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Show THE PROGRESSIVE OPINION Generous Treatment of Axis Prisoners in U. S. Improves Conditions for Captured Americans -- un. .... - ' r If. ' " - , S"' I r 1-- ;"" (J ' VV I i t h I (I. .' ' :J Red Cross Reports Men in Nazi Hands Well Fed and Housed By BARROW LYONS WNU Staff Correspondent In some 30,000 families throughout our land today the folks are thinking of some soldier from home who has fallen into enemy hands now a prisoner of war far away. When our troops make the great push against the main-land of Europe, there will be more boys taken prisoners. In the war prisoner camps within the United States, we hold some 175,000 enemy soldiers captured mostly on the battlefields of Africa, Sicily and Italy. Of these, 125,000 are Germans, 50,000 Italians. Only 116 are Japanese. Many protests have been made to army authorities, because of the good treatment given these prison-ers. Lots of people don't under-stand why enemy prisoners should be given the same comforts, the same medical attention, the same food as our own soldiers. ' But there is a reason so compel-ling, that none can complain when It is understood. It is not for the sake of the prisoners, but in the interest of our own soldiers held by the enemy. They are the real object of our forbearance and solicitude. And, of course, our national honor is involved, for we agreed to give prisoners the same food and care as our own men under the Prisoners of War convention signed and ratif-ied at Geneva on July 27, 1929. Reciprocal Good Treatment. Reliable reports made to the army Indicate that the good treatment we have accorded prisoners has won for our own men in German prison The first German soldier to be taken prisoner in Iceland was Ser-geant Manfrak, who bailed out of his Junkers plane after it had been hit by V. S. army fighters. He is shown at intelligence headquarters, en-joying the rations on the tray before him, despite a bandaged arm and numerous bruises. ians who escaped from a branch camp at El Paso, partpf the Lords-bur- N. M., camp, and one German who got away at Crossville, Tenn. There has been complaint from organized labor lately because we have used some of the war prison-ers for tasks in lumber camps and on road work, where there was no American labor available. General Gullion gives labor assurance that prisoners of war are not being put to work on any job where civilian labor is available in adequate sup-ply. Prisoner of war labor is a temporary expedient to relieve the existing shortage of man power. The United States agreed at the Geneva convention to return all prisoners of war to their own coun-tries at the conclusion of the war, hence the fear of competition with free labor is groundless, the gen-eral says. Prisoners Cut Pulpwood. Prisoners have been in logging operations where American workers have left the woods to work in ship-yards and machine shops at much higher wages, he explains. They have been useful in cutting and peeling pulp logs needed critically, for containers in civilian industry and for newsprint, of which there is a shortage. Prisoners have been used also in maintaining roads in some areas where other manual la-borers are very scarce. The tre-mendous importance of road main-tenance, in view of the heavy traf-fic, is obvious. Prisoners have been used also in laundries. Nearly everyone today has suffered inconveniences because of the shortage of laundry labor, and can understand this expedient. The story of Japanese prisoners is less happy. When a Japanese soldier is taken prisoner he is washed up he never wishes to re-turn to Japan for he is disgraced forever in the eyes of his country-men. We have in this country scarcely more than a hundred Japanese pris-oners, and General MacArthur has only a few hundred more, accord-ing to General Gullion. They are given the same food and accommodations as our own soldiers, because we hope by ac-cording such treatment to amelio-rate the lot of our own 18,500 men held by the Japanese. camps conditions that are at least as good as those under which Ger- - man soldiers live. These facts were revealed for the first time to your correspondent by Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, provost marshal general of the army, who has general supervision over prison-ers of war. The actual guarding of the prisoners is a function of the prison camp commander who is un-der the control of the commanding general of the service command. Censorship