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A MARINE’S
PRAYER
Dear God, in a
world that’s racked with war,
Let me think of the coming years
When the cannon’s core has ceased its roar,
And the nations dry their tears.
Keep Thou my heart unblasphemed. Give
Me strength to wait release;
And let me live as a man should live
In a fight for the God of Peace.
O Father, rant
that I may last
To build the world again;
To know when pestilence is past
A brotherhood of men.
Bless Thou the aged with Thy light;
Protect our troubled youth;
And let me fight as a man should fight
In a war for the God of Truth.
Thy Will be done,
if Thou decree
That I shall die afield.
But let me go face to the foe –
Sustain me, lest I yield.
Let no man cry he saw me fly
The battle’s agony.
And let me die as a man should die
In a fight for Liberty.
G. E. Lord, PFC
U.S. Marine Corps
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FAIR
ENOUGH by Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK, July 9 – In one of his state
papers, written in October, 1929, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded a high
note.
“How about the
larger number of public officials who are honest in the sense that
they cannot be put in jail, but who are dishonest in the sense that
they commit acts which are morally and ethically wrong?” he demanded.
“What of a public official who allows a member of his family to obtain
fees or benefits through his political influence?”
This is the late president’s own
answer to those who now would condone or dismiss the charge that
during his presidency he used the prestige, if not the real power, of
his high office to obtain large loans for his son, Elliott, and later
to clean up these debts, one of them at the rate of two cents on the
dollar. By his own declaration of moral and ethical standards, Mr.
Roosevelt has indicted his name and compromised his place in history.
However, an indictment is not a conviction but merely a charge and he
is entitled to a fair trial of the evidence. Further developments
mgiht justify a formal court trial on a grand jury indictment of some
surviving principal in dealings thus far revealed or yet to be
revealed. If there should be no grand jury indictment, however, then
those who revere the memory of Mr. Roosevelt should be the last to
oppose a congressional inquiry which would offer the only means of
rehabilitating him as an honorable public servant.
It may be remembered, although more
likely it has been forgotten, that Wendell Willkie said something
during the (article torn) of moral and ethical wrong. Willkie was a
lawyer with a prosperous practice in public utilities. He never was
accused of any dishonest act in this legitimate field of legal
practice but nevertheless the propagandists of the Roosevelt party
heckled him with insinuations that a Wall Street lawyer must be a
crook.
They ignored the fact that, in 1924,
Roosevelt, himself, endorsed John W. Davis, the Democratic nominee for
president, who was a Wall Street lawyer and a partner in the firm of
J. P. Morgan. They overlooked, also, the fact that when their
candidate had been a lawyer his office had been in the Wall Street
district and that even then his son, Jimmy, had an insurance office in
the same region. There was the same note of insinuation in the
emphasis which the New Deal propagandists laid on the fact that
Willkie’s apartment was at 1010 Fifth avenue, New York. That was a
false move, however, for the Republicans quickly replied that Harold
L. Ickes, the one who threw that boomerang, had two homes both more
pretentious than Willkie’s apartment and one of them on a street
called, in his biographical data in Who’s Who, “Private Road.” Nor
did they neglect to make the comparison between Willkie’s apartment,
paid for by his own earnings, and the Roosevelt ancestral estate at
Hyde Park received by inheritance.
At any rate, Willkie plainly was
needled by this propaganda so one day he announced that if he were
elected he would file a sworn statement of his assets and those of his
family on taking office and another when he should leave the
presidency. That was a formality that had been adopted by law in one
of our sister republics to the south as a corrective measure, but the
suggestion that it had been made necessary in our own country made no
impression on the people. They either rejected the very idea that Mr.
Roosevelt would stoop to acts which he, himself, had condemned, or
were so far gone in such civic immorality that they could see nothing
improper in such conduct even if it could be verified.
It is not repeating rumor or spreading
scandal to say that there is evidence which strongly suggests many
other acts of exploitation of the presidential office which would come
fairly within the denunciation that Mr. Roosevelt uttered in 1929. At
that time a statement of this character served a political purpose
against his opponents, but that fact is no reason to doubt his
sincerity, then. The question of his sincerity and of his ethics and
morals in office comes now with the unchallenged assertion that he
encouraged a business man who was under political fire to lend
$200,000 to his son on “unbankable” security and later enlisted Jesse
Jones, his Secretary of Commerce, to settle this debt on terms
amounting, as far as Elliott was concerned, to a total washout, and
other liabilities at great discounts.
The instinctive reaction of those who
would defend the late president has been to suspect the lender of
ulterior motives. Perhaps Hartford’s motives were not pure. He might
have thought that if he didn’t lend the money his troubles would
multiply as, in fact, they did, notwithstanding the loan. But none of
this counter-attack, consisting, so far, of innuendo accompanied by
direct charges, has attempted to deny that the initiative was on the
side of the borrower and that Hall Roosevelt, the president’s
brother-in-law, Elliott’s uncle and the brother of Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt, and a member of the White House family circle, took an
active part in the negotiations.
Mr. Roosevelt’s own question, “What of
a public official who allows a member of his family to obtain fees or
benefits through his political influence?” demands an answer from
those who are in a position to give it.
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Mrs. A. M. Donahue of 115 West Main
street is announcing the marriage of her daughter, Capt. Margaret
Kathleen Donahue, ANC, to Tech. Sergt. J. W. Mills, USA, of Derry,
Pa., which took place Wednesday, June 20 at the Army base chapel of
the 106 Station Hospital unit at Naples, Italy.
White flowers, palms and other
greenery decorated the altar before which the Rev. Father Sullivan,
Chaplain, performed the ceremony at 2:30 o’clock in the presence of
members of the hospital unit and close friends of the couple.
Given in marriage by Col. C. F.
Fisher, AMC, also of this city, the bride appeared in a white bridal
gown with finger-tip veil and carried a bouquet of gardenias and
stephanotis.
Lt. Katherine Kerrigan, the maid of
honor, chose a formal gown of blue. Her bouquet was of red roses.
A reception for friends of the bridal
couple followed at the apartment of Col. Fisher.
The bride graduated from St. Mary’s
high school and St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing. She entered
the service in September, 1942, and has served as head nurse of her
unit since going overseas in July, 1948.
Sergt.
Mills, who was assistant manager of the Hotel Gore prior to entering
the army air corps, completed 90 issions over enemy territory in the
European theater of operations. He has been overseas for two years.
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