OCR Text |
Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS , 2,000,000 Russ Strike Nazis; Yanks D rive Inland on Luzon; Set Up New Deferment Policy ' - i Released by Western Newspaper Union. (EDITOR'S NOTE: When optnJvns mr expressed In these columns, they are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily t this newspaper.) ; STITINJ,- y msTPRassiAC f&!- '9(&'. f ?i2?0? POLAND PACIFIC: Move Inland As carrier planes from Adm. Hal-sey's Hal-sey's Third fleet ranged the South China sea to smash Japanese shipping mr'mm that could bring re- I inforcements and ; supplies to the Phil- WMAi' " ippines, U. S. ground forces under.com- ;f3ii $ mand of Lieut. Gen. ; - Walter Krueger con- ; 4 f" 'SfA g tinued to move in- 'S K " ? land on Luzon in jr their drive for , i Manila. A ; Only to the east- - ' - t-S--i ward did the Yanks Gen. Krueger encounter stiff Jap resistance, with Jap armored columns, col-umns, using baby tanks, lashing at the left flank of General Krueger's forces in an effort to check a drive that could bottle up sizable enemy units to the northeast. In the early absence of appreciable appreci-able 'enemy strength southward toward Manila, Yank columns took full advantage of the minor resistance resist-ance to securely fasten their hold on a network of highways leading from their supply dumps at Lingay-en Lingay-en Gulf for the great battle shaping. In penetrating the Japs' inner lifeline life-line in the South China sea, Admiral Halsey's carrier planes not only attacked at-tacked enemy shipping bearing supplies sup-plies to the Philippines, 1,100 miles away, but also bombed their sources of supply along the Chinese mainland main-land to the west. DRAFT PLAN: For 26 to 29 With the pool of 18 to 25 year olds dwindling, and with the services insistent in-sistent on the use of younger men. War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes traced out the course to be followed in the induction of industrial indus-trial workers in the 26 to 29 class without impairing the production effort. ef-fort. Under Byrnes' formula, 26 to 29-year-olds not in essential activities would be the first to go. They would be followed by those engaged in relatively unimportant positions in essential or critical industries, who can be easily replaced. Finally, those in more important jobs in essential and critical Industries would be inducted. Meanwhile, some 365,000 deferred farm workers between 18 and 25 years of age began receiving their pre-induction physicals, preparatory to local boards' review of the cases of those found fit for the services. CIGARETTES: Trade Rationing In fte first broad attempt at private pri-vate rationing during the war by a trade, the National Association of Tobacco Distributors drew up a plan under which the 1,250,000 retail outlets out-lets they serve would issue cards controlling their customers' cigarette ciga-rette purchases to assure an equitable equita-ble supply for all. Framed after shortages had pinched many communities, the distributors' dis-tributors' plan did not meet without criticism, with an official of the National Na-tional Association of Retail Druggists Drug-gists declaring that no such private rationing was necessary if members were given their wartime allotments instead of smaller and smaller amounts. Eight-seven per cent of the retail outlets would be affected by the plan, with exceptions including the chain stores, which buy direct from manufacturers and take 8 per cent of supplies, and hotels, railroads and other places serving travelers and normally selling 5 per cent of stocks. ON ROAD TO MANILA The road to Manila, which American Ameri-can forces broke open with landings on the gulf of Lingayen, lies through the great central plains of Luzon. A broad open corridor 40 miles wide and hemmed in by mountains, this region is one of the most populous and normally productive . areas of the Philippines, with many small farms spreading a mosaic over the face of the land In what the Germans Ger-mans say may be the decisive phase of the, Euro pean tear, the Russians launched a general full-scale offensive along the long east ern front, as indicated indi-cated by arrows, attacking at-tacking northward from East Prussia to Southern Poland. At the same time, the Reds pushed forward into Czechoslovakia. Czech-oslovakia. Main Russian effort was concentrated below Warsaw on route to Krakow, with the Germans forced to give up forward positions po-sitions under the sustained pressure of the Red attacks, prepared by the heaviest of artillery bombardment. EUROPE: All-Out Drive On the move behind massed artillery, ar-tillery, with tank columns spearheading spear-heading their drive, 2,000,00.0 Russians Rus-sians smashed at German defenses from the wooded lake country" of East Prussia to the vast snow-covered plains of Poland in an all-out effort to reach the Reich. Greatest concentration of Russian Rus-sian strength was along a 200-mile front below Warsaw, where about 650,000 Reds hacked forward, with one of the wings swinging to the rear of the former Polish capital, capi-tal, and the other riding down hard on Silesia, important German industrial in-dustrial province. Outnumbered, with no natural barriers to hole up behind on the flat plains, the Germans were compelled to fall back as the Reds overran their forward positions. In East Prussia, where the Nazis could utilize the forested terrain, the Reds were held to smaller gains. Meanwhile, the. Reds encountered encoun-tered stiffening resistance in their push into southern Czechoslovakia Czecho-slovakia and Hungary as the Nazis sought to buttress their industrial districts to the west. Write-Off Bulge One month after Field Marshal Von Rundstedt had launched his lightning thrust into Belgium and Luxembourg into the First army's rest sector, his forces streamed back into the Siegfreid line again under cover of fog and rain. As the U. S. armies wrote off Von Rundstedt's sudden offensive thrust, however, the cagey German general was reported to be shifting With the war department removing re-moving the limitations on the total of overseas vets who can return home on 30-day furloughs, Gen. George C. Marshall said the number should rise sharply in the next few months. major forces to the Alsatian front to the southeast, where small but sharp Nazi diversionary attacks earlier ear-lier had bitten deep into American and French positions along the frontier. Von Rundstedt's abandonment of the bulge and withdrawal into the prepared defense fortifications