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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS House Group Approves Measure To Draft Men into Armed Forces; Hope for Palestine Agreement Ebbs I By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Staff Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE: Wha eplaloa. are expreiaed la theie eolnmni, they are thoie at Welters Newipaper Union's ewi analyst and not aeeeuarUy at this newspaper.) ? Current Events ? S Anyone who can answer all five of the following questions may consider himself an expert. It doesn't make any difference ) what kind of expert. It's enough jutt to bt one without going into , boring detail about it. 1. Trans-Jordan is playing a key role In the Palestine situation. How long has it been an independent inde-pendent state? 2. State department is considering consid-ering some form of military lend- lease for the five nations which j signed the Brussels pact. When i did lend-lease begin and when was it terminated? 3. Do yon know about how many of America's 542,000 troops now j are serving outside the U. S.: (a) 338,000; (b) 258,000; (c) 158,-000; 158,-000; (d) 58,000? 4. Sen. Eobert A. Taft of Ohio is seeking Republican presidential presiden-tial nomination. There have been seven Ohio-born Presidents. Name them. 5. Bureau of labor statistics reported re-ported that the consumer price index in-dex declined from 1G8.8 in January Janu-ary to 16C.9 in March. What event took place in mid-February that was a factor in the decline? Clouds in the East tWtfmmJr. li rHt ' nout tc-i Amateur and professional military mili-tary experts now are weighing the pros and cons of "war" in the Holy Land. Palestine is completely encircled en-circled by Arab states except for its Mediterranean coastline. Numerals Nu-merals indicate estimated fighting strength of the various Arab states. Jewish forces in Palestine are said to number about 75,000. DRAFT BILL: On the Way Yielding to the pressure of the times, congress was putting its band gingerly to the business of passing a selective service act which would give .he nation's armed forces a total manpower of slightly more than two million in two years. The house armed services committee commit-tee had approved the measure, after hearing Defense Secretary James Forrestal term it an "excellent" one, and passed it on to the floor of the house for debate. Thus, for the first time since before be-fore the war, congress was facing squarely the momentous issue of a national draft. That this was happening hap-pening during the hair-trigger days of an election year only served to underline the apparent urgency of the matter. As approved by the armed services committee, the bill would: 1 Raise total authorized manpower of the armed forces to 2,005,882 army 837,000, air force 502,000, navy and marine corps 666,882. 2 Require registration of men from 18 through 30, with those from 19 through 25 liable for two years' service. 3 Exempt most veterans from further service, but those under 31 would have to register. 4 Allow seizure of industrial plants by the government if they refused re-fused to give top priorities to armament arma-ment orders. ANSWERS 1. A little over two years. In i March, 19-16, under a treaty with Great Britain, Trans-Jordan became a sovereign independent state. 2. President Koosevelt signfd thu lend-lease bill on March 11, 1011. It was terminated by President Truman as of Aueiift 22, 1015. 3. b) 253,000. 4. U. S. Grant. Rutherford B. Hayes, James A Garfield. Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft. Warren G. Harding. All were Republicans. 6. The break In the grain market JERUSALEM: Confused Time was running out In Palestine, and with it the hbpe for averting a Jewish-Arab civil war for possession of Jerusalem. the waning days before Great Britain removed her troops from the Holy Land upon expiration of the British mandate on May 15, Palestine Pales-tine had become- a savagely confused, con-fused, moribund state. Bitterly, the United Nations trusteeship trus-teeship council virtually abandoned its efforts to devise an effective plan to safeguard Jerusalem from ravish- ment by the warring factions. Delegates Dele-gates could not hit upon a scheme that could be enforced. Nor was any Arab-Jewish agreement agree-ment in sight which might result In a truce necessary to give any U. N. plan a chance. Like a little boy watching his father trying to get his kite out of a tree, the council looked hopefully to Jerusalem where the Red Cross was doing its best to bring a halt to the fighting. , As far as the threatened invasion of Palestine by neighboring Arab states was concerned, no one seemed able to sum up the situation accurately. accur-ately. Jews were insisting, in the face of denials, that Syrian and Lebanese armies had invaded northern Palestine, Pales-tine, and the British were reported to have rushed troops back into the As it stood, the draft plan was conceded to have a good chance of passage at this session of congress. But complications were being threatened threat-ened by the senate armed services committee which seemed inclined to combine a universal military training train-ing measure with the draft bill. The committee was waiting for Army Secretary Kenneth Royall to recommend details of a bill to call 161,000 18-year-olds for a year's trainV ing. They would be taken in addition addi-tion to men procured through the draft. As a combination, that didn't look so good to many Republicans. Rep. Walter G. Andrews (Rep., N. Y.), chairman of the house armed service committee, called the idea "utterly foolish, inconceivable and not called , for." BIG PLANES: Russian Russia put some big four-engined planes into the air over Moscow for the annual Soviet May Day parade and managed thereby to instill a modicum of uneasiness in the hearts of U. S. military experts. At last reports they were awaiting more detailed reports of the planes from U. S. observers in order to gain, if possible, a new insight into Soviet airborne army