Newspapers / The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, … / May 29, 1941, edition 1 / Page 3
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WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS . , By Edward C.-Wayne „ . .. War Approaches New Critical Phase As 'Showdown' Looms in Near East; Defense Mediation Board Struggles To Avert Strikes in Vital Industries (EDITOR'S NOTE—When •pinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) (Released by Western Newspaper > k • '-V . - . . . . . .. .4 Marshal Petain's decision (or France to collaborate with Adolf Hitler's government has made the tiny French mandate of Syria the center of un rest and a potential battleground. Here are pictured French colonial troops on parade in the streets of Beirut, chief city of Syria. NAZIS: Creative Pause Although fighting continued heav ily in North Africa and seemed to be stepping up on the Iraq front, Berlin talked of a "creative pause" which could be regarded as a pre cursor of events of great magnitude. Berlin claimed the turning point of the war was at hand, and pointed to diplomatic spearhead attacks in France and the Near-East as the type of thing referred to in the "pause." As Britain caught its breath for a few days after the terrific bomb ing of London and other cities, casu alty lists were made up showing that 86,312 citizens had been killed or wounded by bombings since last June. Yet the two worst months were September and October, not March and April, as most had thought. There were 32,000 casualties in the fall months, and only 23,000 in March and April. This showed a better defense in shelters, as there was no question but that the spring raids had showed much more power than those in the fall. In the matter of IOSJYS at sea, there was somewhat of a drop dur ing the month of April, ftnd in early May, one week showing only a loss of 36,000 tons, or at the rate of about 150,000 tons a month, as against pre vious months when the rate hopped up to around 250,000. This was in spite of the fact of longer days and better weather for submarines to operate in. Many be lieved the R.A.F. raids which held the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau ap parently damaged at their docks in Brest were responsible in great measure for the fall-off in sinkings. Reports from North Africa tended to show the British army of the Nile picking up somewhat in verve and apparently in machines, though some reports showed the supply of tanks to be so low that the British were arming trucks with cannon and sending them out into the desert in lieu of tanks. Tanks were moving off American assembly lines, but how many were getting to Britain and especially to the Near-East and North African fronts remained a mystery. There were increasing evidences that the British and Nazis were go ing to hook up in a big battle in the Near-East, and perhaps this time on somewhat more even terms. Within a day after the Nazi planes moved into Iraq via Syrian air dromes, a brief death notice in a Berlin paper told of the loss of a young pilot named Von Blomberg, son of the Field Marshal, also for mer war minister, who was ousted in 1938 when he married a carpen ter's daughter. It was not said where Von Blom berg.died, but the British radio said it had been determined that he was one of the first casualties among the Nazi fliers to enter Iraq. London did not try to minimize the 'importance of the Nfe&r-East flight, and official circles likened it in to the"* Battle of the Atlantic, and stated that the Britisji control of the Near-East would be thor oughly defended. ,v " Word came through that Nazi, in fantry units were moving into Syria through the Bosporus, and;would be sent to Iraq, undoubtedly well sup ported by mechanized' forces. ' " From the British viewpoint, thg stalemate in North Africa was a TANKS: And Killers Even as the first new tanks were moving from assembly lines, the army was concentrating on "tank killers" snd studying several meth ods of combating the armored weap on. Among these were tank-traps, land-mines, posts, redoubts armed heavily, and mobile artillery, includ ing, ,of course., tanks themselves. tribute to the heroism of the under equipped army of the Nile, and the long defense of Tobruk, backed up by the navy, showed how thinly the long Italo-German rear was held. Salum changed hands five or six times in a week, and some cases of British advances into Libya were reported, though Axis sources al ways claimed the British were ."chased back." MEDIATION: Bigger Stick American industry, geared up to its highest pitch in