reveals that letters trom relatives and friends express much gratitude and happiness over the way we are treating their men. "We are informed by the Inter-national Red Cross that the Ger-mans say that because of our good treatment of their soldiers, they are giving our men more liberties and better treatment," General Gul-lion told your correspondent. "The Seneva conventions required that each prisoner be given the same lood as soldiers of the capturing power receive in base camps. Ac-cording to the reports of Swiss ob-servers, the Germans are living up to this provision; our men in some Instances are getting even a little better food than the German sol-diers, although the German facili-ties do not compare with ours. "I think there can be only one answer to the complaint that we are treating the prisoners we take too well. One gets it when one asks the question: Is it better to yield to a very natural, vengeful impulse to take it out on our prisoners, or to ob-serve our treaty agreements and pro-tect our own men?" ' Few Escape. There have been complaints also that the prisoners we hold have not been sufficiently guarded; that too many, have escaped to become a menace to the home population. Seneral Gullion points to the facts. Of the 175,000 prisoners we now hold In this country, about 100 have es-caped, but all except three have been recaptured and are in custody. The only men at large are two Ital- - Ttf ACT FEW JAP PRISONERS HAVE BEEN TAKEN BY U. S. I A n JAPANESE 400 ffff $ nv " O 09 nn m v aaw ici U2U 9ff ff f fffffff ff ff ffffff H GERMANS 111,000 iijLi mmmmmmmifftif? 10,000 ON THE fy t FRONTft : WRUTHWYETH; g JOW is the time to L Use scrap of old woolen p ,!t; ' ?ou have on hand. That i : the moths got into; the dr c which f spots cannot be r1' the trousers that are knees-- all of the mag.d KW?S' LrViWi - OftRK RED-"'- ; P LIGHT RED r?"6 j$ AND DARK BLUE fe BACKGROUND tB0li LIGHT AND DARK TAN CT2 ;hese may be made into hand looked rugs that you will be nr' .o own. The square rug in the as designed to fit in a sm" iressing table corner. The r md-ribb- design in the ch? ikirt and window valance in making a border .enter flower for the rug. it" asy to make your own rug dc; ,k n this way to exactly suit :oom. So begin today to plan": rug for some special spot in L,i lome. NOTE: This illustration is from v.. .0 which also gives directions lor ither rag rugs that you may irely from things on hand, as m lirections lor making slip covers ani t nodeling old furniture. To get -'j 300K 10 send 15 cents direct to- " ' MRS. RUTH WYETH SPEARs"! Bedfora Hills New , J Drawer 10 Enclose 15 cents for Sewing B w No. 10. Name , Address Gfew diz'.: if win :::: CL0S3G l? Put nostril. It (1) shrinks swollen membranes, (2) soothes irritation, (3) relieves transient nasal co-ngestion . . . and brings greater breathing comfort, i-- - Follow the complete t...j directions r- - - in folder. VATi.J.. Fim Protect and ease skin with Meisani, us PHuFF soothing, medicated po- - der, Also relieve burL.r:, AN N OYS itching, of irritated eU. f SNAPPY FACTS ABOUT jgl rubbe: More than 25 American aut-omotive companies are making military vehicles for United States soldiers and our Alliei and they have first call on tires and other rubber items. Forty thousand additional mile! hw been obtained from individual tir In use at Camp Stoneman becouso of the g campaign in forco there since rubber became scarce. No tricks just plain tire care and recapping at the right time. An 875-pou- electric magnet attached to an electric truck "sweeps" the floors of a m-unitions factory of steel litter and serves the double pu-rpose of salvaging metal and preventing tire punctures. Gas on Stems:'! Relieved in 5 minutes or double money dart When excess atomacb acid causes painful.1 Ihk grfts, sour BtoniHch ami heartburn, doctors prescribe the fust est acting medicines ."V. symptomatic relief medicines like those n Tablets. No laxative. brings coring" Uf Jiffy or double your money back on return w to us. 25c at all druggists. fTo relieve distress of MONTHLY" Lydla E. Plnkham's Vegetable COT pound Is niRde especially lor to help relieve periodic pain wltn weak, tired, nervous, blue leeu' - due to functional montniy u turbances. Taken regularly Plnkham s cou pound helps build up resist"" against Buch symptoms. Hero product that helps '"r that's the kind to buy Farnousio almost a century. Thousands w thousands of women have repo'1 benefits. Follow label directions Worfft trying! J.YDIA