Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS by edward C wayne reports of hess flight to england fill news columns and radio lanes convoys plus strikes kes plus priorities equal headaches in defense program EDI EDITORS TORIS norr when opi opinions lorn niona art are tx pressed in chec they arft are S hose of f the news new analyst and nd not y of newspaper new paper I 1 released by western newspaper union i BOMBSHELL human variety the rudolf hess incident was the dropping of a bombshell into the moors of scotland which went up with a louder explosion than any of the tons of TNT that hillers Hit lers aviators had yet sent across the channel imaginations ran riot the house of commons was in a dither more than 20 basic theories were advanced to explain why hess fled germany in an airplane and dropped to earth in a parachute and with the interweaving and variations of these one had several thousand stories to choose from to list the british theories and those of neutrals would be futile because they were not only limited by the imaginations of their creators to list the german explanations also would be futile because they obviously were the outbursts of a government whose nose was temporarily out of joint outside of this all was speculation all was guesswork but the guessers guessels gu essers most of them being paid at so much a word let themselves go and endless columns were printed yet the story was not being overplayed most thinking newspaper men being at a loss for earlier comparisons pari sons in journalistic history which one must recall go far back when history is considered but outside of the type of story that history presented in the middle ages and during the days of caesar and hannibal and anthony and cleopatra and cassius and brutus and helen of troy hess flight was unique most newspaper bommen commentators gators were willing to call it the biggest story in centuries and let it go at that they wagged their heads and said what if cordell cordah hull were to fly to germany or what if it had been the other way over the channel and anthony eden had made the trip this was enough to settle the point as to the magnitude of the news to their own satisfaction anyway basic explanation of the hess in incident on the standpoint of logic 41 an RUDOLF HESS A louder explosion than bombs brought personal considerations and personal safety to the fore it was pointed out a hess had evidently wanted to escape germany for some reason for he was practically under a detainment tain ment sentence by hitler Hit lers s having grounded him b if his reason for escape was sound then to pick out a spot where he would be utterly safe from retribution england was the one and only spot in the world c if personal safety was his motive then an inescapable P parallel aralle was that something must have been bee wrong with the unity of the nazi naz party of which chic h he was no 3 fu fuehrer e ahre this was enough explanation for british serenia serenity y over the incident also for german perturbation it was significant that most german dispatches covered these three points point no I 1 was covered when hitler announced hess was wa s crazy and had been detained for his own safety no 2 that he should select england germans explained by saying that the nature of his insanity was that he believed that he could bring about peace point no 3 was handled by a straight out denial that anything was wrong with the nazi party hess was a good nazi but crazy painted toenails toenail whether crazy or not when they took off his shoe and sock t to 0 attend to his fractured fracture d arilde ankle he wa was s found to have painted toenails hardly the american id idea ea for hard boiled nazi leaders personal decorations everyone who ever had any contact with lie hess Ss told his paragraph dr ar two from the palmist who said ie ae was superstitious to the newspaper commentator who took five minutes coast to coast to tell how he had seen hess go skiing two rears ago priorities and A new difficulty in in the U S handling of defense work loomed when william S knudsen motor official and head of seemed to take as a personal issue the question of ofa taking priorities out of his hands handsh i and giving them to a special 1 bation answerable only to the army and navy chiefs knudsen was quoted as saying that he would quit if the plan went through thus the question of priorities lifted ed its head as a vital defense issue further complicating the picture priorities were becoming g a very real issue in business also many manufacturers finding that this one question might easily keep them from success or failure in carry carrying ing out contracts the right to a priority of delivery of machine tools might alone answer an entire question of manufacture knudsen took the attitude that if the work of production manage A 02 1 14 4 J 0 r WILLIAM WILLIA 31 S KNUDSEN ile he forced an issue ment was his that to remove from his hands a vital tool like the right to decide questions of priorities would be to make his task impossible and to rob him of his prime prerogative it seemed likely that unless this question was ironed out swiftly to the liking of the danish born production expert the government might be looking for a new man STRIKES upgrade up jp grade A again in ain the labor trouble tempo in the united states defense industry was on the upward curve again with a order for browning machine guzis guns held up at the colt factory at