history, and real izing, whether the public did or not, that the call for 40 billions of dollars worth of material was equivalent to asking industry to work an Ameri can miracle, teetered along on the brink of the cliff of labor troubles, but without actually falling over. It was evident that somebody or some agency, presumably the de fense mediation board, Dr. Dykstra chieftain, was wielding a bigger stick than the department of labor conciliators ever did, and was wield ing it to some purpose. Strike threats, not so much strikes, became the order of the day. The soft coal strike was halt ed, then threatened to break out again, but the mediators were "on top" of the trouble and hoped to quell it. The hard coal miners, 100,- 000 of them, threatened to walk out, demanding more wages. Nastiest threat of all was the Gen eral Motors strike, which had Knud sen of OPM up a tree when he called it the "most dangerous." The C. I. O. Automobile Workers group wanted a 10 per cent pay raise and a closed shop. The strike was set for one morning, and three hours before it was due to break a 24-hour truce was announced, and a couple of hours before it was expired the strike was settled on a basis of the pay raise but no closed shop. The Colt's strike, tying up $30,000,- OOC in machine-gun contracts, lasted only a day. Tanks were moving off assembly lines, 20-mm cannon for airplanes were in mass production, a 3,000-horsepower airplane motor was said to be "less than a year away." In every way it was apparent that American industry was "catching the idea" that it was being called upon for a supreme effort in which the United States was challenging the world, and was planning to show the world that this country, supreme in machines and machine tools, could dominate the world in mili tary affairs. But the public still Gallup-polled 79 per cent against active entry in the war, and Dr. James B. Conant of Harvard said "America doesn't know.it's in a real emergency." Odd thing about the poll was that nearly the same per cent favored all-out aid to Britain. OCD: Ready to Go President Roosevelt was calling on millions of Americans to enroll in the civilian defense group, under the banner of a new "group of initials, OCD, meaning the; pfflce of Civilian .Defense.' It was expected that Mayor LaGuardia of New York wpuld lejd the movement. The jflah" was to line up men and •ttomeQ all over the nation for all sorts' of duties from airplane spot ting to . Watching for spies or sabo tage anfl even keeping an eye on prices of commodities. It is planned to build an organiza tion into which millions, can be en rolled and trained. The plan was borrowed whole cloth from England, and has been Britain's most successful organiza tion, aiding the British more than any other one thing in keeping air raid casualties down, and thus so far stalemating Hitler's efforts to knock Britain out of the war from the air. AI3O of immense value in Britain has been the morale-building effect of the civilian defense group, par ticularly the ARP workers. THE DANByftY, AETOfWj i Defense Bonds WEiSKL : J£ '?*■*. f|; : f^ ■» *W* '.^MKh ■. S^BBEp Hk " n A Kf ' Hfe, fIBI Ignace Jan Padereu'ski, ffirmer premier of Poland and pianist of uorld-widr fame, as he urged all Americans to purchase United States Savings Bonds. His teas one of a number of nation-wide radio pleat made by nationally knotvn persons volunteering their aid to help the sale of these bonds. Money obtained in this manner is being used to finance the national defense program. DAKAR: A Problem Despite the fact that many papers, especially those with a non-interven tionist tinge, were playing up con voys as a leading issue, the Vichy flop to the Nazi standard seemed to bring far more sensational issues than convoys to the public notice. President Roosevelt immediately, when he learned that Petain had pledged France to a more complete collaboration with Germany, and that this might take a military turn, warned France that this country did not consider this as a friendly atti tude, and this was followed up by the announcement by Pan-American republics that they would take over French Guiana and Martinique if there was any danger of their fall ing under Nazi control. This attitude was promptly re sented by French authorities, and a slight diplomatic interchange fol lowed, apparently for the moment quieting things down, though there were Swiss reports that Ambassa dor Leahy would be recalled. Then came the sudden news that the French would give the Nazis the use of their air and naval bases, especially at Dakar. And Dakar, small African