E. PINKHAM'ScqmU Who's News This Week By Delos Wheeler Lovelace Consolidated Features. WNU Release. MEW YORK. In November, 1917, when the United States had been in World War I for seveD months, the navy sent to its Brook-ly-yard an bpruance Goes to Annapolis Sea in This War; graduate 11 An Admiral Now aTS ut ol the academy and just turned 30. He'd had a post-graduate course in electrical engi-neering and he'd helped build the battleship Pennsylvania before go-ing to sea in her. The powers that be figured that he'd make a electrical superintendent. ' The only person displeased about the whole thing was Raymond Amos Spruance himself. In fact, the only thing that delighted him was that he managed to wangle a couple of months afloat in 1918. This time it has turned out the way he likes it, and President Roosevelt recommends that this same officer, now 57 and a vice admiral, be promoted to admiral for his success as commander of the mighty assault force that just trounced the Japs in the Marshall islands. The admiral's a man who shuns the limelight, but talk to navy men and they'll tell you he's tops as a tactician. Be plans his moves meticulously, and carries them out with skill and daring. He and Vice Ad-miral Fletcher drove the Japs back at Midway in 1942, and Spruance himself had charge of the conquest of the Gilberts. He packs a tremendous amount of energy in his medium build, and he drives himself and the men with him hard when the heat is on. His rug-ged face had been weathered by many a salt breeze. His blue, flinty eyes are those of a born commander. The Spruances are a family of four. His wife and daughter live out on the Pacific coast and his son, true to the navy tradition, is an officer on a submarine. QUITE likely Mrs. George C. is doing a little extra listening these days. The thoughtful chief of staff of the Army of the General Has Silent states taUu Audience in Mrs. outhisprob- - Geo. C. Marshall lems t0 his wife as to no one else. And with the going a trifle heavy in Italy he may be talk-ing more than usual. It is to be noted that the gen-eral talks his problems to, and not with, Mrs. Marshall. Unlike some Washington wives she pre-tends to no expert knowledge in her husband's field, even the edges of it. Her role is that of audience while the sometimes harassed general thinks out loud. For this role she is nicely fitted. She used to be a Shakesperian actress and early learned to show a lively, but silent interest while Mansfield and others reeled off the long, magnificent speeches of the Bard. For both the Marshalls this is their second marriage. He met her on a boat when she was a Baltimore lawyer's widow, met her again on land, decided he had done enough reconnaissance and found she- - felt the same way. A slim wife, hardly up to her husband's shoulder, with modish gray hair, she is finely propor-tioned for the roles of Portia, Juliet and Rosalind. These were among her favorites. Ophelia was one of her favorites, too, but that can hardly be of any present help. "EN. Alexander A. Vandegrift, commandant of the marine corps, marks the first birthday of the women's reserve with an all en- - Col. Ruth Streeter compassing ..weI1 done ,. And the Marines and a smile Have No Regrets "Shts UP the keen blue eyes of Col. Ruth Cheney Streeter. Those are the very words she has been waiting 12 months to hear. She knew that at the start the leather-necks, almost to a man, 'were from Missouri as far as her organization was concerned. Now the stamp of approval is as emphatic as the skep-ticism was real, and the director of the reserve is justly proud. A year ago if this action-lovin- g wife of a lawyer could have had her way, she'd have been ferry-ing planes overseas. She had learned to fly at 45 and held a civilian pilot's license, and it seemed pretty silly to her that Washington thought 47 too old for the Ferry Command. Her year in the marines has erased that disappointment. She admits she was startled when the marines commissioned her a major in January of 1943 and set her to bossing the sister group to the WAVES. She had found time from running her home in Morris-town- , N. J., and bringing up her four children to participate in wel-fare and defense work, but this was something else again. She received her second promotion in a year last January and now she far outranks her three sons in service, two in the navy and one in the army. Only her husband and her daughter are not in uniform. Colonel Streeter spent her