hartford conn and other old labor difficulties threatening to break out anew including the coal strike always rearing its head was the threatened general motors strike I 1 which would if it occurred affect t millions of dollars in defense work and about employees and john L lewis said that if the coal contract with southern operators was not forthcoming soon he would call the coal miners out again this brought the strike news back onto the front pages with a bang and representative thomas of new jersey a republican called for a roundup of communists in labor groups and to order them all arrested on treason charges this was the most drastic step suggested thus tar far SHIPS britain bound president roosevelt assured the nation that the administrations objective of tons of merchant shipping for britain would be realized by mid june this assurance carried with it the important promise that the bill permitting the president to take possession of foreign vessels idle in american ports was in the category of sure things the senate and house engaged in a desultory effort to write into the bill amendments chief among which was the tobey amendment forbidding the use of convoys the whole convoy issue as indeed andee d all other news of the war on th this is side of the water took a back se seat at during the news ascendancy of rudolf hess but the issue was there ready to r rip ip itself out into the open at an appropriate moment and to beco become in v the central point of a whole congressional debate on the presidents general foreign policy the tons of ships for britain within a month came as the nazis were claiming tons of british ships sunk by U boats since the start of the war and with the british while admitting losses losse a of at least half that tha t amount generally showing the pinch sh sharply amply further drastic re reductions duct ions in the meat ration and little is as dear to the as his beloved be beef ef and mutton were announced and the general trend of commons debate indicated that britain was feeling the ship pinch tremendously DRAFT i bars lifted of extreme import was the decision of congress to lift all bans to the size of the army or to the ques 1 tion of selective service for any purpose for which it might be used in the national defense also vital was the decision immediately to classify the young men still unclassified in the first call and to set up the second call for an early date probably in july two things were highly likely as a result that the draft would be used to cau call men of a younger age than before and that it would also be used to hunt out missing links among the skilled trades for use in defense industry the first eventuality naturally would follow the report of army chiefs after a few months elpe experience with draftees that the younger men were far more adaptable than the older and could take their training quicker and better the second resulted from the realization that many men in the uniform would be much more productive duct ve to defense in shipyards or munitions plants and that the classification fi lists if turned over to defense production men might result in discovery of these facts before the uniform was donned the lifting of any ban on the size of the army tended to indicate that there was justification for the growing belief that the end of a calendar year would not very likely mean the end of a mans military service under present conditions VICHY A new role more and more it was becoming apparent that newest german propaganda was to convince the world especially the united states of one fact that the war was over and germany was about to undertake the difficult task of reconstruction in effect the story to as one german writer put it poor daddy roosevelt was this all british have been chased from the european continent except at gibraltar thus germanys germanas Germ anys prime objective has been achieved we shall now try to cement these people into one force working for germany with this force we shall confront the united states and defeated britain first move in the war is now over game was to lighten somewhat the armistice terms for france and to ask deeper collaboration this according to dispatches vichy accepted unanimously the german plan called for the return of some prisoners of war the raising of the line between occupied and unoccupied france and a list of demands on the french for operation cooperation co which might never be made public most observers believed that germany in order to get and hold the mediterranean would give almost any concession to beaten france to grab the french fleet but this did not appear on the surface as a condition why a change what did change role in the world up to that moment the world had pictured vichy and unoccupied france as a saddened hungry nation bled white by the nazis and hoping against hope for the day when a british victory would return the country to peace prosperity and freedom now the world had to picture a france which had further surrendered which was sending darlan to repeated close and secret conferences with a high nazi authority and which was war prepared to tell the united states in effect just what the germans were claiming the war is over europe now is is dominated by germany and prance is going to collaborate politically and socially to see what she can gain tor for herself in the reorganization of europe if you go into the wai war on the side of britain you are against not for us |