port, but of mighty import to the United States and Britain, at once leaped into the cen ter of the spotlight as the major problem. Dakar was the very hop-off place that President Roosevelt had men tioned in the early days of the war as the probable one that Germany would use if an air invasion of the New world was attempted. It was a clear call on the part of the President for a fuller realization by the public of the severeity of the present menace to the Western hemisphere, yet talk of Dakar and its vital character brought storms of protest from non-interventionists. The first effect of the Dakar in cident was to change vitally the at titude of some "new" non-interven tionists, including Senator Reynolds of North Carolina, who had whooped it up against the lease-lend bill, and now was being quoted as "not in favor of going into Dakar, but prob ably favoring taking over Mar tinique and French Guiana." HESS: Simmering Hailed as one of the most terrific news stories of all time, the Hess flight to Britain simmered down somewhat when it became known that the German claim that he was flying on a peace mission and had a Messiah complex was at least partially confirmed by the British. However, even those who were writing the most hotly anti-British articles admitted that Germany's nose was out of joint, and hinted that a pause in cross-channel activi ties might be blamed on the Hess flight, and one writer said it was the "worst blow the Nazi govern ment had suffered in its history." The discovery that Hess had paint ed toenails and that he was at the very least an odd fish Caused the British propagandists to moderate somewhat, and they were treading softly. .. , • But they were teasing Germany in every way they' cGtild, and' the results were beginning to show; for Berlin admitted that seven radio lis teners ha4-.been apprehended, and that one had been executed, and all ot' these cases had occurred' after Hess' capture ?nd after the BBC had started 10 German-language broadcasts daily on the subject ot Hess. DIES: Showdown Martin Dies, head of the commit tee investigating unAmerican activi ties, announcing he was ready for a showdown on the Communist situa tion as it affected men and women on government payrolls was threat ening ah upheaval. He claimed to have knowledge that his previous report, which earned him an official rebuke from President Roosevelt, resulted in tho disbanding of one organization. 29, 1941 Hess Known for Loyalty To Hitler, Nazi Germany Was to Succeed Goering as Nation's Leader; Washington Legislators Closely Study Letters From Constituents. By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. (WNU Service, 1343 H Street, Washington, D. C.) WASHINGTON.—It's a mad world these days and Washington is a nervous corner of it. Outside the iron pickets which sur round the White House, human pick ets walked. Their banners protested against convoys, against sending American soldiers abroad to fight. So:diers who may be sent abroad to fight charged the protesting pick ets. knocked down the men, pushed the women around. Home-returning theater-goers stopped to cheer the soldiers. On Capitol Hill mail protesting against convoys poured in. That afternoon Washington was stunned to hear that a young farmer in Scotland helped a German officer who had just dropped from the skies, into his cottage and gave him a glass of water. The officer was Hitler's trusted lieutenant, Rudolf Hess, and the news of his sensa tional flight dropped into the midst of the Washington melee, to make confusion worse confounded. The fighting pickets, Hess in the headlines, pushed history back for me. Pickets were attacked in front of the White House at the beginning of World War I. I saw Hitler lay the accolade of succession to Nazi leadership upon Hess the day World War II began. Some of the fighting pickets of 1914 are staid grandmothers today. HESS PARTY LEADER If you had asked me, in 1939 when I was broadcasting from Berlin, who of all men in the Nazi party would be the least likely to desert its lead er I would have said Hess. He was not a striking figure, he did not pa rade in the brilliant uniforms of Herr Goering, he did not make the fiery speeches of Herr Goebbels. But he was the real head of the party, the inside man. And so when he sud denly turned up in Britain, I could not believe that he was there except to be about his leader's business. I can see Hess that day in Berlin. It was a solemn sight, the hurriedly called meeting of the Reichstag in September, 1939. There may have been many in Germany then who still hoped that Britain and France would