Montana labor news., 1945-02-01
WARTIME LIVING
Ry RETTY GoInsTEIN


The War From Palm Beach
Palm Beach, Fla. is an exclusive re-
sort where mulh-millionaires go to es-
cape the cold hard winter. playing all
DAY in the sun and gambling to drive
away boredom in the night. From the
golf course or roulette table at Palm
Beach the war looks different than it
does from a foxhole or a war plant. On
New Years eve d. L. Whitehurst. a
copyreader for the Palm Beach POST
Times, sat down ana wrote a column
telling the playboys what they looked like
greeting the fourth year Of war.
He described the tropical moon shining
on the honor roll in W. Palm Beach.
where the names of local boys in the
service are listed. "A couple Of blocks
away" he wrote, Jewellers drank to the
New Year Far down the lanes of an
uncertain future they saw brighter days,
even if they could not make out the
hands on their own wrist watches. Half
drunk women heard their drunker men
tell why this bloody mess, so far far
away would be over before another New
Year shall dawn. Thanks to the Yanks
in the tanlzsl
And so last night did that part OF
America which is so ready to fight war
that knows no mud, no gaping, oozing
wounds, no dying buddies, no fear Of
death that often turns to hope. cele-
brate the coming of a New Year.
Raw whiskey does not smell good.
even when mixed with a woman's per-
fume, but some men find it easier to in
hale than the odor Of a week-old wound.
Or the foul smell of an unbathed, sweaty
body
Whitehurse described the evening
clothes, the diamonds and the fakes. IN
Palm Beach a war was being fought
from the wave washed sands of a placid
resort, he said The men there knew
how war puts terror in timid hearts, but
they We're there not to talk about it..
They had been in combat-with their
draft boards They had won. They had
their stripes-d deferment stripes. They
were glad They said toasts to their
stand-ins-the Yanks in the tanks"
The man was fired from the paper and
the Palm Beachers, who We're sick enough
from hangovers without having to read
the facts of life that way, recovered from
both.
Or the Ritz Hotel in Paris
But supposing a visiting millionaire
from France spent New Years Eve in
Palm Beach and then went back and de-
scribed it as typical of the American
homefront at war He could say: I saw
America and while we over here are suf-
fering and dying, they sit on the sand
all day and play and clip their fat cou-
pons and gamble all night.
Recently an American millionaire,
frederick Coolidge Crawford, board mem
Der Of the National Association of Manu-
facturers and labor-hater came back
from France with the story that people
there really prospered under the Nazis.
He said he went to the Ritz Hotel and
the big brass doorknobs and all the
were there There we're
new silk curtains hanging the rooms
were modernistic the hotel looked
well painted" And "a fine conservative
told him the people didn't
suffer under the Nazis and didn't want
to be liberated
The People Tell a Different Story
War correspondents tell a different
story about France, how when liberation
came. the people were eating only bread,
made without yeast, and some vegetables,
how they had no milk, no eggs, no heat
in their homes, no warm clothing, how
a million French houses were destroyed
and hundreds Of thousands Of acres Of
ruined by German mines, and
how fiercely they fought to liberate their
country from the Nazis-first preparing
by years in the underground, then in
the great battle that finally freed
France.
During the occupation the Ritz hotel
was the hangout Of the Nazis and the
T CllIllhlSn WIN SuIldDDA dbCA VIII bllI4AA'
It's the hangout TO-DAY Of the eX-collabo- /
rationists and the war profiteers and
visitors like Crawford Of
the NAM. Their story is no more the
story Of the people of France than the
Palm Beach story is the story Of the
people Of America--the war worker and
the GI, There are people fight this
war and people fighting against it, and
that holds all over the world
Secure heaW attacks against our enc