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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne Seven Billion Dollars to Aid Britain Is First Step Under Lease-Lend Act; England Admits: 'Spring Blitz Is Here' Following Terrific Raids on London (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) I (Released by Western Newspaper TT"'"" 1 VICHY, FRANCE. Frenchmen of a few years ago would never have dreamed that this scene might take place in their homeland. But here it is. Gen. Neubronn von Eisenburg, who, as Nazi inspector, keeps a sharp eye on what's left of the French army, salutes as he reviews a French honor guard on his arrival at Vichy. BRITISH: Aid Into Laiv Under the eyes of watchful photographers. pho-tographers. President Roosevelt wielded six pens, made the British aid bill, called by its opponents the lend-spend-give bill, and then turned in his chair and told newsmen he would ask for $7,000,000,000 as the initial appropriation under the measure. While this announcement struck with bomb-shell force as the greatest great-est American peace-time appropriation appropria-tion request in history, the congress apparently was willing to go ahead and match the President's desire for speed with some action of its own. This was evident when the bill returned re-turned from senate to house with an even dozen amendments attached. Representative Martin of Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, minority leader, jumped to his feet, pleaded for unity and for action, ac-tion, and received a most unusual tribute from his colleagues. He received what is known as a standing ovation from the entire house. The lower branch of the congress responded to this brief talk by voting 317 to 71 to accept the changes put in by the upper house. Then Vice President Wallace and Speaker Sam Raybuxn put their penned signatures to the printed measure and off it went to the President Pres-ident Hardly had it become law and within an hour after the President had asked for the aeven billons, statisticians were busy trying to tell the public what this amount meant in purchased goods and services. One of these put it this way it would equal a strip of $10 bills reaching 2Vi times around the world; it would buy 120 Empire State buildings at 50 million each; or it would build 115 Triborough bridges at $60,000,000; or 120 dread-naughts dread-naughts at $SO,000,000; or 2,350 submarines, sub-marines, 2,090,000 light tanks; 28,-000 28,-000 four-motor bombers; also would pay the entire cost of public education educa-tion in the U. S. for three years, or provide a $50 U. S. bond for every man, woman and child. Thus given a visual picture of what the sum meant, it was figured that the first Job would be for the President to provide for England as much as possible under the law of the existing military and naval equipment, up to the $1,300,000,000 limit set in the bill. It was pointed out that this amount would come out of the seven billion total, for as soon as $500,000,-000, $500,000,-000, say, of aid had been sent from existing equipment, the army or navy would be reimbursed that amount, and would then be able to purchase replacements. The rest of the $7,000,000,000 will go into purchase contracts for eventual even-tual aid to Britain, Greece or other nations which are opposing Nazi aggression. ag-gression. These contractual obligations obliga-tions must bo on the dotted line by 1043. but can be carried out through 1046. LONDON: Hit Hard Terrific series of air attacks on England, especially on London, plus tremendous losses at sea brought forth the frank statement In commons com-mons that the spring blitz promised by Hitler was now fully under way. Government lenders expressed confidence In the outcome, balancing balanc-ing against ship losses unannounced and untotaled damage inflicted on German naval and undersea strength, not to mention loss of planes. More than 6.000 Italian and Nazi aircraft have been downed, with a loss of about 2,200 British airplanes, the air ministry said, since the beginning be-ginning of the war. This, it was claimed, is a significant sig-nificant and important inroad into the first-line strength of both air armadas, but a more severe blow to the Italians, with about 1.500 planes downed, than to Germany, with about 4,500 put out of action. The naval chiefs in London emphasized empha-sized the British need of ships, particularly par-ticularly naval vessels, paid a glowing glow-ing tribute to the work of the 50 former U. S. destroyers obtained in swaps for bases, and one authority said: "We have enough trained men to man the entire U. S. navy, if it could be turned over to us." Not that he meant, he said, that the navy should be turned over, but he pointed the manpower that Britain Brit-ain has trained, as compared with the available ships. As to the effects of air raids on London and other British cities, the loss of life again was becoming heavy. Guardedly it was disclosed that Buckingham palace again had been struck. Portsmouth was a special attack object, and there was heavy loss of life there. STRIKES: Groiv Apace As labor troubles multiplied in the United States, in defense and non-defense non-defense projects, including the huge bus drivers' walkout in New York, it was reported that William S. Knudsen finally had been driven to considering the "draft industry" provision in the powers of his office of-fice as