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Show Weekly IVews Analysis 1 Farley-Garner-Hull Alliance Arises to Plague White House By Joseph W. La Cine EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed in these columns they are those of the news analyst and Dot necessarily of the newspaper. White House As chief of the Works Progress administration Harry Hopkins has spent more money than any previous pre-vious U. S. citizen, yet that was precisely what Franklin Roosevelt hired him to do. If this job as federal fed-eral Santa Claus gave Harry Hopkins Hop-kins a bad name among conservative conserva-tive Democrats and Republicans, the bad name grew bigger during 1938's electioneering. But the campaign cam-paign expenditures committee of Texas' Sen. Morris Shepard found Harry Hopkins generally blameless of using WPA funds for political purposes. Considered a spendthrifty scapegrace, scape-grace, Mr. Hopkins is to U. S. business busi-ness what a public executioner is to a pious churchman. With this reputation rep-utation it is therefore considered bad taste and bad political judgment judg-ment for President Roosevelt to name Mr. Hopkins secretary of commerce. Regardless of Gen. "Ironpants" Hugh S. Johnson's opinion opin-ion that Mr. Hopkins will be the i -, : - ? A POLITICIAN FARLEY He watched for a wealhervane. best commerce secretary ever, political po-litical observers think the appointment appoint-ment foreshadows a serious, permanent perma-nent rift between Rooseveltian Democrats (Hopkins, Solicitor General Gen-eral Jaclcson, Interior Secretary Ickes, Brain Truster Corcoran) and middle-of-the-road Democrats (Vice President Garner, Postmaster General Gen-eral Farley, Secretary of State Hull). A month ago, when Homer S. Cummings retired as attorney general. gen-eral. Chairman Farley warned that his potent political organization would be swung to one side or another, an-other, depending on who was named to succeed Mr. Cummings. By choosing Solicitor General Bob Jackson, Jack-son, President Roosevelt would show left-wing tendencies and thereby there-by lose Farley support. As it happened, hap-pened, the commerce vacancy appeared ap-peared and was filled before Mr. Roosevelt got around to the attorney generalship, so this post became the weathervane. Mr. Farley's current cur-rent opinion: That President Roosevelt, Roose-velt, by naming Mr. Hopkins, is boosting him for the presidency in 1940; that Bob Jackson, the alternative alter-native for 1940, will be named attorney at-torney general; that some New Dealer, like Michigan's ex-Gov. Frank Murphy, may get a Supreme court post. If this happens and the wind is now blowing in that direction. di-rection. Farley, Hull, Garner, et al will bolt from the New Deal. Whether the President dares to thus bite the hand that feeds him is doubtful. Vice President Garner carries tremendous prestige in the South; Jim Farley runs the most tremendous powerhouse in U. S. history; his-tory; Cordell Hull is the New Deal's most popular cabinet member, with Democrats and Republicans alike. If these men bolt, there is a possibility possi-bility that either 69-year-old Mr. Garner or 67-year-old Mr. Hull will head a presidential ticket in 1940, with Farley as running mate. Transportation Last autumn President Roosevelt's Roose-velt's railroad fact-finding committee commit-tee ruled against a wage cut to help sorely pressed carriers on the ground that its beneDts would be only temporary. But this did not minimize the problem of high operating oper-ating costs vs. low income, and the President agreed to ask congressional congres-sional consideration for any readjustment re-adjustment program railway management man-agement and labor might offer. Therefore, just as congress prepared pre-pared to open, a six-man committee ottered its plan, indirectly laying part of the responsibility at the President's own doorstep. The committee's com-mittee's explanation of rail troubles: trou-bles: (1) government's favoritism to competitors, such as barge lines; (2) lack of centralized transportation transporta-tion regulation. The remedy: Regulation of nil forms of transportation by (1) the interstate commerce commission, which would fix rates, regulate services, serv-ices, valuation and accounting; and (2) an independent transportation board which would handle all other regulations. Also recommended is a federal transportation court to handle reorganization