Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS by edwardc edward C wayno wayne reports of hess flight to england fill news columns and radio lanes convoys plus strikes plus priorities equal headaches headachy es m in defense program EDITORS NOTE when klomm are r es ped expressed la in these th coin h a the they sto r these the of the th nw now an ori 0 and nil nt not necessarily of this ihli no w ne lessed by western newspaper union BOMBSHELL human variety the rudolf hess incident was the dropping of a bomb bombshell hell into the moors of scotland which went up with a louder explosion than any of the tons of TNT that hillers Hit lers aviators had yet sent across the channel imaginations ran riot the house of commons wait waa in a dither more than 20 basic theories wore were advanced to explain why less fled germany in an n airplane and dropped to earth in a parachute and with the interweaving and variations of these ono one had several thousand stories to choose from to list tho the british theories and those of neutrals would be futile because they wore not only limited by tho the imaginations of their creators to list the german explanations also would bo futile because they obviously were tho the propaganda outbursts of a government whose nose was temporarily out of joint outside of this all was specula tion all was guesswork adt the gu guessels guessers essers most of them being paid at so much a word lot themselves go and endless columns were printed yet the story was not being over played most thinking newspaper men being at a loss tor for earlier comparisons pari parl sons in journalistic history which one must recall doean doesn t go tar ar back when history to la con considered 81 dered but outside of the type of story that history presented in the middle ages and during the days of caesar ond and hannibal and anthony and cleopatra and cassius cassaus and brutus and helen of troy hess flight was unique most newspaper commentators were willing to call it the biggest story in cen centuries and lot let it go at that they wagged their heads and said what if cordell hull were to fly to germany or what it it had been the other way over the channel and anthony eden had made the trip this was enough to settle the point as to tho the magnitude of the news to their own satisfaction anyway basic explanation of the hess it incident on the standpoint of logic wl k RUDOLF HESS A louder explosion than lian bombs brought personal considerations and personal safety to tho the fore it was pointed out a iless hess had evidently wanted to escape germany tor for tome some reason for lie ike was practically under a de tain ment sentence sen by hillers Hit lers having grounded him b if his reason for escape was sound then to pick out a spot where he would be utterly sate safe from retribution england was the ono one and only spot in fit the world c it personal safety was his mo me alve then an inescapable parallel was waa that something must haye been wrong g with the unity of the nazi party of which lie was no 3 fuehrer this was enough explanation for british serenity over the incident also tor for german perturbation it was significant that most german dispatches covered these three points point no I 1 was covered when hitler announced hess was crazy and had been detained for his own safety no 2 that he should select england germans explained by saying that the nature of his insanity was that he believed that he could bring about peace point no 3 was handled by a straight out denial that anything was wrong with tho the nazi party hess was a good nazi but crazy painted Paint cd toenails 9 Whet whether fier crazy or not when they took off his shoe shod and sock to attend to 0 his fractured ankle he was found io to have painted toenails enalls to hardly the american idea of a hard boiled nazi leaders personal decorations everyone who ever had any contact with hess told his paragraph or two from the palmist who said he was waa superstitious to the newspaper commentator who took flye minutes coast to coast to tell how he be had seen iless go skiing two years ago priorities and A new di in the U S handling bandling of defense defence work loomed when william S knudsen motor official and headon head of seemed to take as a personal issue the question oi of taking priorities out of his hands and giving them to a special organization answerable only to the army and navy chiefs knudsen was quoted as saying that he would quit if the plan went through thus the question of priorities lifted ats its head as a vital defense issue further complicating the picture priorities were becoming a very real issue in business also many manufacturers finding that this one question might easily costly keep them from success or failure in carrying carry ing out contracts the right to a priority of delivery of machine tools might alone answer an entire question of manufacture knudsen took the attitude that if the work of production manage 14 WILLIAM S KNUDSEN lie he forced an issue ment was his that to remove from his hands a vital tool like alko the right to decide questions of priorities would bo be to make his task impossible and to rob him of his prime prerogative it seemed likely that unless this question was ironed out swiftly to the liking of the danish born bom production expert the government might be looking tor for a new man STRIKES upgrade up grade again the labor trouble tempo in the united states defense industry was on the upward curve again fth a order tor for browning machine guns held up at the colt factory in hartford conn other old labor difficulties threatening to break out anew including tho the coal strike always rearing its head was the threatened general motors strike