girlhood in Peterboro, N. H., and Boston. New England still marks her quick, clipped speech. Neither Bryn Mawr nor her years west of the Hudson have changed that. BEHIpil THENfEV5j ByPAULMALLONj" Released by Western Newspaper Union. ECONOMIC FORMULAS MISSED THE Full employmen has been placed alongside interna tional peace as an equal objective of the British government for thi postwar world in an official pro nouncement by the chancellor of thi exchequer, Kingsley Wood. No doubt our government also wil seek "full employment at all costs' with equal ardor. But in the ful employment discussions, both hen and in Britain, the talk is of nev sensational artificial methods o achieving this result a $25,000,000, 000 annual federal budget to finano public works, a work weel (yes 20) and various other devices. The groove in which all this con servative and liberal thinking is go ing is the one we dug for ourselve: in the last depression-t- he line tha everything which happened in th previous thousands of years of thi world was wrong, that this is thi age of the liberation of man in whicl economic formulas are the solutioi to all problems, that the former nat ural laws of both God and Nature are henceforth to be repealed b; what the economists call "the su premacy of economic man." THEY ALL FAILED This is strange in view of our re cent experiences with economic for mulas. Not one has worked amonj the many we tried in the last 1' years the gold buying policy t raise prices, the ever-norm- gran ary to provide eternally balancec food production; the public worki expenditures, deficit financing, thi Keynes plan, the shorter work weei ell to restore full employment, bu' they did not do so. Some of these steps proved polit ically popular temporarily, but die not achieve their economic purposes As economic formulas, they did no' do the job. Yet the postwar ful employment remedies now being of fered propose to go further alonf this narrow rut in which we hav been unsuccessfully plodding for 14 years. Now they talk of nearly triplinf the old New Deal peacetime spend ing budget, and cutting the work week in half, with no greatei assurances that these new step! would work any better than the old If any government wants to pro vide full employment in the future it must first free itself from thes unsuccessful grooves of thought break out of these reactionar; shackles of the mind and search foi valid ways and means that seen: likely to do the job. What makes full employment' Good business. Nothing else evei made it in a democracy. Wha: makes good business? The expec tation of the people that they cat make a profit. No other formuh in a democracy ever made peoph spend and invest, buy and sell. MAINTAIN PROFIT MOTIVE Governments then must direc. their search for full employment intt one line maintenance of the profi-- incentive. If they want formulas they must seek new ones to keej an expectation of profits in the pub. lie mind. The line on which they are now going lies clearly in the oppositi direction. A $25,000,000,000 budge' would require such heavy taxatior upon the people as to make theii wages (profits) worth less and be so onerous on business as to dis courage the expectation of profits. In fact, the higher you raise taxes the less chance there is of profit, good business and full employment' In following this line, you defeai your own objectives. A work week? That i "share-the-work- not fuU employ- ment. Does this suggestion search in the right direction when you con sider the fall of France, due to hei inability to get production on the 3' and week? Are we, in thi war, winning on the production iron' by reducing the work week, or arc we not now proving conclusively thai full production (with full employ, ment) requires a reasonable wort week? A work week would cu' salaries in half, leaving that muct less to spend, that much less to pro- duce, that much less to buy H would be a depressant to full . Clearly it appears to me our think-er- are on the wrong track. Lei them look in the opposite directior and devise means of maintaining s IZl ,St6ady "delation oi that is all they will hav. tleIrshanntheard f eiorhood prat- Maybe there will be a amount of price inflation, T least, continuation a, of the inflation have w experienced in this Ev eryone knows that But thi , Poration and investor in "the clln The wise financial ry realize the possibilities of iXtion1 But they also know that h a s the same as money wiU alw nent, is impossibTe th6Se mVest' Released