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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS U-Boat Warfare Takes Turn for Worse; New Wedge Driven Into Rommel Lines As Allies Continue Furious Air Attack; Outline International Currency Plan fFDITOR'S NOTE : When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of Western .Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) I Released by Western Newspaper Union. lifti!lllHlft& jm KASSERINEJT . El Diem teSMafcnosifj SWAMP H Watmata5rify Bordj Zoumit J&M5S iS Vfedinine 1 Map shows Allied progress in the campaign to oust Axis forces from North Africa. Hard on the heels of Marshal Rommel, "The Fox," was the British Eighth army, under Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery. After a week's pause, during which Montgomery brought up troops and supplies, sup-plies, the Eighth army stormed Rommel's, improvised defenses at the YVada el Akarit. The chief passes to the coast, where the Americans fought hot engagements, are in the areas of El Guettar, Maknassy and Fondouk. TUNISIA: Fight to Meet Action in Tunisia continued with Lieut. Gen. George Patton's Second American Army corps fighting for a junction with British forces at Gabes. Thousands of mines blocked the American advance. Sappers kept busy clearing the fields and later American tanks rumbled into action. In their bid to prevent an American Ameri-can and British junction, the Axis tanks thrust at the American armored ar-mored columns. Americans brought up artillery to heavily shell Axis troop and motor concentrations. Slowly but surely Patton's men advanced ad-vanced along the Gafsa road. Awaiting them at Gabes were the British, who brought up their heavy guns to shell Marshal Rommel's entrenched Afrika Korps along a narrow line in the El Akarit gulch, 15 miles north of Gabes. At Akarit, "The Fox" was expected expect-ed to put up another short, stiff fight before falling back toward Sfax. His strategy calls for a series se-ries of delaying actions while the Axis completes coastal defenses in Italy. In northern Tunisia, Nazi troops fell back toward the coastal bastion of Bizerte under the pressure of British troops. Native Arabian Ghouims, armed with knives, have been helping the British with guerrilla guer-rilla activity. Fighting Before Talk Gen. Charles DeGaulle's scheduled meeting with Gen. Henri Giraud in North Africa for the purpose of consolidating con-solidating all anti-Axis French in the war has been postponed by request re-quest of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. General Eisenhower felt that political po-litical discussion in the midst of critical crit-ical fighting in Tunisia could only have a disturbing effect. Prime Minister Min-ister Churchill is supposed to have persuaded DeGaulle to await Anthony An-thony Eden's report of American reaction to the complicated North African problem. U-BOAT WARFARE: Turn for the Worse Indications that the battle of the Atlantic has taken a turn for the worse were made evident when Secretary Sec-retary of the Navy Knox announced that Allied ship losses were considerably consid-erably worse during the past month. Although the secretary gave no estimate es-timate of the total number of U-boats U-boats the Nazis have used in their spring offensive, he said that "just as we expected and as I said it would be, there are more German subs out there." The subs are concentrating in the middle Atlantic, along the shipping routes from the United States to England and the Mediterranean. It is predicted that the submarine campaign cam-paign will become worse before it gets better. Naval experts estimate the Axis will have 700 submarines operating in packs along supply routes this spring. To counter the U-boat offensive the United States is rushing construction con-struction of a fleet of destroyer-escort destroyer-escort vessels, smaller than destroyers. de-stroyers. PROMISE: More Farm Tools Following a review of the legislative legisla-tive situation with Democratic congressional con-gressional leaders, President Roosevelt Roose-velt has indicated that, in view of the improved war outlook, he will give more attention to domestic problems. Speaker Rayburn, following follow-ing the conference, said the "President "Presi-dent is going to give his personal attention to the question of having more iron and steel allotted to the manufacture of farm machinery." RUSSIA: Sparring for Knockout In Russia, the two giants continue to spar for positions. Sloughing through marshy swampland, swamp-land, hardy Russ engaged German infantry in hand "to hand grappling near Novorossisk, gaining ground. Here the Nazis are backed against the Black sea coast. In the Smolensk region, Russian troops consolidated positions encircling encir-cling this vital Nazi supply base. The Germans remain active in the Kharkov district. Two hundred miles to the north, Nazis claimed advances at Orel. Seventy miles to the southeast, German attacks against Red lines on the western bank of the Donets river met stiff resistance, the Russ said. BOLIVIA: 'Essential Move' Even before the Bolivian congress had a chance to formally declare war on the Axis, the nation was told that such a move was essential to American solidarity and that the country's productive facilities must be immediately expanded. When President Enrique Penaran-da Penaran-da and his cabinet held a conference confer-ence with United States Vice President Presi-dent Wallace io discuss a war decree, de-cree, Brazil was the only South American country at war with Germany Ger-many and Italy. Bolivia had broken bro-ken off diplomatic relations with the Axis a year ago. MONEY: Stabilized Currency? Secretary Morgenthau called it "tentative" and John Q. Public thought it looked complicated but everybody realized that it was mighty important "it" being a comprehensive plan to stabilize postwar post-war world currencies and fix their values in terms of gold. Actually involved in the program were these major points for working out a system to maintain the monetary mone-tary solidarity of all the nations of the world at the end of the war: 1. Creation of an international stabilization sta-bilization fund (five billion dollars). This would be set up by the United Nations and associates. 