Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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“USE IT UP*’ THE NEWBERRY SUN FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1943 1218 College Street NEWBERRY, SOUTH CAROLINA • O. F. ARMFIELD Editor and PuMisher Published Every Friday In The Year Entered' as second-class matter December 6, 1937, at tht postoffice at Newberry, South Carolina, under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. REAMiS HAVE been • written and millions of cubic feet of hot air expended to inform our fighting men of the Land of Milk and Honey they may expect to find when they come marching home triumphant in this global war. Veterans of the first world war must smile when they read and hear this sort of thing for it has a famil iar ring. They, too, were promised much and wound up with 60 very in flated dollars from their grateful government. They did finally get a bonus after it had been passed over the president of the United States— Franklin D. Roosevelt—the same who somewhat back recommended all sorts of nice things for World War II men. You see an election is around the corner and ten million soldiers are going to vote. Boys now fighting the world over had as well know that they will find when they return about what they left; the selfish are still among us, money is still our god. They will learn soon enough upon their return that they have another job to do. Theirs will be the task of redeeming the government from the grasping claws of impractical idealists who put it 15 billion dollars in the red 1 before war began. No, fellows, you are not coming back to a Utopia despite Henry Wal lace and other dreamers. But that will not lessen your determination to fight, for after all you are fighting for your mothers and your sisters. You are all that stands between them and the brutes of Japan and Germany. “Making the World safe for Democracy” is all right for the politicians to toss about at banquets while you crouch in a foxhole but YOU know that you are fighting for Mom and her right to live without fear. Let that be your consolation when you go under fire; her love and her tears will be your reward when you come home. Expect no other. DOCTOR JAMES KINARD speaking before a woman’s club in Co lumbia warned of the danger of a sagging home front and its effect on the fighting front. He had reference to production, morale, etc. There is another angle of this home front business which is an affront to every mother and father with a son in the service. This has been brought about by the govern ment’s dilatory policy in harnessing the nations resources for the prose cution 0* the war. Pressure groups who wanted business as usual pre vailed over a perhaps none to reluc tant government with the result that thousands are getting rich while mil lions of boys are fighing for a pit tance. Grafting, and profiteering are rampant and there seems little disposition on the part of the gov ernment to put a stop to it. Many are getting rich on government con tracts, salting away their prifits in tax-free securities to enj:y when all the blood is spilt and the ways of pleasures return to them. Every dollar, every talent, every resource of every kind, should have been conscripted at the beginning of the war. It is neither Democratic or right to conscript young men and compel them to give their best years while leaving others to accumulate great fortunes. This condition cannot be righted now, it has gone too far, but return ing soldiers will know how to deal with it.' They will know how to get recompense for what hey have suf fered! THE AMERICAN LEGION made a great mistake following the last World War in following a “no poli tics” policy. It gradually saw the error of such a policy and of late has had some voice in certain politi cal questions. Returning soldiers of the present war will be forewarned and "will be a force in politics and in shaping the future of our country in the next two or three decades. They will not al low it to fall into another war for they know what war is. Messrs Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin may make all the plans they care to but so far as this country is concerned they will stand or fall on the will of our returning soldiers. The “elder statesmen” who have made such a mess of things will have to give way to men determined to deal from the shoulder. WE’RE ready to join old Cotton Ed Smith as d charter member of a new Democratic party with Harry Byrd to carry the banned into the next election. Senator Byrd is a real Democrat untainted by New Dealism. He kept his skirts clean while other southern Democrats bent the knee before the boys with the money bags. That makes Byrd no less than a hero for the pressure was great, very great. If the Democratic party is to be purged and redeemed it must; be done by Southern’ people of the type of Harry Byrd, people who cherish the ideals of Jefferson and Jackson. Northern Democrats have nothing in common with Southern Democrats. They are Democrats for convenience not from ideals expounded by Jeffer son, hence they feel at home in the polyglot New Deal. People of the South have never liked the New Deal. True, it had some defenders here as long as the money lasted. Good Democrats swal lowed a lot of nauseating stuff be cause they thought they had to have the money the government was bor rowing and giving them. They didn’t like the government’s pamper ing of John L. Lewis, Mrs. Roose velt’s coddling of the negro, regi menting cf the farm, and so on, but