ON U.S. HOME FRONT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 64, 16 March 1944, Page 4

ON U.S. HOME FRONT

ATTITUDE TO THE WAR

WARNING AS TO NAZI AIMS

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23.

Mr. Cecil Brown, who came into worldwide prominence by his broadcasts from the days when the Japanese were over-running the Pacific war zone, gave a nation-wide talk over the radio and said he had been travelling from coast to coast in the United States seeking to find what the American people were thinking and talking about.

"Some Americans think certain phases of the war are simply nuisances, and they don't understand the war in its entirety," he said. "They think the Roosevelt Government should have told the people more about the war. Some people told me: 'We have not been sold on this war.' Some newspapers have achieved prominence by saying that the war on the battlefronts and the war on the home front are two different warfronts. It is now the basis of the Presidential campaign.

"President Roosevelt's opponents say Roosevelt is a good man to run a war, but he has made a mess of the homeland. I asked hundreds of people I met: 'How do you think the war is going?' Eighty per cent to:d me about the situation on the battle fronts and most of the others on both fronts, and they recognised it as all one war. 'How about the home front? Is not that a part of the war?' I also asked people I met in various parts of the country.

"They all agreed that General | Eisenhower did not get all those guns, planes and tanks out of the sky, but that they came from the home front. They want to separate the two fronts, and that is the reason of the Presidential campaign. The people told me further that the generals are running the war and that the American nation needs a President who can manage home affairs. Roosevelt has not convinced the people that the difference is very little between running the war and running the home front. The Truth on Rationing "Before I started out on my survey of the country I thought people were almost up in arms about food rationing, and that the people were in fear of food shortages or even were doomed to starvation! Then I was astounded to discover that not one protested against food rationing. Some even told me: 'We should have stiffer rationing, and that makes us feel the war more.' At least one woman told me that."

Mr. Brown said the Germans were holding out in the hope of getting a negotiated peace. That was why they were so reckless in sacrificing men, and were holding out thinking Americans would tire of the war on the home front and would accept terms of peace. The Germans were anxious to win the peace, and he was doing his best to awaken the people of the United States to be on their guard against dissension among the United Nations. Despite the fact that the R.A.F. was giving Berlin terrific drubbings night after night, the Germans would not permit details of the damage to be learned outside their own country. They were willing to take any measure of punishment, hoping the Allies would tire of warring and then the Germans could get their desired negotiated peace.