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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne Extending of Material Aid to Russia Poses Difficult Problem for British; U. S. Also Studies Soviet Aid Question; Early Reports on Fighting Are Vague (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) 1 (Released by Western Newspaper TT""" I EACH COMPLETE SYMBOL EQUALS 10 PER CENT Total National Production (In millioni of tons): Coal (1940), 164.6; Oil and Sat (1940), 34.2; Pig Iron (1940), 14.9; Steel (1940), 18.4; Sugar (1937, 1938), 3.5. Drawn from an authoritative source, the above chart indicates the total amounts of strategic resources produced In the entire Soviet Union. These items come from the Ukraine and Caucasus in the following percentages: per-centages: Coal, 62; oil, 83; iron ore, 64; pig iron, 63; steel, 47; and sugar, 74. Thus loss of the area represents a tremendous blow to Russia and an important gain for the Nazis. This chart was released by the University of Chicago Round Table. AID: To Reds? As Nazi Germany and Red Russia hurled their armies into the most far-flung battle-line of all human history, his-tory, the question of just what aid would be sent to the Soviet forces was a moot point on both sides of the Atlantic. The governments of both Britain and the United States declared themselves on successive days as having solved the question as to the aid principle by boiling it down to a very simple equation "Anybody that is fighting Nazis is on our side in this fight." Britain announced it would send "economic and military aid," and the United States said the same, but it was not immediately clear just how much of the latter there would be. England's first move was to increase in-crease the effectiveness of her bombing raids on occupied France and German cities, raiding both by day and by night, and reportedly downing many Nazi airplanes. In fact, the RAF reported the dropping of as many bombs by weight in two weeks of the Russian warfare as they had in a whole month previously. Heavy American bombers were constantly arriving on the scene in England, and these, presumably, permitted the British to regard planes as slightly more "expendable" "expenda-ble" than they had viewed them previously. pre-viously. There did not seem to be any question of "ferrying" airplanes to Russia. Rather, the only serious question of a changed policy on the part of England was the suggestion in some quarters that it might be a good thing for Britain to cross the channel with soldiers and tanks now that Hitler's "back was turned." That Britain was watching the Russo-German war with her fingers crossed was evident in the military answer to this suggestion. The first objection was that the channel ports had been so blasted that they would not be suitable for landings of large numbers of troops, and that, if the Germans should win a sudden and swift victory over the Russians, then limited forces of British on the continent con-tinent might find themselves in a very precarious positions. Therefore the question of British aid to Russia seemed to be largely one of sending an advisory military mission, which was done at once, and the extension of more liberal trading credits. In the United States, aside from the fact that the question of any aid at all became a matter of vitriolic debate, the actual aid to the Reds boiled itself down to the same thing. President Roosevelt said: "Even if Russia were to send us a 'list of her needs, it is not possible to fill the order as one would go to a store. Our munitions factories, including in-cluding the airplane plants, are completely busy filling our own needs and those of Britain." The question of time was important, impor-tant, for the United States did not want to send planes and other equipment equip-ment to Vladivostok, thence to start the long trek across Siberia, and then to arrive just in time to fall into Nazi hands. Yet this government did unfreeze Russian credits in this country, undoing an action it had taken just 10 days before Messages of sympathy sym-pathy and encouragement were sent by Sumner Welles, although he plainly plain-ly stipulated, as Churchill had, that American aims and ideals were utterly ut-terly foreign to those of Stalin. Anthony Eden was the official spokesman for Britain and his words had the same portent. And so history in the gross was being written, with an estimated 4, OCX), 000 men in action on two sides of a 2.000-mile battluline. FIGHTING: Clouded The Russo-German war was odd in that it was being carried on without with-out the benefit of war correspondents. correspond-ents. Of little value as they are in modern mod-ern warfare, where they are scarcely scarce-ly able to keep up with the swiftness of events, and where they are just as apt as civilians of other types to become casualties themselves, they were badly missed in this, the greatest great-est battle from point of numbers and power of all history. It would have taken an army of them to cover a 2,000-mile front, to begin with, and in the second place, the Nazis barred all correspondents from the front, and the Russians did likewise. The Nazis were using "soldier "sol-dier correspondents," but the feel- ing among readers of communiques was that they were more than usually usual-ly uncommunicative. It was impossible to do more on a war map than to draw hazy lines, with arrows pointed at the districts where one side or the other claimed that the action was taking place. Estimates of the number of men and machines in action were of the haziest conjecture, running all the way from 100 divisions on a side to 200, and the plane guesses from 2,000 on