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Show ' Ernie Pyles Slant on the War: Schools Must Prepare Young People To Cope With Difficult Problems of Future Officer Won Lasting of His Soldiers Citizens, Are Urged a are Respect Visit Their Local U. S. s . To Learning Centers Labor, industry, educators, the churches and womens clubs re uniting in a call for the observance of American EducaThe tion week, November week is dedicated to public tribute to schools and is sponsored by the National Education association, the American Legion, the United States Office of Education, and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. An annual pilgrimage to the nations schools is made in more 1. than 4,000 communities by more than 10 million persons during the weeks program of school activities. " Calling upon the citizens to visit their schools, President Roosevelt asks observance of American Education Week to become better acquainted with those faithful servants of the nations children and youth the teachers. In the Presidents message to patrons, students, and teachers of American schools, he asks that teachers be encouraged in their, task of cultivating free men fit for a free world. For these teachers are the conservators of todays civilization and the architects of tomorrows world of promised peace and progress. They serve within the very citadels of democracy, devotedly whether in war or in peace. When victory on the fields of battle shall have been achieved, the work yet to be done through our schools will be enormous, the President continues. I therefore call upon the teachers of America to continue without flagging their efforts to contribute through the schools to that final consummation which alone will make possible of fulfillment all plans of education for new tasks. Realizing that the schools play a vital role both in the prosecution of the war and laying the foundations for the peace, Education for New Tasks is the theme for the 24th annual observance. Schools are preparing children and young people for the new tasks which confront our country, states F. L. Schlagle, president of the National Education association, the new tasks of making postwar readjustments, maintaining economic security at home, improving intergroup relationships, assuring justice to minority groups, adapting our life to the new technology, and improving community life. Only a people of intelligence, character, goodwill and earnestness can meet these issues with success. Program for the Week. Daily themes in the development of "Education for New Tasks are: Building Sunday, November 5 Worldwide Brotherhood. Monday, November 6 Winning the War. ImprovTuesday, November 7 ing Schools for Tomorrow. DeWednesday, November 8 Peace. an veloping Enduring PreparThursday, November 9 ing for the New Technology. Friday, November 10 Educating All the People. BetterSaturday, November 11 Life. ing Community When the war is over, our country will be faced with a problem of readjustment which in many ways will be as difficult as the problems of mobilization for the war, warns Mr. Schlagle. Millions of men and women must be retrained for new jobs. Boys and girls in schools must be aided in adjusting to postwar conditions. The war has emphasized the nations need for youth. We cannot afford in the postwar period to permit youth to become the lost generation again, he says. BrotherWorldwide Building hood, topic for Sunday, opening the weeks program, will be observed in the churches throughout the nation. According to Everett R. Clinchy, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Brotherhood is giving to others the dignity and rights we want to keep for ourselves. We need to make universal brotherhood part of the learning experience. He points out that this can be done by thinking scientifically on questions of race, religious cultures, and nationality differences which divide people into groups. Mondays theme, Winning the War, is a reminder of the wartime job being done by the schools in preinduction training, adjustment of courses to permit pupils to do wartime work, rationing and registration programs, conducting scrap and bond drives, as well as continuing their regular program of education for 25 million American children. Improving Schools for Tomorrow emphasizes the steps needed for improving American education. Equalization of educational opportunity through state and federal aid, payment of adequate salaries to teachers, streamlining the administrative organization of education in many areas, and the building of school programs around real life problems are among the pressing needs for better schools in the postwar era. Hope For Enduring Peace. Education is a potent force which can be used for the promotion of peace, underlies Wednesdays top1 . ic, Developing an Enduring Peace." Proposals for the international organization following the war include a council on educational policy which would become a permanent international agency for education. The purpose of such an agency would be to lift educational standards, to encourage education for international understanding, and to report for action to the general international body attempts in any nation to promote war through education. Preparing for the New Technology points to the reliance techedunology and science have upon cation. The need for intelligent management and the reduction of unskilled labor are emphasized. The need for specialization on the part of workers calls for ever-increasi- ng cooperation and mutual helpful- The promise of a new world ness. depends upon technology. To reach that promise we must develop of through education people capable out. Mr. Schlagle points using it, Educating All the People, topic for Friday, emphasizes that despite increasing emphasis dur- Is vetting Practical and scientific trainingschooL jy, trend will in even grade Prohang ing the war years, sew tinue into peace times. .These boys are con- the great strides in establishing system of public education, there 13 per cent of our adult population education having only a fourth-grad- e or less. Hundreds of thousands of men fully qualified in every other respect have been found by the Selective Service to have less than a fourth-grad- e education. Bettering Community Life, topic for the last day of American Education Week, underlines the role of the school as a community center, serving adults as well as children, and acting as a force for bringing the people together so that plans for improved community life may be made and developed. Problems of Future. American Education Week grew out of the First World War. It was first observed in 1921. Twenty-fiv- e per cent of the men examined in that draft were illiterate; 29 per cent were physically unfit; many were foreign-bor- n and had little understanding of American life.. These were startling disclosures. Unfit as they were for war, these men were also incapable of serving their country most effectively in time of peace. Members of the newly formed American Legion wished to correct these conditions. They saw ip this situation an opportunity to serve their country after the war. When a campaign of education appeared to be the only answer they consulted the other sponsoring organizations and as a result the first American Education Week was observed. All the new tasks which confront our society as a whole are the ones with which our schools must deal. For the schools are of society and their task is to build society by Mr. developing good citizens, Let Schlagle further points out. us utilize the power of education to Many adults need a grade school education, either because they came from some region of the country where schools are remote, or because they are foreign born. Here a young woman from Austria waves her hard-wo- n diploma. fulfill the promise of Amerifurther ca and to enable us to do our part among the family of nations in the establishment of a just order of affairs in the world, he urges. Six Billion