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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Churchill-Roosevelt Meetings Presage New Action on Second European Front; Mediterranean Naval Battles Indicate Rising Anglo-American Air Strength (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the uews analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) Released by Western Newspaper Union. t ( , ' J ' - L . . Z .'...-...:....t,....I.J Gone are the days when this unholy trio of American Nazi chiefs paraded around in their Bund uniforms. George Froboese (left) of Milwaukee, Midwest bund head, killed himself under a train en route to a grand jury hearing in New York. Fritz Kuhn (center), former national Bund chief, Is ill in Sing Sing prison, and Dr. Otto Willumeit, Chicago leader, is under indictment as a spy. CHURCHILL: Third Meeting For the third time within a year Prime Minister Churchill and President Presi-dent Roosevelt met face to face to discuss war problems, when the British statesman arrived unheralded unherald-ed in Washington for a series of conferences. Their first meeting occurred oc-curred last August aboard ship and resulted in the Atlantic charter. The second was Mr. Churchill's visit to Washington last December after America's entry into the war. It resulted in the declaration by the United Nations. This third meeting, following closely on Russian Foreign Minister Minis-ter Molotov's historic conferences in Washington recently, promised momentous mo-mentous consequences in the prosecution prose-cution of the war. Two matters of pressing need the opening of a second sec-ond European front and further steps to curb dangerously rising Allied Al-lied ship losses by Axis submarines faced the two leaders. Another leader of the United Nations Na-tions to reach American shores was Queen Wilhelmina of Holland. REDS VS. NAZIS History Repeats? - Balaclava, famed site of Tennyson's Tenny-son's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," took its place in modern battle headlines as Hitler had rammed his massed power against the defenses of Sevastapol's fortifications. The Crimean fishing port Balaclava Bala-clava where the legended charge by the British occurred in 1854, was a fierce point of contention between the Russ and Nazi forces in the battle for control of the western Black sea coast. Possession of the Sevastapol naval base was vital to the hard-pressed Russians, for it represented a powerful pow-erful barrier to the approaches of the Caucasus oil fields a prize which would give the Nazis coveted oil and bulwark their war effort. To the north in the Ukraine, where the Nazis were attempting to straighten out their long circular line at Kharkov, battles raged doggedly, dog-gedly, with Red army communiques communi-ques reporting successful counterattacks. counterat-tacks. FATS AND OILS: Houseicives Contribute Frying pans, pots and roasters in millions of American homes yielded up a harvest of fat as the-national program to salvage grease and oils from the nation's kitchens got under way. Fats collected in this household campaign will be used in making glycerine an important element in explosives manufacture. Meat markets mar-kets everywhere will be collection agencies where housewives will deposit de-posit the salvaged fat. Butchers will then turn the fat over to the Tenderers. Ten-derers. In Chicago where a fat salvage program has been in progress for months past, it was reported that collections averaged 50,000 pounds weekly. AUSTRALIA: Japs Still Menace Lest his countrymen be lulled into a belief that the battle of the Coral sea had removed all danger of a Jap invasion. Prime Minister John Curtin of Australia held aloft a warning finger. Declaring that "Australia can be lost," he declared if the commonwealth fell to Nippon, that Hawaii and the entire North American coast would lie open to Japanese attack and west coast cities would be in danger. MEDITERRANEAN: Axis Gamble Fails As the swiftly moving battle for world naval supremacy shifted to the Mediterranean, Germany and Italy had made a supreme gamble by throwing every available airplane, air-plane, submarine, torpedo boat and virtually the entire Italian fleet into an effort to knock out the British forces. The stakes were the strategic strate-gic convoy routes supplying Axis-menaced Axis-menaced Tobruk and Malta. That the Axis gamble had failed was due in part to the timely intervention inter-vention of United States army heavy bombers which made their Mediterranean Medi-terranean debut by scoring 35 direct bomb hits on two Italian battleships, setting them afire and sending the whole force of 15 Italian warships scurrying home to port. The epic sea and air fighting centered cen-tered around two heavily laden British Brit-ish convoys one leaving Alexandria for Tobruk and the other leaving Gibraltar for Malta. Both carried badly needed supplies for hard-pressed hard-pressed British garrisons. In two days of -death-struggle fighting, the British and Americans beat off Axis attacks, shepherded the convoys safely to their destinations, destina-tions, sank or damaged seven Italian warships and shot down 33 planes. LIBYAN FRONT: Nazi Fox With the Suez canal as his eventually hoped-for goal, foxy Nazi General Erwin Rommel continued his harrassing thrust against the British forces in Libya. Whether