production manager to end the Allis-Chalmers affair, among others. Increasing concern was shown by production chiefs in the national defense de-fense when figures showed a 27 per cent increase In strikes during the past 30 days. This gave a disquieting disquiet-ing tone to the situation over and beyond be-yond any single disturbance or group of troubles. Some of the danger spots were In the Midwest, some In the East The Allis-Chalmers strike was past a month and a half and still deadlocked dead-locked when Miss Perkins sent John R. Stcelman, head of the conciliation concilia-tion service, personally to direct a last-minute effort to end the trouble before Invoking the "draft" of industry, indus-try, which would lake over the plant, thus instantly outlawing the strike. Several plants of the International Harvester company were down because be-cause of strikes, the vital coal and steel industries were in the midst of threatening conferences between worker and employer, the Brill plant in Philadelphia was down, holding up a big ammunition order for shell casings; there was an auto strike in Oakland. Statistical review of the situation was headache enough for production produc-tion chiefs, the number of strikes in January as compared with December Decem-ber being 220 as against 100, and the 220 became more ominous when it was shown Hint the five-year average for January was only 170 and for December only 120. Total man-days lost In January totaled to-taled 625,000 as against 400.000 lost in December, and here the figures on past years was more favorable, as the five-year average of mnn-dnys mnn-dnys lost In January was 1,012,605. TURKEY: Scene of Bombing Dramatic was the entrance of former for-mer Bulgarian ambassador from England, George W. RendeL into Turkey after his flight from Sofia. Rendel and his staff walked into the lobby of the Pera Palace hotel. There was a flash, a roar, and the cries of wounded and dying. The smoke cleared away to find Rendel still unhurt, several members of his staff wounded, and two men killed, one of them a Turkish secret service serv-ice man assigned to guard the ambassador. am-bassador. Twenty-three, in all, were wounded by the blast, which badly wTecked the room in which the crowd was gathered. But, as in the Munich bombing which Hitler escaped, the chief target tar-get of the Turkish bomb, Mr. Rendel, Ren-del, was unscratched. His aides said there was no doubt that it was a deliberate attempt at assassination, and its occurrence at the very time when Turkey was debating its position posi-tion in the expected forthcoming invasion in-vasion of Greece by the Nazis, served further to entrench Istanbul on the front pages of the press. Rendel's attractive daughter, 20, who was standing near the blast in the hotel lobby, told the story in a few words when she said: "As far as I could tell the floor just flew up." She is a calm soul, having driven her father through the streets of Sofia during the German occupation occupa-tion in an automobile flying the British Brit-ish flag. It was later revealed that an attempt at-tempt was made to blow up the train on which Rendel and his party were traveling to Istanbul. This was proven prov-en when it was found that the handbags hand-bags which contained the explosive had traveled on the train with the Rendel party, but failed to go off. The Nazis denied that the bombs had been planted on the train, saying say-ing the Rendel baggage had been loaded under the eyes of scores of Gestapo agents. However, British sources later replied that another uncxploded bomb had been found in baggage unloaded from the train. JAPAN: Peace Move Whether it was under the frowning frown-ing menace of Axis guns, both in the West and in the Far East, or whether it was sincere, but noteworthy, note-worthy, at any rate, was the statement state-ment issued by the Indo-Chinese (French) government following the ratification of the peace treaty with Thailand (Siam). In this peace treaty Japan was the peacemaker and mediator. Back of her mediation efTorts, however, was a huge fleet which was moved into waters off French Indo-China during the height of the Thailand-Indo-Chinese war. Reports from Saigon, when the peace was finally terminated, giving Thailand huge slices of Indo-Chinese territory along the borders, were that the peace was more satisfactory satisfac-tory than the French government had hoped for. It was stated that in Saigon it was expected that even larger cessions ces-sions of territory would have had to have been made if Japan had not intervened. Immediately- Foreign Minister Matsuoka announced that he would shatter Japanese precedents by taking tak-ing a trip to Europe to confer with his Axis partners. Von Wiegand, writing from Shanghai, Shang-hai, saw in tills project a chuncc that Japan would seek Axis, particularly par-ticularly Nazi mediation in an rITort to end the Japanese-Chinese war. Fill: Cracks Down Federal Bureau of Investigation agents went to New York and arrested ar-rested two men, Dr. Manfred Z.ipp and Gueiitlicr Tonn. his assistant, under the law which requires agents of foreign governments to register. The result was that, after a preliminary pre-liminary hearing. 7.app and Guen-ther Guen-ther were released on $.'t.00l) bail j each for the court trial. The inves- I ligation had revealed that they were j represent.-) t ives of the Na.i news agency, Transm-can News Service, j |