Roanoke Rapids daily herald., 1948-10-17
Many Planted
As Officers
In. Service
PEGLER
Rv WEsrBRooK pEGLER


hateful propaganda against the
high brass and 1.-The big brs-f
NAVY which began almost on aiye
dot of VE-Day--as soon as Rus-
s;a was absolutely rescued from
Hitler-was touched off and
stimulated by the communists.
Many of them were planted ~
officers in the publicity and mo-
rale rackets of the service.
They concocted morale" pam
phlets and doodled diagrams to
show that Roosevelt's union
racketeers, for all their dis
graceful record of strikes, mall
lingering, loafing, whistle-jump-
ing and overtime profiteering.
had done as much to win the
war as men who had been killed
in action. These planted pro-
pagandists Matched "indoctrina-
ton" courses to disarm the real
Americans, the fighters, OF
their natural, honest hatred Of
the Bolshevik dictatorship and
persuade them that anyone who
uttered any suspicion of Com
munism was doing Hitler's
work. Men who should have
stopped this, but didn't want to,
sat in the Pentagon in Washing
ton and let it 60 on. The gull
test of these were members Of
the cult of Harvard Law, the
main source of the brutal cynic-
ism which became the phi
losophy of our government after
1888.
The propaganda against the
"brass" roared up in the SER
vice publications where the
Communists and their shrinking
friends we're hiding out the war,
who had sworn death to the Ma
zis but with the proviso that the
neighbors' children should do
the killing. Editors who will
take the trouble to look back
will find also that it came in
standard package-goods dis
tributed by some of the syndi-
Gates from Washington and New
York. There was a temptation,
even to editors, to engage in
apple polishing by appealing to
the social bigotry of the ma
jority by Safeguarding the off
icers as class and particularly
generals and admirals. There
we're so or 80 enlisted men for
every officer and the tempta-
ton to propitiate them was pro-
portionate. There had been a
similar campaign in Italy after
the first war. Officers were
chased and mauled by hoodlums
because they were officers.
Train crews sometimes refused
to bulge until officers got off.
Many fine Italian officers ma
turally threw in with Ease
ism and they got hunk with the
buns who had humilitated them.
Brass" is a cheap cliche af-
fected by blackguards and fax
ers of journalism and the radio
who cannot write and crib their
paltry bromides from fui pi-yu's
timestyle. 1t came out of the
old British army and with
some tarnish on it, at that.
Their generals were brave,
stately and imperious but slow
and had little imagination.
Any attempt 20 redress the re-
putation of the American off
icers, and especially of those "a
bove the rank of captain and
heut-commander, runs hard a.
galnst the fact that Roosevelt,
Y, no cheapened and befouled ev-
cry fine thing that he touched,
Immediately made rank cheap.
Bill knudsen, great manufac-
turer, was induced to accept the
three-stars of a ieut-general,
formerly reserved for really
good commanders of American
armies in war. Nobody made
fun of Mr.. Knudsen but many
who admired him felt sorry for
him because he plainly felt rid
iculous. Thereafter, Roosevelt
and his friends tossed out con-
stellations of cheap stars. On
winter mornings in Washington
downtown, bag-eyed, tired gen.
erals, few months out of civil
ian clothes, lurched against
sleepy enlisted men going to
work. The buck-general, or bril-
gadier, actully had less pres
tlge here than buck-sergeant
had had in normal times.
Officers of the regular army
had their own sentiments about
this. A man put in years of pa
triotic soldering. Always loyal
to the beautiful ideal and code
of West Point. At IS or so, he
found himself still a colonel or
lieutenant-colonel while the fell
low hanging to a strap in the
same bus wore one or two stars
pinned on him ony to permit
him to out-rank other ex-civil-
ians in financial or legal nego-
tiations in the Pentagn.
Press-agents and well-placed
relatives Of Hollywood mag
mates who always made pretty
shots of Roosevelt's polio par
ties and made him look noble
in the newsreels, wound up colo
mel. A speakeasy man became
grandiose mess-sergeant wit
Qlac ON hic l,rn rda uxhinDiNQ