plans. In addition, the committee offered four other complaints which could be remedied by legislation. It asked removal of restrictions on RFC loans to carriers, repeal of the long-and-short haul rate clauses (which prevents rails from charging charg-ing a lower rate for a long haul than for a short haul over the same route in the same direction), elimination elimi-nation of low rates for government freight, and discontinuation of government-operated barge lines. Briefly, carriers want less red tape and more efficient government regulation over their industry. Against President Roosevelt's probable prob-able approval of the general program, pro-gram, observers stack Montana's Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, chairman of the interstate commerce committee. commit-tee. Chief comments to date come from President John J. Pelley of the Association of American Railroads, Rail-roads, who calls the report "the most comprehensive and constructive construc-tive ever made," and President Alexander Al-exander F. Whitney of the Brotherhood Broth-erhood of Railway Trainmen. The Whitney opinion: "It's just another smoke screen to tickle the public chin." Defense The satisfaction of U. S. speech-makers speech-makers from denouncing Nazi Germany Ger-many is equalled only by Nazi Germany's Ger-many's satisfaction in making reply. re-ply. Yet each outburst and retort invites wider rupture of the already strained German-American diplomatic diplo-matic relations, started during November No-vember when each nation withdrew its ambassador over the Jewish persecution per-secution issue. Returning from Europe Eu-rope just as protests and replies were charging from Berlin to Washington Wash-ington and back, Illinois' Sen. J. Hamilton Lewis commented that the U. S. must stop its "hate wave" against European dictatorship, must instead substitute peace through conciliation and conference. What prompted Mr. Lewis' statement state-ment was the remark a week earlier by Secretary of the Interior Harold S. Ickes, to the effect that Henry Ford and Col. Charles A. Lindbergh should be ashamed to "accept a decoration at the hand of a brutal dictator (Hitler), who with the same hand, is robbing and torturing thousands thou-sands of human beings." Result was a German protest, followed by the state department's refusal to apologize. apolo-gize. This latter action was contrasted con-trasted with the hasty apology last spring when New York's Mayor Fi-orella Fi-orella LaGuardia similarly cursed Nazidom. Its significance: That the U. S. has decided to handle Adolf Hitler with boxing gloves, not kid gloves. Such a revolutionary diplomatic stand requires military-naval back- Fx ADMIRAL BLOCH Purposes, announced and otherwise. ing. Last fall, when the European threat first became imminent, President Pres-ident Roosevelt hinted at the desirability desir-ability of a two-ocean navy to give our Eastern seacoast the protection now enjoyed at our back door. At the same time he suggested the U. S. might enlarge its defense program pro-gram to encompass the entire Western West-ern hemisphere. As the new year started, the state department's stiffened stiff-ened attitude and Mr. Roosevelt's hints could be seen taking form in smoke clouds over the Panama canal. ca-nal. Eastward from the Pacific came the entire fleet (except a small submarine sub-marine and destroyer squadron at Honolulu), led from the battleship New Mexico by Admiral Claude O. Bloch. Its intent: To stage the first Atlantic naval maneuvers since 1934, and the second largest in U. S. history. From January to May 140 combatant boats will play hide-and seek frob Brazil to Cuba. The announced purpose: "To afford af-ford the maximum amount of fleet training, training of personnel and tests of material." Added, unannounced un-announced purposes: (1) To focus U. S. attention on naval requirements re-quirements while congress is debating de-bating armament appropriations; (2) to stage a show for the benefit of any ambitious European dictator who might be watching; (3) to court Latin-American friendship by showing show-ing how Uncle Sam's battlewagons would protect South America as well as North America. Balkans Obviously Italy has resented Germany's Ger-many's economic invasion of the Balkan states, for while the Rome-Berlin Rome-Berlin axis is her most important alliance, Italy nevertheless has long-standing ambitions in Yugoslavia, Yugo-slavia, Albania