a side to 4.000. There were even skeptics on the street who asked "who knows whether wheth-er there's any fighting at all." The answer to that was to be found on the Western Front, where bombing of England had been abandoned, aban-doned, and virtually German defense of the air. Hitler, said wiser observers, observ-ers, would not have permitted that unless the "real McCoy" in the way of a war blitz were going on at the Eastern front Both sides made the most optimistic optimis-tic claims. The Germans claimed "uncounted" planes shot down and destroyed on the ground; the Russians Rus-sians said the count In the first week was 387 for them, 382 for Germany. The Germans claimed that they'd wiped out a whole division and that their blitz was moving forward on schedule and that a great victory would be announced momentarily. The Russians countered with the statement that at no place had the Nazis moved into actual pre-war Russian territory, and that at some points their own troops were on the offensive. One instance of the difficulty of getting facts from the communiques came in the battle of the Prut river, which the Germans first claimed to have crossed without difficulty; later lat-er said they had "established by hard fighting a bridgehead across the Prut," two days after they had previously announced an easy and swift crossing. As to the Prut, the Russians said "10 barges of the enemy crossed a wide river under cover of a fog, but were hurled back later with terrible ter-rible losses" and this river was supposed to be the same Prut. The Russians claimed Warsaw and Constanta, important cities in Nazi-occupied territory in flames, and heavy damage on Helsinki and Danzig. The Germans said they were burning up Leningrad, Russia's second most populous city. MISCELLANY: BROOKLYN, N. Y.: Public school children were given nn emergency air raid drill, getting thern "in on the ground floor" in case of air attacks at-tacks on the metropolis. LONDON: The RAF has 500 young pilots who were born in the United Slates, according to an official offi-cial report. Most of them enlisted in Canada. DAYTON, OHIO: Fred Snitc, the "iron lung" daddy, Is practicing with a portable outfit that will permit per-mit him to walk about LEASE-LEND: The Picture The veil of secrecy surrounding the whole question of lease-lend aid to Britain, which had not been pierced very satisfactorily from the readers' point of view by President Roosevelt's 90-day statement, was pulled aside enough to give a more promising picture. The disclosure came before the senate's commerce committee. It came in the form of a general survey sur-vey by a number of shipping lines as to the increase in Red sea cargoes, car-goes, which, presumably, were mostly of the lease-lend variety. This was in a discussion of a house-approved bill that would place virtually all merchant ships operating operat-ing from" the U. S. under the control of the Maritime commission. Ship operators appeared before the committee asking for "just compensation" com-pensation" for themselves and that this be included in the measure. Then came the reports. One said that a large part of its 32-ship fleet was now in the Red sea business; , another reported three ships now en route there; still a third said he had sent four ships there, and that he had 16 others in the same trade. The attorney of the Maritime commission, testifying for the ship-operators, ship-operators, said the amount of lease-lend lease-lend cargoes to the Red sea was "enormous." ANY PANS? Asks LaGuardia "Little Flower" LaGuardia got under un-der way his OCD, or civilian defense de-fense director, and made his first nation-wide appeal a plan to start a collection of scrap aluminum. His broadcast appeal called for citizens to contribute everything from pots and pans to washing machines, ma-chines, and he set a goal for the nation of 20,000.000 pounds. Reception depots will be maintained without charge, LaGuardia said. He asked not only housewives, but all hotels and restaurants to give. He wants everybody to make an inventory of all the aluminum utensils uten-sils they can spare. His list included "golf clubs, pots, pans, vacuum cleaners, picture frames, ice trays, measuring cups, kettles, double boilers, jar caps, refrigerator re-frigerator plates, toys and all things like that." LABOR: Not at Ease Despite the final removal of all troops from the plant of North American Aviation, first and only factory to be taken over by the army in order to break a strike, labor was far from at ease, though there were many factors tending to improve the situation. In the first place, assuming that the Communists actually were in back of some of the labor troubles, they now found themselves fighting for their lives (in Russia) against the Nazis, and as America was pledged to do likewise in the "all-out-aid" program, the Communists changed their front and were less likely to participate in defense strikes. But on the other hand, the basic desire of labor for a 75-cent an hour minimum wage as a sort of level at which they'd be willing to work hard and faithfully at most any sort of defense task, seemed not at all reduced, and this was sure to cause outbreaks in the future. Example For instance, 5,000 employees of the Sperry Gyroscope company voted vot-ed to strike. Whether they would carry it out or not was problematical, problemat-ical, but the specter of labor trouble was rearing its head in this concern, which makes the all-important bomb-sight. These workers wanted a blanket 20 pur cent wage increase. The company offered an unspecified compromise, then added the words, "take it or leave it." The workers voted to leave it |