not fight for Poland. Hitler had promised he would gain his ends without shedding German blood. The bitter memory of the last war, the starvation, the defeat, the humiliation were still sharp in the memories of the people. Then they had had no victories to cheer them. Hitler himself was pale and worn when he walked into the Kroll Op era house where the Reichstag meets. His speech was restrained, he seemed to me like a man who had made his will and said his pray ers. He spoke almost apologeti cally, said his greatest desire was to be the Reich's first soldier. Then he announced that he was going to the front, "and," he added, "if any thing happens to me in battle, Party comrade Goering will be my suc cessor." Goering, in a gaudy uni form, on his high pedestal, saluted. The crowd cheered. Then Hitler turned to the right, where the tall, lanky Hess was seat ed on the stage in his simple brown uniform. "And if anything happens to Comrade Goering, Comrade Hess will be his successor." The crowd cheered. Hess rose deliberately, looked at his chief and saluted. I could think only of a great, well trained and faithful St. Bernard slowly and obediently answering his master's whistle. It is hard to believe that this man would desert his master. Hess was fervent. He may not have been as religious as his frequent calls upon the Almighty may have indicated, but he had a fanatical devotion to Germany. His loyalty to Hitler from the earliest contact with the Fuehr er-to-be was based on a great faith— on a belief that Hitler, and Hitler alone, would save Germany. • • • Legislators Study Letter• From Voter m The senator I wanted to see was busy and I was waiting in his outer office talking to his secretary who was an old acquaintance of mine. He had a sheaf of letters in his hand. In spite of the rules for keeping the windows closed in order not to dis turb the air-cooling system in the senate' office building, the window was open. A breeze caught one of BRIEFS . . . by Baukhage The mosquito almost became a fifth columnist the other day—it might have caused a big fire in a defense plant. One hundred barrels of water had been placed around the plant to guard against fire—and then in order to remove the mos quito menace, five gallons of oil were poured on the water in each barrel.—Fßl.. the letters. It dropped on the floor and I picked it up. "I don't want to lose that," the secretary said, "it's important. Read it." It was an emphatic protest on the subject of a measure before con gress, written in a firm hand, in good, straightforward English. "Notice the paper," said my friend, "see that hole in the corner. There was a string through that. The pad was fastened to the tele phone. And it was written with the pencil tied to another string. I hap pen to know the man who wrote it. He runs a flour and feed store, but I'd know just about the type of writ er it was from the paper." "Why," I asked him, "is it. that important?" "It's important because the people who write on that kind of paper, with a pencil, are important people to us. They elect us." (This secretary always said "us" because he had been in politics with the senator for 10 years, ever since his chief was a member of the state legislature.) For the past few weeks letters like that—and other ones, too, which I'll speak of in a minute—have been flooding the post office in the Capitol building. They have concerned the question of convoys. And they have had a lot to do with how congress voted. LETTERS SPUR DEBATE When the letters stop, the debate stops. That's an axiom. And on an important question the number of letters grows each day until it reaches a peak. Then suddenly the number drops. The drive is over. It's time to vote and settle the issue. There are several kinds of letters which come in to congress, to com mentators and writers. There are the "nut" letters which are easy to identify. They don't count. There are the form letters, or letters which, though sometimes they are individually written, all have the same phraseology. They are organ ized propaganda, easy to identify and to assay. Then there are the letters on expensive stationery. Usu ally their writers are known. They are in the minority. Then there are the letters I spoke about first. Not always in pencil or on scratch pa per. But simple and spontaneously written. They count. But here is another interesting point. Just because there are more letters on one side of a question than there are on the other doesn't mean that the apparent majority is an evidence of the real attitude of the community. More people who are against a