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Show Weekly News Analysis- Europe Rushes to New Crisis As Loyalist Spain Is Crushed lly Joseph W. La lline White House This year's congress was advertised adver-tised as highly independent, probably prob-ably ready to fight any proposal coming from the White House. But within three weeks after congress opened President Roosevelt had apparently ap-parently Introduced the bulk of his legislative program and could expect ex-pect favorable action on most of It: Defense. His $552,000,000 emergency emer-gency two-year program is moving slowly but certainly, aided by war yNfeSiyyvy' SN! 3 Poland there In Pn-Uk- GERMANY ZLZZ o0: I TsVVVVWij ""jEs HI Mo'1" ,lnti'Commun', p Vczecho-slovak1a" IfaaagMfgi SNXHUNGARy: I Hung.r, Join, .nti.com. I nk . '?T"!TT'v' !S muniit pact under Nail a gT -'"'TUMANIA f I ,'JA!JJUGOSLAVIAf Ifnit JirTtJ EUROPE'S 'WALL OF NEUTRALITY' Map shows how Hitler and Mussolini hate built eastern European ulliances to promt themselves from Russia while pressing new demands against France and Britain. (See EUROPE.) clouds over Europe and Asia. Social Security. Broad revisions and extensions will probably be approved, ap-proved, though congress may demand de-mand an accounting on the huge social so-cial security reserve fund. Reorganization. Defeated last year by Republicans and insurgent Democrats, Dem-ocrats, governmental reorganization 1s again being broached in the-house the-house by Missouri's Rep. John J. Cochran. Since this year's anti-administration anti-administration bloc is bigger than 1938's, reorganization is probably doomed for failure. rublio Health. Already Introduced Intro-duced is the national health program bill, to be paid for jointly by states and the U. S. First year's federal appropriation would be about $50, 000,000. Eventually the total annual cost to state and federal governments govern-ments would be $900,000,000. Aided by growing public health consciousness, conscious-ness, the bill is expected to pass. Railroads. The White House has Introduced no bill, but has given its blessing to railroad relief measures introduced by California's Rep. Clarence Lea and Montana's Sen. Burton K. Wheeler. Since rail relief is an established need, not a political politi-cal question, it is being justified on th,e bases of national defense, public safety and national economics. Monetary Powers. The White House will probably be granted continuation con-tinuation of the treasury's currency stabilization fund, which reportedly netted a neat profit last year, and the presidential power t further devalue de-value the dollar, which congress does not think has been abused. Only stumbling block is that stabilization stabili-zation fund operations have been secret, se-cret, which congress does not like. Communications. Not vital, but a White House fetish, is interest in the federal communications commission which President Roosevelt would like reorganized this session. His purposes: To improve FCC's legal framework and administrative machinery. ma-chinery. If congress gets time, this will probably be approved. EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions It expressed in thes columns, thef are those ot 1h newt analyst, and not necessarily ot the newspaper. Europe Except for Spain, January found all Europe immersed in an ominous calm broken only by occasional un-der-cover whispers among democracies democra-cies on one side and dictators on the other. Europe was a theater and Spain was its stage. By the end of the month the play on Spain's stage was definitely approaching its climax because Fascist-subsidized Rebels had put the communistic Loyalist government to flight at Barcelona. Bar-celona. This marked the beginning of Loyalist Spain's end, soon to leave both Italy and Germany free to press new demands against Britain and France. The reason for this embarrassing situation is that Europe's democracies democra-cies have followed a policy of nonintervention non-intervention in Spain, declining to admit that non-intervention is really a disguise for the now-discredited policy of dictator appeasement. Regardless Re-gardless of the moral issues re- miles long and 100 miles deep. For newly inaugurated President Pedro Aguirre Cerdo, reportedly Fascist bent, it presented the worst initiation initia-tion under fire ever experienced by any Western hemisphere chief executive. exec-utive. Total fatalities, which probably prob-ably will never be determined, run from 8,000 to 11,000. Injuries run into even more thousands. Faced with a stupendous reconstruction job which will require several years, Chile will probably need all outside financial assistance available to stave otT national calamity. Congress Last summer, Rep. Martin Dies and his committee on un-American-ism unearthed dirt concerning Harry Har-ry Bridges, west coast labor leader who is not a naturalized citizen but nevertheless guides the destinies of many American laboring men as an unofllcial mogul of John Lewis' C. I. O. This put Madame Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins on the spot, because the Dies committee claimed Harry Bridges was an alien and a Communist, that he advocated overthrowing the government by portcdly involved in Spain's war, London and Paris must now realize that their mistake has not been the refusal to side with Loyalists against the Rebels, but rather their permitting permit-ting Germany and Italy to aid the Insurgents. The result is that Fascist Fas-cist nations now control Spain. France is therefore surrounded on three sides by potentially hostile nations, na-tions, while the Mediterranean becomes be-comes predominantly dictator-controlled. Spain's war is not finished, but it has been sufficiently localized to free Mussolini's hands for other pursuits. pur-suits. Almost every competent European Eu-ropean observer has predicted a new crisis following Barcelona's collapse col-lapse and the whispers throughout Europe have backed up that prediction. pre-diction. Most important foundation work for the new Italo-German demands y V t V ' - ! TaxaUon. Legislation to permit reciprocal taxation of federal, state and municipal bonds and salaries, now exempt, is apt to be adopted in the face of strong state and