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Show . . to-S; ........ . 1 Rescue of crew of Hudson bay steamer Bnve-klnin f -Mrs. 'Gloria Vnnderbtlt. twenty-year-old widow of Reginald vL whuf ? CDg,aVa b3y 8fter thelr stllp sank- 2 ,7,000.000. 3-WreeUase of the Dixie Flier uf ter wTsectlon, n? h t ' 'f"8 the bulk of hls formne of on being killed and fifty injured. UJnS the crashed near Whorley, Tenn., one per- NEWS REVIEW OF CURRENT EVENTS Aircraft Board Hears Col. Mitchell on Weakness of America's Air Defense. By EDWARD W. PICKARD WITH S00 pounds of "ammunition" In the shape of documents and undaunted by his approaching court-martial court-martial for insubordinate utterances, Col. William Mitchell appeared before the aircraft board last week and repeated re-peated and elaborated on his charges that obstinacy and inefficiency of high army and navy officials have rendered the United States utterly deficient in air defense. He read a prepared statement In nine sections, the main points of which are thus summarized : Development of air power has made It the chief weapon of national defense, de-fense, navies and armies becoming subordinate and auxiliary to it. As airships can destroy any surface ships, the submarine becomes the backbone of the navy. The army, unchanged in constituent elements, will function as the last line of defense when the air i and sea forces have failed to stop the enemy, or offensively only when control con-trol of the air permits transport of troops at sea. Anti-aircraft guns are Ineffective and always will be, crippling crip-pling only a very small percentage of planes. The United States has no air forces worth mentioning and If involved in-volved in war today would need from three to five years to develop an adequate ade-quate air force properly equipped. Great Britain could invade America with a thousand planes in eight or ten days and a few days later would reach the heart of the country ; and Japan could invade America by way of Alaska. In future wars the nation losing control con-trol of the air will capitulate to desolation deso-lation by unrestricted air attack. An adequate air and submarine force would make this country invulnerable to attack, and the cost would be but a fraction of that of the army and navy at present. Finally, the United States should have a department of national defense, comprising the navy, army, and air force, and a department of aeronautics, comprising military and civil aviation and aircraft manufacture. manufac-ture. The mission of the land, sea and air forces, said Mitchell, should be definitely def-initely stated by law. That is: "The army to be charged with the defense of all land areas; "The navy to be charged with the defense of all sea areas, on or under the water beyond the control of missile mis-sile throwing weapons from the shore of effective aircraft operations from shore bases ; "The air force to be charged with the complete defense of operations and the aerial attack of all enemy targets on sea and land." To the self-asked question why the air service is in such sad plight, Colonel Col-onel Mitchell replied: 'Because air matters are entrusted to the army and the navy which are handled and governed and dominated hy non-flying officers. They not only now next to nothing about aviation, ut regard it merely as an auxiliary of their present activities and not as a "win force In the nation's military equipment. Their testimony regarding 'Ir matters is almost worthless, some-toes some-toes more serious than this." Next day Colonel Mitchell continued his attack and criticized the navy for the Shenandoah disaster and the fail-Ur fail-Ur of the Hawaii flight. Then he was questioned at length by various members mem-bers of the board and finally Chairman Chair-man Morrow asked Admiral Fletcher ' tle navy and (leneral Harbord of the army if they desired to put any luestions to the witness. To the surprise sur-prise of everyone, both declined to do any cross examining. Mitchell himself was evidently disappointed. THE naval court of Inquiry at Lakehurst, Capt. Anton Heinen, rmer German Zeppplin pilot who intruded in-truded the crew of the Shenandoah, Pressed the opinion that the wreck- of that airship was primarily used by the failure of the officers ciarge to heed danger signals that were "shrieking out loud." Specifically Specifical-ly he blamed Commander Lansdowne, saying: "In my opinion the ship ran deliberately into the center of the storm for at least half an hour after danger signals had been shrieking out loud. With the ship having sufficient power for steerage way, she easily could have got out of danger. I stand ready to prove this from the evidence presented to this court." Captain Heinen criticized certain structural changes In the Shenandoah, and said he had heard from many members of the crew that they mistrusted mis-trusted the airship because of her condition. con-dition. Lieut. J. B. Anderson, aerologlst on the Shenandoah, testified that Commander Com-mander Lansdowne disregarded his advice to change the course. ANOTHER misfortune befell the navy in the ramming and sinking of the submarine S-51 about twenty miles from Block island. Struck by the steamship City of Rome, she sank immediately and of her crew of 36 men only three were saved. Every effort to save the men Imprisoned In' the vessel's hull was made, but in vain, largely because of stormy weather and swift tides. After several sev-eral 'days divers brought up the bodies of two of the victims, and operations to recover the others and to raise the submarine were continued. Blame for the distressing accident has not yet been fixed. GERMANY accepted the invitation of the allies to a conference on a security pact, and this week the foreign for-eign ministers are assembled in Locarno, Locar-no, Switzerland, discussing the terms of the proposed treaty designed to give lasting peace at least to western Europe. The Germans sought to stipulate stip-ulate that their country should be purged of guilt for the war, but this was firmly refused by England and France. Probably the request and its rejection were designed to satisfy the nationalists in both Germany and France. DISTINGUISHED statesmen from thirty-six