measure will take pen in hand than those who are for it. One senator, in a community where we all knew the sentiment for a particular reason was very much pro-convoy, told me his letters were running three to one anti. "They would have to run ten to one against a measure before it would mean that the majority of my constituency were against it," he told me. • • » PROPHET IN WASHINGTON A prophet has come to Washing ton—but he will not prophesy! He is John Maynard Keynes, tall, slim, precise. He was a member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace conference of 1919. With the ink hardly dry on the Versailles treaty he wrote that "... the Carthaginian peace (a peace of force) is not practically right or pos sible . . . The clock cannot be set back . . . without setting up such strains in the European structure and letting loose such human and spiritual forces as . . . will over whelm not only your 'guarantees' but your institutions, and the exist ing order of your society." I asked Mr. Keynes, who is here in Washington as a British treasury official to consult on the lend-lease law, if he thought it was necessary to prepare for a new kind of peace. "Yes," he answered, "but I am much more concerned now with fighting the war." Mr. Keynes believes that we must raise money for defense by a type of forced borrowing, a method by which a part of all salaries are de ducted and turned over to the gov ernment. After the war, these forced savings, according to Keynes, would help tide over the period when de fense production drops off and thus help to avoid a depression like the one that followed the last war. A labor shortage in defense indus tries is now threatened, according to rome authorities. But if present trends continue, John Studebaker, commissioner of education, predicts that 1,000,000 persons will have been trained for defense occupations by June 30, 1941. Up to January 1 of this year, 325,000 have been trained or were in training. •••v , •, .• . . . 'ft 5 ? V* r Y' yj Ufe g BT3?wPfet Some Waist! Gladys—Last night Ben tried to put his arm around me three times. Thelma—Some arm, I'd say I As Per Request "Gwen said if any man kissed her without warning she would scream for her father." "What did you do?" "I warned her." Saying Something "I've been ashed for refereneei for our la*l muiil. U hut on earth can I say in hi'r favor"t" "If ell, '■he has a good appetite and sleeps u ell." Good Grief! Speaker—Now, ladies and gen tlemen, I want to tax your mem ory. Voice in the Audience—Heavens, has it coine to that? In Japan you can tell if a girl is married or single by her hair. Here you can't always tell if it's a girl. Will He Be Surprised! "Nice garden, old man, but what do these labels 'Wait and See' mean?" "Oh, I just forgot what I planted there!" k HENRy Milt ML fOUNP A SETTER WM : k FOR SPEEPy_WRjTIN6. jrweeemx. way TO treat constimiou pue to lax of PROPER "MK" IN THE P/ET 6 TO CORRECT THE CAUSe OF THE TROUBLE WITH A PEUCIOOS CEREAL, KEUUOGG'S [~7~ AU.-OKAW. .. EAT / WZypj lsi IT BIER)/ OM ill fl/Jiii/ wo mm aEMiy mU'HHAlikm\ OF WATER. I \ Swift Report Report, that which no evil thing of any kind is more swift, in creases with travel and gains strength by its progress.—Vergil. tff^LJOSEPIL WORLD'S LARGEST SELLER AT wTnrpriiTlfE§) Regulated Plans Men's plans should be regulated by the circumstances, not circum stances by the plans.—Livy. sss>ss>ssssssss" We Can All Be EXPERT; BUYERS •In bringing ui buying Information, . to prices that are being asked for what we Intend to buy, and gi to the quality we can expect, the advertising columns of this newspaper perfomC a ■' worth while service .which tavei ui many dollars a year. 1 ' * . •Itlt a good habit to form, the habit of consulting the advertisements every time we make a purchase, though we have already decided, (ust what we want and where we are going to buy It. It gives us the most fee(lng , In the worldi the feeling of being adequately prepared. . 4 • When we go Into a store, prepared beforehand with knowledge of what b offered and at what price, we go as an expert buyer, filled wHh self-confi dence. It Is a pleasqnt feeling to have, the feeling of adequacy. Most of the unhappiness in the world can be traced to a lack of this feeling. Thus adver tising shows another of Its manifold facets —shows itself as an aid tgward making all our business relationships more secure and pleqsont.
The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, N.C.)
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May 29, 1941, edition 1
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