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Show ! WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne Churchill Asks for Tools, Not Men To Aid English in Defeating Dictators; Lease-Lend Measure Passed by House; Britain-Rumania Split Diplomatic Ties IFDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are lhoe of the new aualyl and not nece&aitrily of this newspaper.) (Keieased bg. Western Newspaper Hninn i 1 In general, the bill went to the senate little changed from its original orig-inal ideas but with certain safeguards safe-guards which the congress felt public pub-lic clamor demanded. That these WANTED: Tools Not Men Great Britain can "finish the job" Inf defeating the dictators) if the United States will maintain a supply of the necessary "tools," said Winston Win-ston Churchill, Eritish prime minister, min-ister, in a world-wide radio broad-j broad-j east. He expressed the opinion that ! American troops would not be needed need-ed to insure a victory over the Axis powers. "But we do need most urgently an immense and continuous supply of war materials . . . and we need to bring them here," continued the British statesman. Then he warned of Hitler's effort to prey upon shipping ship-ping and coupled this with another warning that the long-predicted German Ger-man invasion of the British " isles might be near. He spoke of the war soon enter-, ing "upon a phase of greater violence," vio-lence," and stressed the possibility of a Nazi thrust in the Balkans. safeguards did not hamstring the measure seemed quite positive. SENATE: Warming Up Many were the signs that the eventual action in the senate will be far more exciting than the brief passage-at-arms which took place in the lower house. Just as Lindbergh had been the chief anti-administration testifier before the house committee, so he was before the senate foreign relations rela-tions group. Yet his statement before the latter lat-ter seemed much better prepared, much more restrained, better thought out than his previous two expositions of his premise that "Britain can't win, therefore America Amer-ica shouldn't stick her neck out." I There was little doubt in administration adminis-tration circles that the bill would pass senate as well as house, and create in this nation a huge arsenal for Britain. But indications were that there would be a bitter fight before be-fore all was over. FRANCE: At Crossroads Most sensational crisis of recent months confronted France, with Laval La-val the big issue. The crisis was brought to a head when Germany, after Laval's ouster from the Petain Vichy regime, de- The British victories in Africa and the shelling of the Italian port of Genoa by the British fleet came in for their share of praise in the prime minister's remarks. RUMANIAN: Break Day after Churchill's address came word from Bucharest that the British minister there had informed Rumanian Premier Ion Antonescu that Great Britain was breaking diplomatic dip-lomatic relations with that country. Britain has been threatening to do this ever since last fall, when Ru- DEFENSE: Program on Spot The lend-lease bill fight served to place in bold relief public criticism criti-cism of the progress of the general defense program. In some states cantonment construction at army camps was so far behind that National Na-tional Guard regiments, called out for national service, were forced to start their year of training in their home cities, for lack of facilities to house them. While senators and other witnesses wit-nesses in Washington were castigat- mania allowed hundreds of thousands thou-sands of German troops to enter the country. This is usually the last step before an outright declaration of war. LEND: Spend and Spend The rhyming trio of words describing de-scribing the British Aid bill, lend, spend, send, reached their first "climax "cli-max when the house passed the measure with a majority of 95 votes and after several amendments, most of them with administration approval, had been placed in the measure. There was, after all, little curtailment curtail-ment of the President's "all-out" powers in the final form of the measure meas-ure as the house passed it. A ceiling of $1,300,000,000 was ' ing the war department for the lack of proper defense equipment, William Wil-liam S. Knudsen and his defense construction staff were going ahead and publishing occasional figures showing what plane production was accomplishing. In January, for instance, 296 war planes, many of them trainers, were built and delivered, and it was revealed re-vealed that this was more than had been completed in a whole year of ordinary production. Yet, as soon as such figures were released, they formed fodder for new 'attacks, as it was pointed out that most of this production was being sent to Britain. There was no sign of a diminution of labor trouble, with strikes bursting burst-ing forth or threatening as fast as the NLRB and other conciliation placed above the bill, but it was made plain that if this is not enough, all congress need do is raise the ceiling. The time limit placed on the bill ostensibly was two years, but as a matter of