and Hungary. Therefore There-fore correspondents have watched with tongue in cheek while Italy's Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister min-ister and son-in-law of Premier Mussolini, Mus-solini, stresses his diplomatic relations rela-tions with Hungary. While apparently appar-ently attempting to draw Hungary into the Rome-Berlin axis and the Italo-German-Japanese anti-communist pact (at expense of the League of Nations), Count Ciano is probably more interested in making his Balkan Bal-kan neighbors dependencies of Italy. Likewise, Rome has watched with interest Yugo-Slavian Premier Milan Mi-lan Stoyadinovitch's victory in the December general election, which probably paves the way for a Yugoslavian Yugo-slavian Fascist state. While Count Ciano works on Stoyadinovitch, that gentleman has crawled into his shell to wait the outcome of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's January Jan-uary conference with Premier Mussolini. Mus-solini. If Mussolini emerges victorious, vic-torious, Yugo-Slavia will probably lead the Balkans in a pro-Italian ITALY'S COUNT CIANO For the cause, or for Italy? movement; if he loses, the anxious Balkans will line up with Western democracies. For Great Britain and France, who also covet Balkan friendship, a mes-siah mes-siah has appeared in Grigore Ga-fencu, Ga-fencu, 47-year-old World war flier named as Rumanian foreign minister. min-ister. Once an influential Bucharest newspaper man, Gafencu has long advocated closer co-operation among Yugo-Slavia, Hungary and Bulgaria, thereby averting dependency depend-ency on either Germany or Italy. Germany Since German policies began antagonizing an-tagonizing world democracies, the obvious prediction has maintained that German foreign trade would suffer. It then follows that Germany Ger-many must increase her domestic production to become independent of foreign imports. The difficulty of the task was first emphasized in late November when Col. von Schell was named "general plenipotentiary" plenipotenti-ary" of the automobile industry to speed production and standardization, standardiza-tion, and institute necessary economic eco-nomic measures. A few days later Dr. Karl Lange was given similar powers over Germany's machine industry. in-dustry. Next came Dr. Fritz Todt as "general plenipotentiary" in charge of all road building. Such industrial "czarships" smell amazingly like communistic Russia's Rus-sia's commisar system, and the idea was probably borrowed from that good neighbor. To give the entire system added impetus, Dr. Walther Funk, salesman-like economics minister, min-ister, has been named czar of all German industry, with supervision over Herren von Schell, Lange and Todt. Always closely supervised, German Ger-man industry will now feel official domination even more severely. How an apparently communistic method of industrial overlordship will work in a nation which still supports private enterprise, remains to be seen. Germany's foreign trade has suffered. suf-fered. In 1937 Germany built up a favorable balance of S168.000.000. In 1938 this was wiped out and imports were $159,200,000 more than exports. Great Britain A solidified empire is the United Kingdom's goal since Nazi-Fascist states began threatening her position. posi-tion. Among the empire's weakest features is the string of miscellaneous miscel-laneous possessions centering in the Caribbean sea, who individually and collectively have thus far received too little attention from London. One of them, Jamaica, recently heard agitation for annexation by the U. S. Still more recently it was suggested that Great Britain might pay its $4,000,000,000 war debt by ceding her Caribbean islands to the U. S. Belatedly recognizing some valuable valu-able property, London now proposes to group all the West Indies into a new dominion. Its composite parts: British Honduras, Bahamas, Jamaica, Jamai-ca, Leeward islands. Windward islands, is-lands, Barbados, Trinidad, British Guiana, Kingston, centrally located capital of Jamaica, would be dominion do-minion headquarters. The United Kingdom's new empire em-pire would include 2.000,000 people, mostly descendants of one-time Negro Ne-gro slaves, who depend chiefly on agriculture. Main trouble point the past year has been Kingston, where a royal investigating commission was recently welcomed by a strike of gas workers, throwing the entire city into darkness. |