fortifica-tions of the Siegfried line followed fol-lowed quickly upon the Allies' recovery from the first shock of his big offensive and their attack at-tack upon his lines from the north, west and south with massed forces that threatened i to chew his army to pieces. Tak-I Tak-I ing advantage of murky weather, weath-er, and with rearguards stubbornly stub-bornly covering his retreat, he managed to extricate most of his armored columns from the bulge, to fight another day.. Losses High With most of their 90,000 casualties casual-ties on the western front between December 15 and January 7 suffered in Belgium and Luxembourg, the Germans paid a high price for their temporary relief of their vital industrial in-dustrial Ruhr and Saar basins. Of the 90,000 Casualties, approximately approxi-mately 40,000 were captured, Secretary Sec-retary of War Stimson announced, bringing German prisoners up to 844,891 since D-day, with the U. S. First army bagging 230,911 alone. U. S. losses on the western front between December 15 and January 7 reached 52,594, with nearly 40,000 of these suffered in Belgium and Luxembourg. Of the 40.000, Stimson Stim-son said, about 18,000 are missing, miss-ing, with the majority presumed to be prisoners. GUARD MARKETS Protecting both the consumer and honest manufacturer, the U. S. Food and Drug administration moved against a minority of manufacturers manufac-turers who sought to capitalize on the heavy demand of consumers by disguising their food products during 1944. Cases included substitution of mineral min-eral oil for food oil; use of saccharin sac-charin in beverages and ground cocoa shells in chocolate products, and the palming off of prepared cereals for nuts and coconuts. FARM EN'COME: Up 6 With returns from crops showing the most substantial increase, farm income approximated $20,390,000,000 in 1E44, 6 per cent over figures for the previous year, the U. S. department depart-ment of agriculture declared. The rise in Income from crops totaled 11 per cent, the USDA said, with receipts for tobacco showing the biggest increase of 36 per cent as a result of larger acreage and higher yields, and returns on food grains mounting 29 per cent, chiefly chief-ly as a result of the record wheat harvest. With production of deciduous decidu-ous fruit above the unfavorable 1943 season, income from fruits and nuts was up about 25 per cent. With most of the rise due to marketings of meat animals, receipts re-ceipts from livestock and related products were up 2 per cent over last year, USDA estimated. Because of a sharp drop in egg prices and slight decreases in both prices and quantities of chickens and broilers, income from eggs and poultry dropped. Wages H ighest The highest wages and lowest level lev-el of employment of hired hands for a January 1 in two decades were recorded re-corded on the first of the year, the USDA said, partly reflecting the intense in-tense competition of agriculture and Industry for labor. Up sharply from a year ago, rates per month with board averaged $74.60 on January 1, while rates without board stood at $88.90. Daily rates with board averaged $3.54 and those without board $4.15, the USDA reported. As of January 1, the total of both hired and family workers on farms stood at 8,005,000, 2 per cent below 1944, 9 per cent below the 1935-'39 average, and the lowest on that date f '0 years. Part of the decrease attributed to unfavorable iher, which reduced efforts to necessary chores and livestock care in most parts of the country except the west and southwest. FOREIGN POLICY: Senate Debate Charged with the consideration of America's foreign affairs, the U. S. senate, with prewar debates still mutely j ""7?- echoing within the I staid walls of the Cls Vl stately old cham- J f 1 ber, again be-stirred l't&f, , itself as Montana's Lf" 1 Burton K. Wheeler r 4 rose to his feet to t Tgr 5 describe projected &3 postwar peace or- Barton Wheeler ganization as the arbitrary ar-bitrary rule of great powers, and Florida's Claude Pepper warned against scotching an effective international inter-national security body. Said Wheeler: " . . . Observe how the Dumbarton Oaks proposals emasculate the good neighbor policy, poli-cy, override the principle of the sovereign equality of all nations, approve as a cardinal principle the use of brute force and the threat of coercion with re- !v quiring resort to tJjjA J peaceful methods in f I dealing with the 1rjf threat of aggres-'t")!1 aggres-'t")!1 1 s'on' and deUberate-,i deUberate-,i l ly divorce the struc-i--c, ture of the pro- 1 Pose security or- Claude Pepper nature of the peace which it is expected to enforce. ..." Retorted Pepper: "... After the senate failed to ratify the treaty of Versailles (in 1920), including provision pro-vision for the league of nations . . . we abandoned our Allies. We abandoned aban-doned our objectives. We failed to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by that day, and we waited for the next war to come. . . ." HITLER TRIAL: Plans Snagged With Great Britain's rejection of the Allied war crimes commission's proposal for a creation of an international inter-national court to try Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and other Axis leaders, fear was expressed that they might escape punishment, after all. According to the London Sun-itay Sun-itay Express, the British foreign office of-fice favored exile for the Axis heads much in the manner of Napolean's banishment to Elba. Meanwhile, Russia intlmiited that it was proceeding with its own plans for trying Hitler, et al, what with Ilya Ehrenburg, prominent Soviet So-viet journalist, declaring: "... We ourselves will judge our torturers and this we will entrust to nobody. no-body. .. . " Quoting an unnamed British jurist, jur-ist, the London Sunday Express declared de-clared that one of the reasons Great Britain might object to an open trial of the Axis chieftains was because some of its own officials might be embarrassed by being called to the witness stand to give evidence for the defense. LABOR TURNOVER For every 1,000 workers on factory fac-tory pay rolls in November, 60 either changed jobs or left manufacturing manu-facturing work. Quits represented three-fourths of all separations, discharges dis-charges and lay-offs each accounted for 10 per cent and the remaining 5 per cent resigned for military and miscellaneous reasons. The quit rate for manufacturing as a whole. 45 per 1,000, was slightly below that of the previous month, but on the same level with that of one year huh |