fact, it carried on to 1946, through a provision that contracts made on or before July, 1943, could be carried on, but not after July 1946. The President is ordered to keep records of what is lent, spent and PIERRE LAVAL "The Big Issue." manded his return to power as a price for continued German-French collaboration. What the German ultimatum was had not been published, but it obviously ob-viously included a virtual abdication abdica-tion of Petain from power, with Laval La-val to be given practically dictatorial dictato-rial powers, with Petain in a puppet position of authority. To this Petain evidently had coun- iorces of the government got one quelled. Latest to threaten was a strike of 750,000 workers on the nation's Class 1 railroads, who were preparing to vote on a demand by 14 brotherhood organizations for vacations with pay. In the meantime, plant construction construc-tion was speedily going ahead all over the country, a $300,000,000 contract con-tract for merchant marine shipping ship-ping was given out, and Knudsen reported that he saw signs of an . aa oigns oi an extremely rapid increase in the output out-put of planes in the near future. ITALIAN: Armies Whipped A most definite and complete defeat de-feat had been handed to the Italian armies in Libya, completing one of the most dramatic phases of the European war and writing a strange page in modern history. For only a few short months ago Winston Churchill had told the house of commons that they need not expect ex-pect anything in Africa but a British delaying action. He said- J'0!1, forcf are outnum bered from five to ten to one We must expect discouraging reports from all the African fronts " Sure enough, the Italians moved ahead wto Egypt ftey threateneJ , tered witn a proposition which re-I re-I tained him as chief of state, with Laval in charge of domestic problems prob-lems and Admiral Darlan in charge of the French navy and foreign affairs. af-fairs. The issue, at least to most observers, ob-servers, was a renewal of Germany's Germa-ny's anxiety to get hold of two I things the French fleet, and a base for naval and air operations in Af-nca Af-nca from which to bolster Mussolini's Musso-lini's beaten legions. Darlan and Petain took a firm stand that neither of these German objectives would be granted, not in answer to German demands, but in -press statements and in messages to Admiral Leahy, American ambassador am-bassador who had just arrived on the Vichy scene. The issue became critical when Laval summarily refused to accept All Landon, 1936 G. O. P. Presiden-no Presiden-no nommee, is pictured as he told members of the Senate Foreign Rela-fons Rela-fons committee they should do nothing noth-ing that would "trick" this nation into war. In general his testimony favored aid to Britain but opposed the pre,, ent Lease-Lend bill. sent in the way of aid -to warring democracies, particularly, Britain and must report each 90 days, but Uiere is a special provision that the President may withhold details pro-v.ded pro-v.ded he thinks it in the best public interest to do so. The GalluD nnll fn,m u . the Suez canal, the British fell back to Marsa Matruh, and all looked SedU."313 " C Suddenly, for a never-to-be-ex-plamed reason, the Italian advances stopped, and were not resumed Just as suddenly General Wa'vell ordered a "test-tube" attack to try out the strength of Italy's position An advance was started which S was sweeping all before it, with It c Ptudrnt t0W" Cafca captured, the armies of Gra7ini shattered and in full flight, and British moving rapidly in on Triooli the posts offered him, flatly throwing throw-ing down the gauntlet, and as Laval was ostensibly backed up to the full by the German reich, it became a simple question of whether French-German French-German collaboration would end and that Free France would be on" the spot, or whether the fleet and the African base would be surren- dered as a sad aftermath of unsuccessful unsuc-cessful war with Germany None knew what the outcome would be. but it seemed certain Tat J France agreed to surrender the fleet or made a move to do so it would be the signal for further ou breaks of British , ut of the people in favor of the bill, la per cent in favor with reservations reserva-tions largely covered by the amendments, amend-ments, 22 per cent only, positively against it. yiuveiy breaks of British naval action against the war vessels of her erst while war partner. What would happen should Petain stand firm, not even the 4deS speculation could reveal. wlJaest Four hundred and m ry mis of coastline was in Brit o . "h Vnd e Reich wanted t ,aid t0 ItaIy' " would have to be through a French h This was not the entire extent nf the British victory, however f ' Eritrea the Italians were t 'k W terrific poundine . , . lng a British LtrZZJZ and to Ethiopia Hail Sssfe returned, and with help from si m 1 and his own rejuvenate ''S with the British stand! g'?' w'th Planes, was making a stroneC to recapture his kingdom . , from him at enormou! ? cosynS only a few years ago y The British effort to knock r.n, out of the war appeared fa be nr eressine swimminely. pro" |