by Western Newspaper Union. HERBERT HOOVER AND POLITICAL HISTORY TO ME the dominant character in America, the man whom I, person-ally, should most like to see as 'President, of the United States, is Herbert Hoover. I have no expecta-tion of seeing him again occupy the White House. I know he does not want a nomination to any public of-fice and doubt if he would accept one for any office if it were tendered. His place in America today is that of, an influential citizen; to me, the outstanding elder statesman. With ') that statement as an introduction, J I will recount some bits of political j history in which Mr. Hoover figured and as I saw them in the making. In the 1932 campaign, Mr. Hoover knew long before the votes were counted that he was beaten. Much against his personal wishes, he took to the stump in an effort to soften the blow as much as possible. Mem-bers of the Republican "old guard" in charge of that campaign were even less than disinterested in Hoo-ver's election. They were devoting their efforts to their own cause, and several of them were not successful. Four years later, at the Cleveland convention, I spent a portion of an afternoon reading an address Her-bert Hoover was to deliver before the convention that evening. After reading it, I said to him: "You do not want the nomination to be made by this convention but you will have it if you do not leave the platform and the building im-mediately after the completion of your address this evening." He did not agree with my state-ment as to the effect of the address on the delegates, but he did leave the platform and the building the in-stant the last word of that address was spoken. The demonstration that followed was a tremendous ovation. Competent political experts assured me that had he remained and so inspired the continuance of that ova-tion, he would undoubtedly have been the nominee. Again, four years after Cleveland, at Philadelphia, Hoover was to, and did, address the convention. An ele-ment, with a favorite candidate, re-membered the Cleveland incident. They knew it was not the way Hoo-ver said things, but what he said that swayed his audience. They were taking no chances on the effect on that audience of dele-gates. The instant the Hoover ad-dress began, the loud speaker sys-tem went out of commission and remained out until Mr. Hoover fin- -' ished talking. No one in the audi-- , torium heard what he said. It marked the end of any Hoover in-fluence on that convention. ' From his hotel, immediately fol-lowing the completion of his ad-dress, Hoover announced he did not wish to be considered a candidate for the nomination and his name was not presented. The evidently planned j failure of a loud speaker system had marked the end of the political am-- , bitions or expectations of a great American. To me the loss was that of the nation,, but as a distinguished citizen, as an elder statesman, Mr. Hoover exerts a tremendous influ-ence on American thinking. Six months before the Philadelphia convention, Representative Joe Mar- -' tin, then chairman of the Republican National committee, asked me to name my choice for the nomination. I named Herbert Hoover. "If he could be nominated, we could elect him," Martin said. Some one, or some group, had taken no chances on a dark horse nomination. FOR LAST OCTOBER THE NA-TIONAL CONFERENCE board re-ported that a fraction more than one of each two people, men, worn-- ; en and children, in the United States ' was gainfully employed. The total of 63,612,000 had a paying job of some kind. It is these workers of today and those of the tomorrows who must, in time, pay off the na-- tional debt. On October 31, 1943, the average for each worker amount- - ed to $2,595. What the workers of today do not pay will be left as an inheritance for their children, the workers of tomorrow. At the pres-ent time the debt is increasing at about $100 per worker per month. WHAT WE DO, how much we ac-complish, is a subject for pride, not how much we spend. The fact the government spent 88 billions of dol-lars in 1943 is not, of itself, some-thing to boast about though it is an all time spending record and rep-- i resents more than the total cost of government for all of our first 150 years, including the financing of all previous wars. . . . THERE IS NO INCENTIVE to produce when all the profits of pro- - duction are taken for taxes. That marks the vanishing point for the tax collector. EXPERIENCE IS BETTER than theory, though that is not admitted