countries are In Washington Wash-ington attending the sessions of the Interparliamentary union. The conference confer-ence was opened Thursday with addresses ad-dresses by Secretary of State Kellogg and Senator McKinley of Illinois and a response by Baron Adelswaerd of Sweden, president of the council of the union. Silly friends of various factions fac-tions in foreign lands took advantage of the arrival of certain of the delegates dele-gates to exhibit their silliness. For Instance, In-stance, Gen. Richard Mulcahy of the Irish Free State was mobbed, both at his landing in New York and on his visit to Philadelphia, by Irish republic re-public sympathizers; and the Italian delegates who are Fascists were attacked at-tacked by anti-Fascist Italians In New York. NO SETTLEMENT of the French debt was reached because M. Calllaux was unable to offer terms that the American commission would accept and the negotiations have been suspended indefinitely, the French mission mis-sion returning to Paris. However, a temporary arrangement was proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon and this was carried back by M. Calllaux Call-laux for submission to the French parliament, par-liament, which probably will agree to it eladly. This plan Is that France shah pay the United States $40,000,000 a vear for five years and that at the expiration of that period the discussion discus-sion of the definite funding of the debt slnll be resumed. The sum suggested amounts to 1 per cent interest on the total French debt with accrued Interest Inter-est In reality the payments by France would be Increased only S- ,-000,000. ,-000,000. as she has been paying a like sun, annually as interest on he , A i. F. war stocks she purchased in 1019. M Cuillaux could not commit h!m-sef h!m-sef on i he American offer, because as he explained, he was vested with fuU oe s to reach a conclusive settle-Znt settle-Znt but held no mandate to sign a terapomrv makeshift agreement But ne .Ur.red Mr. Mellon he would sup- should pay ' SOO.000.000 anno- OS years. To this was attached a "security "se-curity clause" providing that France might at any time reopen the question and attempt to show that the terms should be revised owing to her Incapacity Inca-pacity to carry thera out. This was objectionable to the Americans, especially espe-cially to Senator Smoot, and rejection of the offer followed. Senator Borah took a hand in the affair by going to the White House and warning the President not to permit the American commission to grant to France easier terms than were granted to Great Britain. Both he and Senator Smoot told Mr. Coolidge there would be violent vio-lent opposition In the senate to any such settlement as Calllaux proposed. Mr. Borah was highly displeased, also, by the makeshift plan of Mr. Mellon. MTCHITCHERIN, soviet foreign minister, balked In his attempt to persuade Germany to stand with Russia against western Europe, Is now said by Baltic diplomats to be trying to unite Russia, Poland and Turkey In an anti-English bloc. He was In Warsaw recently and induced the Poles to Instruct their delegation In Moscow to begin negotiations for a political agreement. This is worrying the Baltic states considerably. Tchitche-rin Tchitche-rin then went to Berlin to discuss a Russo-German trade treaty. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE JARDINE Is getting tired of waiting wait-ing for the Chicago board of trade to take steps to prevent manipulation that causes wild price fluctuations. Last week he issued another warning, saying say-ing : "A failure on the part of the board to take these steps immediately will leave me no alternative but to inaugurate in-augurate action looking to suspension or revocation of the designation of the Chicago board of trade as a contract market."' COMMUNISTS of ' Great Britain fared badly In the national congress con-gress of the Labor party In Liverpool, and the more conservative elements carried out their expressed determination determina-tion to rid the party of the Reds entirely. en-tirely. Chairman Cramp In his opening open-ing speech declared the Communists were a hindrance to the labor movement move-ment and traitors to its tradition. The Reds met their first defeat when the congress by a tremendous majority refused re-fused to reverse a vote of last year by which members of the Communist party were excluded from membership member-ship In the constituent Labor party. Former Prime Minister Ramsay Mac-Donald, Mac-Donald, J. H. Thomas, leader of the railway men, and the chiefs of the miners all took severe whacks at the Reds, and the latter brought on their final and conclusive defeat when they demanded that MacDonald apologize to Russia for the action of his foreign office In making public the notorious Zinovieff letter just before the last election. YOUNG Robert M. LaFoliette, Jr., had a walkover in the Wisconsin election to fill the vacancy In the United States senate caused by the death of his father. His majority over the field was about 2 to 1. E. F. Dith-mar Dith-mar of Milwaukee, who was the only "regular" Republican candidate after Roy P. Wilcox had been forced out by the national organization, ran second but never threatened the winner. The votes for the others were negligible. GOV. AL SMITH'S campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination nom-ination in 1928 was actually launched at a big picnic of the Cook county, Illinois, Democracy in Chicago. The popular New Yorker in his speech especially es-pecially attacked the economy record of the Coolidge administration and promised to do much better In that line If he were sent to the White House. He made a great hit with the 100,000 persons who heard him. OVER the protest of Chairman O'Connor, the federal shipping hoard rescinded the resolutions designed de-signed to divorce the Fleet corporation from the board and readopted a resolution reso-lution of 1921 under which the hoard keeps full control over the actions of the corporation. President Palmer of the corporation is likely to resign, for it is understood he accepted the office on condition that he have certain authority. au-thority. Chicago business men are asking that the shipping board be abolished. |