2. Value of currency in each country coun-try would be "fixed" in terms of gold. 3. An agreement between all nations na-tions to the effect that none would devalue their currencies without consulting the others. BURMA: Neiv Air Bloivs Strengthened British and American Ameri-can air forces continued to demonstrate demon-strate their superiority in Burma, raining bombs on Japanese supply lines with emphasis on the important impor-tant railway from Rangoon to Man-dalay. Man-dalay. The RAF dropped 1,000 - pound bombs on the Rangoon railway station. sta-tion. Photographs showed destruction destruc-tion of an oil refinery, fires from which were visible for 60 miles. A power house, oil tanks and a distillation distilla-tion building were hit. American fliers scored hits at Mandalay. NETHERLANDS: Invasion Spadework? Reports that "scores of British agents" have been landed on the Netherlands coast and are preparing the way for an Allied invasion have made their way to Dutch circles in London. The reports added that a wave of optimism, accompanied by new outbreaks of sabotage and anti-Nazi anti-Nazi attacks was sweeping Holland. The British were said to have been landing parties of two and three bound for the interior. BANKIIEAD BILL: And Parity After President Rocseveit had ve toed the Bar.khead farm bill (because (be-cause he believed it "inflationary") supporters of the measure attempted attempt-ed to override this action by a two-thirds two-thirds vote in congress. First scene of action in this connection was the senate floor where a day-long lively debate resulted in farm bloc members mem-bers realizing that they could not muster sufficient support to bring this to pass. These senators then became content con-tent to force the bill back to the agricultural agri-cultural committee from whence it could be resurrected whenever the farm bloc felt it had enough votes handy to defeat the President's action. ac-tion. White House opposition to the measure on the grounds of inflation presented itself because it would prohibit deductions of benefit payments pay-ments from parity. in setting farm price ceilings. FLYING FORTRESSES: New Offensive The American air offensive in Europe Eu-rope has gotten under way. Fleets of powerful Flying Fortresses For-tresses have pounded the Renault motor works near Paris, with heavy hits causing great damage among the main buildings and auxiliary plants. Coming right back, Flying Fortresses For-tresses flew over Antwerp, bombing the Erla airplane works. These works have been repairing engines for the Nazi luftwafle. Buildings were shattered and large fires started. Swinging at Europe's underbelly, 100 Flying Fortresses dumped their bombs on Naples, splattering 24 ships in the harbor. RAF bombers followed fol-lowed up the attack with another heavy raid. Wharves and the industrial in-dustrial area were left flaming. Eight bombers and eight ( fighter planes were lost in the operations. RUBBER: Self Sufficiency Self sufficiency in rubber production produc-tion for the United States was predicted pre-dicted by William M. Jeffers, rubber rub-ber director, who expressed belief that the nation will develop a synthetic syn-thetic rubber industry that will free the country from dependency on outside out-side sources in the future. "There is one very definite forecast fore-cast I want to make we'll never again be caught the way we were at the outbreak of war," Jeffers said. He added that he envisioned a postwar rubber economy independent independ-ent of any sources outside the United Unit-ed States. He said he viewed the huge natural rubber development in South America as "insurance" against possible shortcomings of synthetic rubber plants in this country. coun-try. LOADED DICE: In Axis' Favor? In the opinion of Adm. William James, British chief of naval information, infor-mation, the "dice are loaded heavily" heav-ily" in favor of the Axis in any Allied attempt to land on the continent conti-nent of Europe. But, said Admiral James, ways and means could be found "when the time comes." "We saw at Dieppe, which was a most carefully planned enterprise, how a few well-situated guns on shore can wreck an amphibious operation." op-eration." Predicting that there will be no new startling invention to deal with the U-boat problem, he said the submarine sub-marine menace eventually would be beaten "by the hard unremitting work of all those engaged in protecting pro-tecting our trade." NATIONAL APATHY: General Speaks Army day this year was passed over with little official celebration for the nation's fighting men were too hard at work to stop for festivities. festivi-ties. However, one commanding general Ben Lear of the Second army took the occasion to score national na-tional apathy and lack of aggressiveness aggressive-ness in many phases of American life. He called for the end of internal in-ternal bickering and urged that Americans apply themselves to crushing the enemy. Speaking of the popular dislike of "absenteeism" General Lear declared that this situation situ-ation is not confined to industry. By this he meant that unless every citizen citi-zen did his or her part, whatever the job, they were defeating the war effort and were therefore absentees. ab-sentees. BRIEFS CUBAN DRAFT: Eight thousand Cubans between the ages of 20 and 25 will shortly be drafted for army service. TRADE COMPROMISE: Bi-partisan support was seen for a compromise compro-mise reciprocal trade treaty act which would allow American producers pro-ducers the right to seek modification of any agreement with a foreign country. AIR LINER: Henry J. Kaiser, the shipbuilding wizard, proposes to build a metal plane that will fly 17,000 miles without stopping. DAD'S DRAFT: Drafting of dads might be delayed if public opinion forces unmarried youths between 18 and 25 years out of deferred war jobs, Selective Service Director Her-shey Her-shey says. FIRE OIL: Allied bombers hit the Japanese oil refinery below Rangoon in continuing attacks upon enemy installations in Burma. The Mytinge bridge area of the Burma Road also was raided. |