Investment. The National Planning committee, a private agency, most of whose directors are businessmen, recently stated that if we make our economic system work reasonably well after the war we shall have a national income of at least 110 billion dollars. The report goes on to relate that according to the estimated figures, we shall spend: 25 billion for foodstuffs as compared with 18 billion before the war; 16 billion for housing as compared with 9 billion; seven billion for automobiles as against four billion; three billion for recreation as against one and a half billion; 13 billion for household operations and equipment as compared with six and a half billion. asks .Mr. Schlagle, Shall we, under such cohditions refuse to increase the two and a half billion which we have been spending for schools and colleges; Shall we, with the highest per capita income of any nation in all history, use our increased wealth to feed, clothe, and house ourselves in comparative luxury, to buy entertainment, airplanes, automobiles, radios,' and refrigerators, and neglect to spend any of our increased income for the educational improvement of our children? We can readily afford the five or six billion dollars which a genuinely adequate educational program for all would cost. This would be the wisest investment that American citizens could make, he contends. Eric A. Johnston, president, United States chamber of commerce, says the organization is obglad to give its support to the servance of American Education Week, 1944. Business recognizes the relation between education and an expanding economy. There is no more important task before us than the development of the kind of educational program which will promote good citizenship and economic well-bein- g. Wounded GI Artist Becomes Most Popular Cartoonist to Soldiers By Ernie Pyle ( Editors Note): Pyle retells some of his experiences while he was with the dough rest in Neur boys during the Italian campaign. He is now taking a Mexico. long-neede- d AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY. In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never' have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas' Captain Waskow was a company commander in the 36th division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle 20s, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him. After my own father, he came next, a sergeant told me. He always looked after us, a soldier said. Hed go to bat for us every time. Ive never known him to do anyanother one said. thing unfair, hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face. And he nevei uttered a sound all the time he sal there. Finally he put the hand down. He reached up and gently straightened the points of the captains shirt collar, and then he sort of the tattered edges of the uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone. The rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line end to end in the shadow of the low stone wail. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep. ed Sgt. Bill Mauldin appears to us trail over here to be the finest cartoonist the night they brought Captain Was- the war has produced. And thats kow down. The moon was nearly not merely because his cartoons are full, and you could see far up the funny, but because they are also trail, and even part way across the terribly grim and real. shad- I was at the foot of the mule valley below. Soldiers made ows as they walked. Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly down across the wooden packsaddles, their heads hanging down on the . left side of the mules, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mules walked. The Italian mule skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodips, when they got to the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself and ask others to help. The first one came down early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule, and stood him on his feet for a moment while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road. I dont know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you dont ask silly questions. We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules. . Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more; the dead man lay all alone, outside in the shadow of the wall. arent about which you at home are best acquainted with. They are about the men in the line the tiny percentage of our vast army who are actually up there in that other world doing the dying. His cartoons are about the war. Mauldins central cartoon character is a soldier, unshaven, unwashed, unsmiling. He looks more like a hobo than like your son. He looks, in fact, exactly like a doughfoot who has been in the lines for two months. Mauldins training-cam- p And cartoons life, that Isnt pretty. His maturity comes simply from a native understanding of things, and from being a soldier himself for a long time. He has been in the army three and a half years. Bill Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, N. M. He now calls Phoenix home base, but we of New Mexico could claim him without much resistance on his part. Bill has drawn ever since he was a child. He always drew pictures of the things he wanted to grow up to be, such as cowboys and soldiers, not realizing that what he really wanted to become was a man who draws pictures. He graduated from high school in Phoenix at 17, took a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, and at 18 was in the army. He did 64 days on K. P. duty in his first four months. That fairly cured him of a lifelong worship of uniforms. Mauldin belongs to the 45th division. Their record has been a fine one, qnd their losses have been heavy. Mauldins typical grim cartoon soldier is really a 45th division Them a soldier came into the infantryman, and he is one who has cowshed and said there were truly been through the mill. some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four Mauldin was detached from soldier a mules stood there in the moon-- . after straight duty year in the infantry, and put to work on light, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. the divisions weekly paper. His true war cartoons started in Sicily . The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. and have continued on through Italy, one is This gradually gaining recognition. Capt. Captain Waskow, Bob Neville, Stars and Stripes edione of them said quietly. One soldier came and looked tor, shakes his head with a veterans admiration and says of Mauldown, and he said out loud: din: Damn it! Hes got it. Already hes the outThats all he said, and then he cartoonist of the war. standing walked away. Another one came, and he said, Damn it to hell anyway! Mauldin works in a cold, dark He looked down for a few last moments little studio in the back of Stars and and then turned and left. Stripes Naples office. He wears Another man came. I think he was glasses when he works. an officer. It was hard to tell offi- His eyes used to be good, but he cers from men in the dim light, for damaged them in his early army all were bearded and grimy. The days by drawing for too many hours man looked down into the dead cap- at night with poor light. He averages about three days tains face and then spoke directly out of 10 at the front, then comes to him, as though he were alive: back and draws up a large batch Im sorry, old man. of cartoons. If the weather is Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and good he sketches a few details at the front. But the weather is he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenusually lousy. You dont need to sketch details derly, and he said: I sure am sorry, sir. anyhow, he says. You come back Then the first man squatted down, with a picture of misery and cold and he reached down and took the and danger in your mind and you dead hand, and he sat there for a dont need any more details than full five minutes holding the dead that. - silver- -rimmed |