Rommel's dream ol a drive to the Suez and a possible link with Japanese forces pushing west would ever materialize depended depend-ed on how stout was the British resistance. re-sistance. Tobruk, recently reinforced re-inforced by a huge British convoy, was the immediate target The tide of battle had surged back and forth, with the Nazi desert force registering reg-istering a superiority in tanks and anti-tank strength. Hope for the British lay in receiving further supplies sup-plies and replacements and in a wearing down of Nazi power due to its sustained exertions. The seriousness of the Libyan situation situ-ation was evident from the fact that the Axis offensive succeeded in splitting split-ting the British army one force withdrawing to Tobruk to make a stand while the other withdrew to positions near Egypt ARMY PAY: $50 for Bucks Uncle Sam prepared to add at least $20 more per month to the pay check of every enlisted man in the nation's armed forces, when President Presi-dent Roosevelt signed legislation granting the first general military pay increase in 20 years. Noncommissioned Non-commissioned officers, "shave-tails" and ensigns shared in the raise. American soldiers and sailors thus became the highest paid fighting men in the world. The lowest grades buck privates and apprentice appren-tice seamen will receive $50 a month, as against $30 formerly. Officers above the rank of second lieutenant or ensign got no pay raises, but were allowed boosts in their subsistence and rental allowances. allow-ances. One result was hoped for by sponsors spon-sors of the new legislation that was to eliminate recruiting competition com-petition between the army and navy. It had been charged that the navy had been in better position to obtain recruits since it could offer more attractive ratings. The uniform pay schedule would, it was believed, equalize the appeal of all services. AIRCRAFT CARRIERS: Lessons Learned Lessons learned in the battles of the Coral sea, Midway island and the struggle for the Aleutian islands were applied by the house naval affairs af-fairs committee when it approved an $8,500,000,000 expansion bill projecting project-ing a "five-ocean navy." For a definite def-inite swing to sea airpower was discernible in the bill's provisions calling for immediate construction of 500.000 tons of aircraft carriers, while postponing the construction of five 60,000-ton super-battleships. This trend was the immediate result re-sult of the smashing blows dealt Japanese seapower in recent weeks by American airplane carriers and their accompanying forces. It was tacit recognition that a revolution in naval tactics has occurred as a result of the battles in the Pacific. In place of the postponed battle; ships, the navy will rush construction construc-tion of more than a score of aircraft carriers with escort vessels and submarines. Scheduled to be completed com-pleted within a year, they will be distributed among naval forces in all areas in which Axis fleets are operating. CHINA: Japs Push On As Jap armies drove deeper into China and two pincer columns were converging on the strategic 450-mile Chekiang-Kiangsi railroad, the China high command appealed again for an Allied blow that would divert the steadily mounting power of the enemy's en-emy's invasion. Discouraging news was made public pub-lic in the announcement that Shang-jao, Shang-jao, an important station on the line and capital of Kiangsi province, had fallen. With all highway sources cut off by the Japanese, China had to depend de-pend on giant American cargo planes to deliver supplies for her embattled armies. This trickle would have to be augmented to a full-scale flow of supplies if effective resistance was to continue by Chiang Kai-shek's armies. PEACE TECHNIQUE 'Cooling Off' A clue to post-war peace table technique was disclosed by Sumner Welles, undersecretary of state, when he advocated a "cooling off" period after the war before final terms are made. ' In effect, the American statesman urged that both the victor and vanquished van-quished plan together and prepare SUMNER WELLES "Cool Off." an equitable settlement that would preclude future wars. Speaking before a United Nations rally, Welles declared co-operation is no less essential in mamtaining peace than in winning a war. "The final terms of peace," he said, "should wait until the immediate imme-diate tasks of the transition period after the defeat of the Axis powers have been completed and final judgments can be coolly and rationally ration-ally rendered." VICHY FRANCE: ' 'Discontent Grows' Somber were the words 86-year-old Marshal Petain spoke to the French people on the second anniversary anni-versary of his nation's military collapse. col-lapse. . Admitting that his recovery program pro-gram had suffered many setbacks, the aged chief of state declared that "discontent is growing" and warned that the government must undertake under-take sterner measures of punishment punish-ment to stamp out unrest, public anger and greed. Petain made no reference to Pierre Laval in his brief radio speech, although .he had declared recently that he and Laval are going go-ing along "hand in hand and in complete understanding." Not only the opposition of the people, but a "slack and sometimes incapable administration" by the government was blamed by the T'flarshal for present conditions. |