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Show H'H 1 U I j.N. ..rl Private Papers Of a Cub Reporter: j Drew Mlddleton of AP, Wm. H. i Stoneman, John MacVane, Chas. j Collingwood and some other Amer- j ican reporters and commentatois rate medals for their reporting ( f the political embroglios In North Af. rica despite the heavy army and State Department pressure to st:p ' them . . . The political censorship was lifted early in January but ! since then pressure has been applied 1 to get the boys to lay off tlio explosive situation created by our ' policy . . . What is not widely ' known is that Columbia Broaden s'.- ing was pressured to shut up Co!- I lingwood and that Harry Butcher, an ex-fixer for Columbia Broadcast- ing, now a commander and naval ! aide to Eisenhower, was the instru- ment. j I Returning war reporters tell of the melodrama on a ship which brought back prisoners of war . . . The Geneva convention, it appears, ruled that officers of war prisoners would handle the discipline of their own men ... On this ship, some of the prisoners included a few of Gw- ! many's former social democrats ... j Now that they were prisoners, the j war was over for them so they re- i fused to salute their Nazi superiors . . . The infuriated officers sought i satisfaction from the Americans in ! charge . . . "We demand," one of them stormed, "some pistols and permission to 1. we these men shot." i The request, f course, was ignored. ig-nored. The correspondents tell us they are amazed about the rumors over here regarding the WAACs in Al giers "allegedly being a headache to Eisenhower" . . . "We didn't see anything to indicate that," said the scribes. "In fact the ladies who ' arrived with Captain Marquis were ! all lodged in a convent in El-Biar, a suburb of Algiers where they kept 1 very chaste hours." ! You probably recall the booklet handed our men in North Africa about Arabian customs, which warned them of the urgent importance impor-tance of respecting mosques, customs, cus-toms, women, etc . . . Arabian dignitaries dig-nitaries say the effect has been very good . . . General Nogues decided to resist when he learned of the American landings in the early hours of November 8 ... He planned to move his headquarters to Meknes, which is inland, and there await German help which had been promised ... He was not pro-Nazi pro-Nazi simply an opportunist ... He thought we weren't there in sufficient suf-ficient force ... He asked the Sultan Sul-tan to move with him from Rabat and from Meknes declare a holy war on the invaders . . Despite the legend of General Nogues' infiDence over the Sultan, His Majesty re-fused re-fused to move or declare a holy war. That was Sunday afternoon . . . That evening about six, the Sultan was handed a copy of the booklet the army got up with the help of a Harvard professor of anthropology and some of his experts who were over there ahead of time . . . This booklet, the Sultan learned, was found on the body of an American soldier killed in the landing at Port Lyautey In the attack on the Kasban there, which was repulsed by native troops ... The booklet was bloodstained blood-stained . . . The man who brought it to the Sultan was an Arab dignitary dig-nitary favorable to the Allied cause ... He translated the passages about respect for Arab customt, Arab women, etc. ... The Sultan, not an emotional individual, wept and laid: "I knew that the Americana Amer-icana were good people. I am glad I did what I did." Notes of an Innocent Bystander: The Wireless: Elmer Davis won-ders won-ders why Franco waited until his Axis chums were on the losing end before he got sorry about the inhumane in-humane aspect of bombings . . . Murder of British Sunday school tots and teachers by the Luftwaffe hasn't been officially wept over in Madrid, either . . .Wm. H. Costle, once of the State Dcp't, spouted don't-trust-Rus-sia talk, but Johannes Steel reminded remind-ed all that Castle's last boner was saying that Japan was to be trusted. He said that on the morn of Dec. 7, 1941, which you'd think would cure him of prophecy forever ... Ed Herllhy, on NBC for Horn and Har-dart, Har-dart, sat a 4-ycar-old on his knee before the mike. "Wouldn't you," asked Ed, "like to go on the ChlV-dren'a ChlV-dren'a Hour?"-to which the child (heard from Coast to Coast) replied: "No, X wanna go to the bathroom!" Insiders tell you net to bet against Oen. Patton distinguishing himself sooner than you think ... The General received "too much of a buildup In Tunisia" and then there was no reason to "attack" the enemy en-emy having fled . . . Life'a photog-ger, photog-ger, Eliot Ellsofon, Is home minus 30 pounds of weight and all his equipment Lost everything getting out of a burning plane Just In time . . . Elsenhower, they say, complained com-plained to Washington about the abundance of newspaper men and radio correspondents In N. Africa. |