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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Act to Defer Stock and Dairy Farmers; Southwestern Pacific Control at Stake In U. S.-Jap Struggle for Guadalcanal; Wage Ceiling Sets $25,000 Limit on Pay (EDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those ol Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) 1 Released by Western Newspaper Union. ' A 1 V - -' X . i RUSSIA: Winter Stalemate In battered Stalingrad women, children chil-dren and old men worked ceaselessly amid the crash of shells and bombs to turn out more weapons and ammunition am-munition and repair equipment damaged dam-aged at the front. In Stalingrad, too, tough Red soldiers held off repeated re-peated Nazi frontal attacks. Northwest of the city Marshal Timoshenko's relief army hammered ham-mered at the German flanks. The weather was beginning to break in favor of the Russians. Moscow communiques com-muniques reported snows on the Stalingrad front and German reports re-ports admitted "unfavorable weather" weath-er" was impeding their operations. Southward in the Caucasus the Germans kept up a three-months' effort to pierce the Russ defenses guarding the Grozny oil fields. Failing Fail-ing in their attempt to reach the coveted oil by a drive through the Terek valley, the Nazis had turned toward Nalchik. ATLANTIC CHARTER: F.D.R. Clarifies Renewed assurances that the Atlantic At-lantic Charter applies "to all humanity" hu-manity" were given by President Roosevelt. The President's statement followed fol-lowed Wendell L. Willkie's assertion asser-tion that millions of people in Asia and eastern Europe were bewildered and anxious about America's war aims and were asking: "What about a Pacific charter? What about a world charter?" Mr. Roosevelt pointed out that the Atlantic Charter declares among other things that the signatory governments, gov-ernments, including Russia and China and all the other United Nations Na-tions "respect the right of all people peo-ple to choose the form of government govern-ment under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived de-prived of them." MacARTHUR: No Presidential Bee Categorically answering reports that he would be a candidate for president, Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced from his Australian headquarters that he had "no political polit-ical ambitions whatsoever" and added that "the only hope and ambition am-bition I have in the world is for victory vic-tory for our cause in the war." "Any suggestion to the contrary must be regarded merely as amiable ami-able gestures of goodwill dictated A cigarette was the first thing this wounded Australian soldier asked for and got, when the medical corps got him safely behind the New Guinea fighting lines. Fighting in the Port Moresby area, the Australian army succeeded in pushing the Japs back in the jungles beyond the Owen Stanley mountain range. GUADALCANAL: Nip and Tuck It had become increasingly evident evi-dent that the Japs had massed a more powerful naval force in the Solomons than the United States could assemble from a navy divided between two oceans. Moreover, the enemy had concentrated superior land and air forces in its supreme effort to knock out the United States defenders. Outnumbered on three sides by Jap forces with heavy artillery, tanks and supplies, American marines ma-rines and army units on Guadalcanal Guadalca-nal Island fought doggedly to hold a small strip of land six miles long and three miles deep and to retain re-tain control of Henderson air field. Whether the embattled Yanks faced another "Bataan" was dependent de-pendent on how soon planes, heavy weapons and supplies could be brought to Guadalcanal. That the Japs were paying dearly for every effort to dislodge the Americans from the airfield was evident from a navy communique which declared that "enemy losses in men and equipment in troop actions on the island have been very heavy as compared com-pared to our own." Jap onslaughts were repeatedly thrown back. One attack pierced American lines south of the airfield, but prompt counterattacks recaptured recap-tured the lost positions. The critical nature of the situation was revealed by mass landing of Jap troops indicating control of the sea in the Guadalcanal area. With the sinking of the aircraft carrier Wasp reported in a communique, commu-nique, navy losses in the Solomons fighting were brought to 14 ships, including three heavy cruisers, six destroyers and four transport vessels. FARM LABOR: Deferment at Last Steadily worse had become the farm labor shortage. Drastic action was necessary to prevent a breakdown break-down in the all-out war program. Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower commission, supplied sup-plied that action when he ordered into immediate operation a far-reaching far-reaching plan calling for occupational occupa-tional deferment of 3,000,000 "necessary" "neces-sary" dairy, livestock and poultry farmers. Under the program, draft boards are to reclassify from 3A to 3B all such workers already deferred on grounds of dependency. Local boards were likewise requested to grant occupational deferment to other oth-er farm hands who are "necessary men" and for whom replacements are not available. A further step toward keeping essential es-sential workers on the farm was the army and navy's agreement to refrain re-frain from recruiting key farm employees. em-ployees. Employers, including war plants, were instructed to cease hiring skilled farm workers. The department depart-ment of agriculture moved to stabilize sta-bilize wages on dairy, livestock and poultry farms, while the U. S. employment em-ployment service undertook to recruit re-cruit farm workers from less critical crit-ical occupations and shift them back to agricultural jobs. SALARY CEILING: $25,000 Limit From fabulous-salaried Hollywood stars to low paid shop girls, every American wage earner would feel the impact of Economic Stabilization Stabiliza-tion Director Byrnes' order putting a ceiling of $25,000 on individual salaries and freezing all other wages at September 15 levels. NORTH AFRICA: Mediterranean at Stahb American-made and American-manned American-manned planes and tanks continued to play a prominent part in" the British armored offensive against Marshal Rommel's Africa corps along the El Alamein front an offensive of-fensive which might decide the control con-trol of the Mediterranean. Britain's cosmopolitan eighth army, comprising English, Polish, South African, Australian, New Zealand, Zea-land, Fighting French, Greek and American detachments, smashed at Axis troop and supply concentrations. concentra-tions. In the forward areas, crack infantrymen picked their way gingerly gin-gerly through tricky land mines and fortifications. Fighting on both sides had a cautious, cau-tious, feeling-out character in the early stages as Allied and Axis forces tested their strength for decisive de-cisive blows. Allied troops showed their mettle in beating back counterattacks by Rommel's tank corps. Meanwhile American and British airmen continued con-tinued their assaults on key Axis supply sup-ply ports, bombing Tobruk repeatedly, repeated-ly, destroying enemy planes and shipping. Elsewhere in Africa, evidence had been mounting for weeks that action ac-tion was imminent. The Vichy government gov-ernment had concentrated most of its available ships and men at Dakar, while American troops were reported in Freetown and Monrovia, Liberia, south of Dakar. Purpose of the new regulation was to combat inflation and increase federal fed-eral tax revenue on corporations. Control of all wages and salaries up to $5,000 yearly was given to the War Labor board. Under the regulations salary increases could be granted only in cases of individual individu-al promotions, individual merit raises, length of service raises, or under the operation of employee trainee systems. Jurisdiction1, over all salaries above $5,000 was - assumed by the treasury department. After the order or-der was issued, President Roosevelt instructed Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau to make future payments pay-ments of his $75,000 a year salary conform to the regulations. The wage ceiling covers salaries only and does not affect income from stocks, bonds or other sources. WILLKIE: Reservoir Leaking American radio listeners who may have expected a rousing, table-thumping table-thumping tirade from Wendell L. Willkie when he reported on his recent re-cent globe-circling air tour, got instead in-stead a quiet, solemn discourse. But there was no mistaking the urgency ur-gency of action he advocated. Appealing for second fronts in Europe and Burma, Willkie urged that we give our Allies more than "boasts and broken promises" before be-fore the great reservoir of good will toward this country throughout the world turns into a gulf of resentment. ' GEN. DOUGLAS MacARTHUR ". . . no political ambitions" by friendship," he said. "I started as a soldier and shall finish as one." The Southwest Pacific commander's command-er's assertions were contained in a statement in which he praised Australia's Aus-tralia's war effort. "No nation in the world is making a more supreme war effort than Australia," he said. NAZI SPY: Tells Sabotage Plot Unfolded in detail for the first time was the dramatic story of how eight Nazi saboteurs planned a campaign cam-paign of destruction against key American industries to cripple the nation's war effort. The story was told by one of the saboteurs Ernst Peter Burger who with another of the spies escaped es-caped the electric chair by informing inform-ing on the other six. The occasion was the treason trial in Chicago in which Burger testified against Erna and Max Haupt, parents of Herbert Hans Haupt, young Chicagoan executed ex-ecuted as a member of the Nazi band; his uncle and aunt, Walter and Lucille Froehling, and two friends, Otto and Kate Wergin. All were charged with harboring and aiding young Haupt. Summoned from his Washington jail cell, Burger described in detail the sabotage plans. Included in the Nazis' equipment were boxes of TNT blocks, bombs disguised as coal, incendiary sticks, infernal machines ma-chines and detonators landed on the East coast from two German U-boats which had brought the conspirators con-spirators to America from Germany. Ger-many. NAVY: 14,000 Planes - Funds were provided for the construction con-struction of 14,000 naval planes and 500,000 tons of aircraft carriers when President Roosevelt signed a 15 billion dollar appropriations bill. The bill likewise contained con-tractural con-tractural authority for 500,000 tons of cruisers. It was estimated that the provision for half a million tons of aircraft carriers would provide approximately 25 carriers. |