municipal mu-nicipal opposition to the bond exemption ex-emption feature. Labor Last year Homer Martin, president presi-dent of C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers of America, quarreled with his vice presidents. President John L. Lewis of C. I. O. stepped in, appointing ap-pointing Vice Presidents Sidney Hill-man Hill-man and Phillip Murray as mediators. media-tors. But 18 of U. A. W.'s 24 board members were anti-Martin men and early last month they voted to strip him of power. Reason: Mr. Martin had been consorting secretly with Harry Bennett, personnel director for the Ford Motor company, only non-U. A. W. auto manufacturer. C. I. O. chieftains thought Mr. Martin Mar-tin was playing for personal control over the huge Ford labor vote. The upshot has been C. I. O's refusal re-fusal to recognize Mr. Martin as head of U. A. W., followed next day by Mr. Martin's resignation frpm C. I. O.'s executive board with the charge that Mr. Lewis has "personal "per-sonal ambitions and a dictator complex." com-plex." The outcome of this scrap will be settled at a Martin-sponsored election March 4, and a C. I. O.-sponsored O.-sponsored election 20 days later. Un- J. PARXELL THOMAS California also spoke up. force and that he had made disparaging dispar-aging remarks about the President of the U. S. Secretary Perkins has failed to give Dies committeemen what they consider a satisfactory answer. Her claim: That a court ruling is now pending on whether membership in the Communist party is a deportable deporta-ble offense. Not since 1876 has an attempt been made to impeach a cabinet I ; y ' - V : A ia uic ttasui dine; uicifc any itrsuildiil conflict will be localized. This means preventing huge, mysterious Russia from aiding Britain and France. Therefore Rome and Berlin have quietly established a solid bloc of "neutral" states reaching from the Baltic to the Adriatic (see map), which will stand as sentinels against Russian aggression while Italy and Germany turn their backs to face France and Britain. The new crisis will center around Italian demands against France, though it may be enlarged through new declarations by Chancellor Hitler. Hit-ler. Italy wants Tunisia (enabling her to blockade the Mediterranean), control of the Suez canal, and ownership owner-ship of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railroad (providing an outlet from Ethiopia). These demands are vital to Britain, because Italian control of the Mediterranean might cut off London's "lifeline" to India and the east. Probable dictator strategy will be for Germany to assure France she will not help Italy, thereby encouraging en-couraging Britain to stand aloof. Then Germany would aid Italy in a possible war just as she has aided Rebel Spain, with "volunteers." Whether London and Paris will wait for such an eventuality is another matter. Thoroughly scared by reports re-ports that joint Italo-German demands de-mands will be voiced by Chancellor Hitler before the Reichstag, by Italian Ital-ian mobilization of her 1908 army class, by threatened German mobilization mobi-lization of 1,500.000 men by February Febru-ary 15, the two democracies are beginning be-ginning to wake up. Encouragingly, Great Britain has begun an intensive army recruiting campaign. But almost al-most completely offsetting this practical prac-tical step is the report that Prime Minister Chamberlain will soon invite in-vite Hitler, Mussolini and French Premier Daladier to a new "Munich" "Mu-nich" conference, there to buy peace with more concessions. Cu7e Earthquakes usually come when sea bottoms sink, forcing up mountainous moun-tainous areas and jarring the land tor miles around. Squeezed along the rocky west coast of South America, Amer-ica, Chile has often experienced such phenomena but never in such disastrous fashion as the earthquake which recently struck a zone 450 member, but that has not stopped one Dies committeeman from setting set-ting a modern precedent. New Jersey's Jer-sey's Rep. J. Parnell Thomas has introduced a resolution calling for an investigation to determine whether wheth-er Secretary Perkins should be impeached, im-peached, along with Immigration Commissioner James L. Houghtel-ing Houghtel-ing and Labor Department Solicitor Gerard D. Reilly. That Madame Perkins' unaggressive unaggres-sive interest in the Bridges deportation deporta-tion case is not popular has been indicated in-dicated at Sacramento, Calif., where the state legislature may ask her for an immediate report on Mr. Bridges' citizenship status. So far as he had determined, said Assemblyman Assem-blyman C. Don Field, the labor leader lead-er has twice taken out naturalization naturaliza-tion papers but has failed to file them in the required time. Aviation Man's top running speed is 21.7 miles per hour; horse's, 45.1; train's, 127.1; boat's, 130.9; automobile's, automo-bile's, 357.5, and airplane's, 440.6. But at Buffalo, N. V., a pursuit monoplane being built for the French government has broken the old airplane record by about 150 m. p. h. With motor wide open but engine speed held down (by an electrically elec-trically controlled propellor). H. Lloyd Child began diving at 22,000 feet, holding his vertical descent until he reached 9,000 feet. The graph chart chalked up his speed until it reached 575 m. p. h., then moved off the paper. Landing with no ill effects. Child estimated he had flown at 600 m. p. h. Since air reacts like solid matter at just over 600 m. p. h., scientists explained that Child had probably traveled fast as a modern plane could ever go. U. A. W.'S nOMER MARTIN He resigned and uas fired. til then, no one knows who controls U. A. W. While this row has made big headlines, head-lines, observers are prone to dismiss dis-miss the possibility that it may indicate indi-cate a collapse of C. I. O. More likely it is an internal squabble. If the anti-Martin majority of 18-6 on U. A. W.'s executive board is any criterion, U. A. W. will remain pro-C. pro-C. I. O. under a new president People James S. Douglas, father of onetime one-time U. S. Budget Director Lewis W. Douglas, has renounced U. S. citizenship to return to his boyhood home of Quebec. Reason: Abhorrence Abhor-rence of recent American governmental govern-mental trends. |