.)
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April 1, 1943, edition 1
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