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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne McNutt Heads Nine-Man Commission To Conscript Essential War Workers; DeGaulle Urges Countrymen to Revolt As Laval Takes Over Rule of France (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) I (Released by Western Newspaper Trntnn f ,! " ,. . ? & v 1 ! ' f V f i 7-1 ' H ' - i Gaston Henrl-Haye, Vichy French ambassador to the United States (left) as he talked with newsmen at the state department in Washington , when he called upon Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. His visit, occurring a short time after Laval became France's chief of government, j was of a conciliatory nature. j MOBILIZATION: Of Manpower On the home front President Roosevelt had moved to mobilize the entire manpower of the nation, placing plac-ing Paul V. McNutt in charge of the commission which would be charged with this duty. It was given all-embracing powers, pow-ers, and not only to draft and place men, but women into industry which would produce the goods needed to win the war. The commission of nine members was to include WPB chief Donald Nelson, also representatives from the war, navy, agriculture and labor la-bor departments, the selective service serv-ice system, civil service and a new labor section of the WPB. At the time when the older men were to register, the 45 to 64 group, and at a time when some millions of potential selectees were listed in classes not available for military service, it was seen as a distinct probability that the McNutt commission commis-sion would begin to draw on this reservoir of manpower. At the same time Sidney Hillman, labor chief of WPB, and former partner part-ner with General IJnudsen in the former war production setup, was called into the White House inner circles as a special adviser to the President on labor matters. It had been thought that Hillman was on his way out. Suddenly the nation discovered that he was not on the way out, but in. BOMBING: Jap Cities Suffer America's spring tonic had been the sensational report, from Japanese Japa-nese sources, it was true, but un-denied un-denied in Allied circles and hence accepted, that American planes, probably carrier-based, had wreaked havoc and destruction on Tokyo and three other great Nipponese centers, including vital Kobe. Some of the angles of the Jap broadcasts had been efforts to gain information as to the source of the attack which apparently had been as much of a surprise to Japan and as much of a mystery as had been the attack on Pearl Harbor. Attempting to pierce the veil of censorship and silence in Allied circles, cir-cles, observers tried to figure the strength and source of the raids, and most of them believed it had been from two U. S. carriers, and might have comprised as many as 100 navy bombing planes. The Japs claimed that nine were shot down. The Japs told of huge fires being started, and 20 hours after the raids had admitted, in their own broadcasts, that the fires in Tokyo had not been completely quenched. From this the American imagination imagina-tion was able to gather a picture of huge blazes roaring through the close-packed, flimsy wood and paper houses of Tokyo's suburbs, the aftermath after-math of five hours of bombing. Simultaneous raids on four cities widely spaced geographically could hardly, they had pointed out, have been carried out from a single carrier. car-rier. If the raids had been by land planes, observers had said, the government gov-ernment would not have kept silence, si-lence, as raids by American planes based in Australia, with a sub-base AUSTRALIA: The long-awaited and expected invasion in-vasion move by the Japs against Australia seemed less and less likely like-ly to come as fuller reports came in of American-Aussie air successes. Despite Jap bombings of Port Moresby, the news was dominated by allied raids on Timor, New Britain Brit-ain and New Guinea, with dire results, re-sults, and it seemed that we had grabbed off air supremacy and the initiative in that part of the Pacific. Reports of American strength in Australia, which had come to this country as being "considerable," were believed to be increasingly large when Marshall's statement about "an army corps" referring to the Ireland troops was given out. This was cheering news to many who expected an all-out assault on Australia. People said that if we had that sort of strength in Ireland, what must we have in Australia? For it had generally been accepted that that would be our main theater of war in the immediate future. in the Philippines, upon Jap holdings hold-ings there had been promptly reported re-ported to us, and later by the Japs. A few doubted, because of Allied silence, that the raids had occurred at all, but these were in the tremendous tre-mendous minority, compared with those who had accepted the Jap reports re-ports of their own disaster, and had preened themselves joyously over the avengement of Pearl Harbor and Bataan, and that the long-demanded bombing of Tokyo had been carried out. LAVAL: And Power Pierre Laval had leaped into the saddle of the Vichy government, and the immediate aftermath had been the recall of Ambassador Leahy and an attitude1 of watchful waiting on the part of Washington to see which way the cat would jump. While it was considered a probability prob-ability that the eventual outcome would be the recognition of the DeGaulle movement as the real French government, this action was not immediately taken. Laval's first act in forming his government was to put 13 of his closest friends into a cabinet of 21 members. He did submit the names to Marshal Petain, and received the aged general's approval, but this had been considered a mere matter of course, as the feeling was that Petain had actually laid down the reins of government and was simply a rubber stamp. Laval split the civil and military divisions of government, abolished the national defense ministry, and kept three all-important posts for himself, the ministries of foreign affairs, af-fairs, interior and information the latter, that is to say, propaganda. DeGaulle's reaction came from London, where he broadcast in French to his people calling on them to revolt, saying "the duty of each one is to fight relentlessly against both the enemy and the men of Vichy, to drive them out and sabotage sabo-tage their orders." Secretary Hull had returned to Washington, and pushed preparations prepara-tions in a diplomatic way to frustrate frus-trate the Vichy coup against the Western hemisphere. He had had a serious breakdown, and had been convalescing in Florida, Flor-ida, but cut short his convalescence to return to the capital because of the critical turn in U. S.-Vichy affairs. af-fairs. RUSSIA: Holds the Ball The Red army, fighting back Germany's Ger-many's spring offensive and turning the tables on the Nazis, were still "carrying the ball." There was no question but that they were being vastly aided by their allies, England and the United States, in two ways by the sending of large quantities of vital supplies, and by the tremendous non-stop Royal Air force bombings of Germany Ger-many and occupied France. These latter were being carried out daily and nightly, by average forces of several hundred bombers and fighters, the high water mark being in excess of 400 planes. And these were no baby bombers either, but huge, four-motored ships, some of them American, most of them British built. One raid, the British estimated, cut off the supplies that would have kept five divisions in the field. Despite this great aid, too much credit could not be given the Russians Rus-sians for the magnificent fight they were putting up. Berlin had been admitting breakthroughs, break-throughs, and from the Murmansk end of the 2,000-mile battle line down to the Crimea, success after success suc-cess was reported. There had been a serious break of the German line near the Karelian Kare-lian isthmus, a point heretofore not mentioned in Moscow dispatches. UNREST: Not only were the Japs jittery over the bombing of their own mainland, main-land, but the Italians were said to be much upset. Premier Mussolini was said to have "fired" several home defense leaders and to have called a conference con-ference of the remainder. As to Hitler, some circles saw in the Laval coup a hope on the part of Hitler that if forced to make an unfavorable peace on account of. the failure in Russia, he would be better oft with Laval as mediator. |