which would it if it occurred affect millions of dollars in defense work and about employees and john L lewis said that if the coal contract with southern operators was not forthcoming forth cuming soon he would call the coal miners out again this brought the strike news back onto the front with a bang and representative thomas of new jersey a republican called tor for a roundup of communists in labor groups arid and to order them all arrested on treason charges this was the most drastic step suggested thus far SHIPS britain bound president roosevelt assured the nation that the administrations ns objective of tons of merchant ii shipping hipping for britain would be ba realized by mid june this assurance carried with it the important promise that the bill permitting the president to take possession of foreign vessels idle in american ports was in the category of sure things the senate and house enga engaged ged in a desultory effort to write into the bill amendments chief among which was the tobey amendment forbidding the use of convoys the whole convoy issue as indeed all other othe r hews aels of the war on this side of the water took a back seat during the news ascendancy of rudolf hess but the issue was there ready to rip itself out into the open at an appropriate moment and to become the central point of a whole congressional debate on the presidents general foreign pulley policy the tons of ships for brit aln within a month came as the nazis were claiming tons of british ships sunk by U boats since the start of the war and with the british while admitting losses of at least half that mount amount generally showing the pinch sharply further drastic reductions in the meat ration and little Is as dear to the as his beloved beet beef and mutton were announced and ithe 00 general trend of commons debate indicated that britain was feeling the ship pinch trem tremendously gold star mother f 1 I 1 0 ve olee 0 1411 y x all K 4 when american gold star mothers conducted their annual ceremonies in glendale C california mrs anna darn barn rock brock b 94 oldest of the group in the nation participated in the ceremonies mrs darn barn brock is pictured standing belore before the ilia marble statuary A compassionate mother which was unveiled L DRAFT bars lifted ot of extreme import was the decision of congress to lift all bans to the size ot ol tho the army or to the question of selective service for any purpose f tor or which it might be used ln in the national defense also vital was the decision immediately to classify the young men still unclassified in the first call and to set up the second call for an early date probably in july two things were highly likely as a result that the draft would be ba used to call men of a younger age than before and that it would also be used to hunt out missing links among the skilled trades for use in defense industry the first eventuality naturally natural lv would follow tho the report of army chiefs after a few months experience with draftees that the tha younger men were far more adaptable than the older and could take their training quicker and better the second resulted restated from the realization that many men in the uniform would be much more productive to defense in shipyards or munitions plants and that the classification fi lists if turned over to defense production men might result in discovery of these facts before the donned the lifting of any ban on the size of the army tended to indicate that there was justification for the growing in belief that the end of a calendar year would not very likely mean the end of a mans military ser service vici under present conditions VICHY A new role more and more it was becoming apparent that newest german prop pro p acanda was to convince the world especially the united states of one ona fact that the war was over and germany was about to undertake the difficult task of reconstruction in effect the story to as one german writer put it poor dad daday jy roosevelt was this AU all british have been chased from the european continent except at GIr gibraltar altar thus germanys germanas Germ anys prime objective has been achieved we S shall hall now try to cement these people into one force working tor for germany with this force wo we shall confront the united states and defeated britain first move in the war is now over game was to lighten somewhat the armistice terms for france and to ask deeper collaboration this according to dispatches vichy accepted unanimously the german plan called for the return of some prisoners of war the raising of the line between occupied aupied and unoccupied france and a list of demands on the french tor for operation cooperation co which might never be made public most observers believed that germany in order to get and hold the mediterranean would give almost any concession to beaten france to grab the french fleet but this did not appear on the surface as a condition why a change what did change role in the world up to that moment the world had pictured vichy and unoccupied france as a saddened hungry nation bled white by the nazis and hoping against hope for the day when a british victory would return the country to pence peace prosperity and freedom now the world had to picture a france which had further surrendered which was sending darlan to repeated close and secret conferences with a high nazi authority and which was prepared to tell the united states in effect just what the germans were claiming the war Is ii over europe now is dominated by germany and france is going to collaborate politically and socially to see what she can gain for herself in the reorganization of europe if you go into the war on the side of britain you are against not for us |