equipment. It is likely, the experts thought, that at least some of the planes were the Soviet TU-70, an aircraft bearing close resemblance to the American B-29. Assumption has been that the Russians copied many of the features fea-tures of the five B-29s known to have been forced down in Soviet-controlled areas during the war. Reported to be a hybrid transport-bomber, transport-bomber, the TU-70 has a passenger capacity of 72. This probably could be Increased substantially, however, if the plane were used strictly as a troop carrier. THE BREAK: Colombia Not quite a month after the abortive abor-tive revolution in April swept the capital city of Bogota into turmoil and caused damage throughout the republic, the government of Colombia Colom-bia formally severed diplomatic relations re-lations with Russia. That the break was a direct result of the revolt, reportedly Communist-led Communist-led and inspired, no one bothered to deny. Officially, however, no mention was made of the uprising. Foreign Minister Eduardo Angel's note to the Russian charge d'affaires said simply sim-ply that Colombia considered that there were no ties which warranted a continuation of diplomatic and consular relations between the two countries. In concordance with the diplomatic action the Colombian government began to redeploy its troops and reorganize re-organize administrative machinery to strengthen its hold and prevent further outbreaks by Communists. Object Lesson OLEO TAX: Fight Ahead One of the most pressing problems members of congress have had to decide this year is whether their political po-litical bread is spread with butter or oleomargarine. It is further complicated by the fact that they might, in choosing one or the other, be letting the gravy get away from them. For good or ill, however, the house of representatives made Its decision. It cassed bv a vote of 260 to 106 a country to deal with what they called a "seriously deteriorated" situation. Still an unknown factor in the rapidly climaxing events was wily old King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. Commander of the finest army in Arabia, the spike-helmeted Arab Legion, Le-gion, he had been talking big about invadihg Palestine from the East. He had been talking, too, about making mak-ing himself king of Palestine. His ambition is a Middle East amalgam of states that would be in the nature of a greater Syria. Experts were not discounting the role Abdullah and his power-politick- bill to repeal all federal oleomargarine oleomarga-rine taxes which have been on the books for 62 years. Those taxes are itemized as follows: fol-lows: 10 cents a pound on colored oleo, 14 cent a pound on uncolored, $500 a year on manufacturers, $480 on wholesalers of colored oleo, $200 on wholesalers of the uncolored product, $43 on retailers of colored oleo and $6 on retailers of uncolored. Even if the federal taxes were repealed, re-pealed, it still would be against the law to sell colored oleo in 20 states. Nevertheless, the house had rid itself it-self of the matter and now it was up to the senate, where a battle royal was in prospect. Reason the oleo tax issue has a stiff fight ahead in the senate Is that senators are elected by voters of entire states, rather than by voters vot-ers of districts within the states as are most representatives. The result, in this case, is a split in the sentiment of constituents of ing could play in the drama. In the end he could turn out to be the catalytic cat-alytic agent that might bring the un-regenerate un-regenerate events in Palestine to a reasonable, if not a happy, conclusion. conclu-sion. COVENANTS: Just Paper In a decision which may produce more extensive reaction than any designed civil rights legislative program, pro-gram, the U. S. supreme court handed hand-ed down a decision that, in effect, outlaws so-called restrictive covenants cove-nants which bar racial or religious minorities from buying or occupying property in many areas throughout the country. Declaring the decision, Chief Jus i tlce Fred Vinson held that enforcement enforce-ment of restrictive covenants by state or federal courts was a violation viola-tion of the 14th amendment. That amendment, adnntpft in lAfin many senators. For example, big northern states such as Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan Michi-gan and Ohio, are composed of consumer con-sumer cities and producer farms. The country districts include dairy farmers and soy bean growers. Consumers Con-sumers in cities want repeal of the taxes, and so do the soy bean men whose product is used in manufacture manufac-ture of oleo. The dairy farmers, naturally, want the tax to remain. The dairy interests are strong. Their supporters in congress have been able to retain the oleo tax by the simple process of shelving any repeal bills in committee. It happened hap-pened to the current bill in the house agricultural committee, but a petition peti-tion circulated among house members mem-bers forced the bill on to the floor where it was approved. reads in part: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The supreme court's decision did not declare that restrictive covenants, cove-nants, as such, are violations of the constitution; but by ruling that it is unconstitutional for the courts to enforce en-force the covenants it reduced them, legalry, to mere scraps of paper. For the most part, covenants are agreements entered upon by real estate promoters and buyers of land or homes. Purchasers agree not to sell their land or homes to persons barred by the covenant, terms of the agreement running from an average of 25 or 50 years to "perpetuity. - Just to prove that the old greenback green-back ain't what it used to be, Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (Dem., Calif.) purchased $17.36 worth of groceries and toted the slim load onto the house floor to show her colltaCucs how prices have Inflated In-flated since OPA controls expired In 1946. Mrs. Douglas has introduced intro-duced a price control resoIuUon in the house. |