by Washington bureaucrats who have only theory. . HITLER IS BETWEEN the devil, the deep blue sea and the Allied armies. To whichever he turns, he dies. ... .! THE SEED OF HAPPINESS can grow in any soil if properly and per-sistently cultiva.te.d.. THE DOCTOR JEKYLLS and Mr. Hydes of this world are never happy in either charac.te.r.. CALVIN COOLIDGE talked little but listened much and he became President of th.e.U.nited States. JAPAN, AND JAPAN ONLY, for the Japanese was the verdict of the Cairo conference. Kay it be soon. Merchant Marine Academy The army has West Point; the lavy has Annapolis; and now tie nerchant marine, too, has its ov.u icademy at King's Point, N. Y. Yanks Had to Blast Japs Out of Holes On Marshalls Doughboys of the Seventh infantry division who captured. Kwajalein and other islands of the Kwajalein atoll during the invasion of the Mar-shall islands literally had to dig the Japanese out of the ground. Col. Syril E. Faine, infantry, ' of New Straitsville, Ohio, who is now in the United States, acted as deputy chief of staff of the division during the six-da- y campaign. He said the Japa-nese defenders of the coral base had taken refuge in hun-dreds of shell craters by the time the first waves of infantry hit the shore on January 31 (February 1, Pacific time). "It was just like killing rats," he declared. "The whole island was rubble, after the preliminary bomb-ing and shelling. The Japs had crawled underground wherever they could, and the infantrymen had to stop at every hole and fire down into it, or throw grenades into it." Playing Possum. The Japanese were up to their usual nasty tricks, went on Colonel Faine. Even after they were hope-lessly defeated, they refused to give up. At one point in the action, an American aid station was estab-lished close to a pile of three ap-parently dead Japs. Only two of them, it turned out, were really dead. The third, at the bottom of the heap, pulled himself up after playing possum for a long time and fired one ineffectual shot at an American officer. Other Japs blew themselves up with grenades. The landing on the Marshalls, Colonel Faine said, was preceded by one of the most intensive bom-bardments of the war. Both army and navy planes participated, and later, warships pounded the Jap de-fenses. "One airstrip on the Wotje atoll was so chopped up," Colonel Faine said, "that not only couldn't the Japs get a plane off it, but you couldn't even have run a wheelbar-row along it." Amphibious Warfare. The aerial hammering kept up as the invasion armada, containing more ships than there were in our whole navy at the start of the war swept over the horizon. As the landings started, Seventh division who had received special amphibious training drove their own "alligators" and "ducks" toward shore, and later ferried supplies back and forth from the mother ships. The doughboys had relatively easy going when they first hit the beaches advancing 1,300 yards on the first day. On the second day, they began to run into lines of pillboxes, against which they advanced with combat engineers right behind them. With flamethrowers, grenades, and other weapons, the infantrymen calmlv cleaned out each pillbox as they got to it. The engineers used 400 tons of dynamite on two islands alone levelling everything on them Leader of this orchestra of Italian war prisoners in Bizerte, Tunisia, is Joseph Pellegrino from Passaic, NT. J., a citizen of the United States. He happened to be visiting in Italy when that nation entered the war. Despite his protests, he was induct-ed into the Italian army, and he served unwillingly until he was cap-tured by American troops during the North African campaign. Some-time after this picture was taken, Pellegrino was accepted for induc-tion into the U. S. army. wy& i a 'm&. I f - 1 ' I Pets help to keep up the morale of pr.soners who are far from home 1 CntaCt With erythmg they used to know and lovl U. 8. army authorities matin-eve- ry effort to make the'tot lured soldiers as bearable as u consistent with the maintenance of discipline. Sports, libraries, mat.es, musical organizations and educational opportunities offer other fr the Prisners VU th.s program is in energies IS W"h G convent Cold Spot It may not sound reasonable at Erst thought, but one of the coldest spots in the world is only ten miles from the equator. The spot is ten miles up in the icy air above the Island of Java, where a temperature of 133 degrees below zero has been registered. Your Life. i |