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Show LABOR: Peace Is Hailed WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne Impending Menace of Allied Invasion Postpones German Spring Offensive; Army Adds New Draft Classification; Hero of Philippines Stages Repeat Role (EDITOR'S N'OTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news anulyst and nut necessarily of this newspaper.) (Released by Western Newspaper Union. J I S s ' ' , ' J WILLIAM H. DAVIS I He points with pride. , i DRAFT: Has New Class Instead of classifying men as either ei-ther physically fit or unfit for military mili-tary service along certain rigid standards, the army had worked out a new class, men who, if certain defects de-fects were corrected, would be marked fit for duty. This was a new designation under un-der the Class I-A grouping. It will be called "Suspended I-A." In it will go men who have been declared unfit for dental reasons because be-cause of nasal obstructions, hernias which can be repaired, or stomach troubles correctible by dieting. The new draft rules also called for men to be sent to hospitals for three-day periods if there was real doubt about their physical ability. There more detailed study could be made, and perhaps some minor repair re-pair work done. Once these men have been corrected cor-rected physically, they will be subject sub-ject to re-examination by the army medical staffs, and if marked O.K. would be taken out of the suspended suspend-ed list and put in full Class I-A. BULKELEY: Hero Repeats Not often is it in the cards for a hero to stage a return engagement on the field of valor, but this has happened for Lieut. John D. Bulke-ley Bulke-ley and his squadron of motor torpedo tor-pedo boats operating in the waters of the Philippines. In January Bulkeley's men had daringly entered Subic bay and had JITTERS: Hit Japs, Nazis Both Japan and Nazi Germany were reported to be suffering bad attacks of the jitters, the former because be-cause of air raid expectations in a country badly equipped to withstand them, the latter because of the impending im-pending menace of an American-British American-British invasion of Europe. Reports had reached Norwegian circles in London that several divisions di-visions of new troops had been rushed to Norway. It was known that vast labor battalions were engaged en-gaged feverishly in building defenses de-fenses along the channel coast. As to the Japs, they were said to be having air raid alarms constantly, constant-ly, even when no enemy planes were in sight. Many of these reportedly had been caused by their own planes in practice or patrol flights. Believing the American ships which raided the Jap mainland had come from Eastern China, Japanese planes had lashed out at various towns there which might have harbored har-bored American bombers. Unquestionably the raids upon Nipponese cities were a serious blow to Japanese morale. Their "sacred soil" was not immune to outside attack. at-tack. The worriment believed to be suffered suf-fered by Hitler over possible invasion in-vasion thrusts was such, London had said, to have caused a practical abandonment of any offensive in Libya or the Mediterranean front. It was possible, they had declared, that the German spring offensive might be forced to be a spring defensive, de-fensive, and that the offensive might be postponed until summer if put on at all. Many believed that if Hitler was to win the war at all, it must be in 1942, and that the practical abandonment aban-donment of a grand-scale offensive on all fronts at once was really a confession of defeat. GOP: Comity, Co-operation Following their Chicago convention, conven-tion, the Republicans had gone back to their homes somewhat surprised to find themselves with a platform of internationalism, to find that they - " had abandoned -isolationism and that this program was written and put over by Willkie, an ex-Democrat. However, they went back resolved to try their utmost to win a few elections elec-tions this year, and some of the leaders were frank in saying they hoped for new life for the party from the change of heart. The national committee chairman Joseph W. Martin Jr. said: "The Republican party may well be proud of its accomplishment. It was a great day for the party when the Willkie resolution was adopted." Some observers had felt during the battle against it that Mr. Martin Mar-tin wasn't so pleased as he expressed ex-pressed himself afterward.1 But in the main the GOP was confident and lively about it all. The big paragraph in the platform plat-form was number three, which read: "We realize that after this war the responsibility of the nation will not be circumscribed within the terri- p?4$i-''' " LIEUT. JOHN D. BULKELEY Return engagement of a hero. The chairman of the War Labor board, a division of the production board, William H. Davis, had issued a report hailing with pleasurethe figures on labor troubles since the first of the year. j He cited the fact that strike stop- pages in war production had been only 0.06 of 1 per cent, practically a negligible amount. Strikes during the first quarter of 1942, he said, had been only one-fifteenth one-fifteenth of those during the same period of 1941. He said that the "no-strike" policy of the board, which had been sold to the major union leaders, had worked out beautifully and that there was no doubt about the success suc-cess of the war production as long as this condition was maintained. At the same time, however, the only rift in the peaceful lute of labor la-bor was the issuing of joint statements state-ments by Presidents Green and Murray Mur-ray of the AFL and CIO, now themselves at peace, attacking the National Association of Manufacturers. Manufactur-ers. Both Green and Murray accused the NAM of making disparaging statements concerning the War Labor La-bor board in a series of newspaper advertisements. This, they felt, was distinctly a blow aimed at the solidarity of labor la-bor in the production setup.. FLEET: Of France Interesting discussions, most of ' them theoretical, over the possible future activity of the French fleet, assuming that Laval was turning it over to German uses either directly or through Vichy, had reached the press, some figuring the fleet, an 1 important addition to Nazi might, others saying it would be of little help if any. British naval authorities, pointing to the experiences of their own handling han-dling of war vessels during wartime said that when a ship was put in fighting trim it could move 200,000 miles or more with only minor refitting. re-fitting. But, they said, when ships have been demilitarized that is, laid up as have the French ships for extended ex-tended periods of time, refitting them for war duty is a big task. This, they said, was especially true of huge battlewagons like the Dunquerque, giving the opinion that it would take months, perhaps a year, before she could be put in true fighting condition. PATENTS: Formal Seizure President Roosevelt had ordered formal seizure of all enemy-owned patents in the United States whether they had been directly or indirectly owned. This was a climatic step following the revelations of a series of poolings pool-ings of foreign patents by American large business concerns. It had been revealed that a Philadelphia Phila-delphia concern, merely identified by the state department as a "German "Ger-man National," had been shipping chemicals from the United States to South American blacklisted firms as late as February, 1941. That this company had paid out a large sum in royalties to Germany last year, and that this year, although al-though no more had been paid, the company was holding its royalties, later to be sent to Germans. That about half of the 1940 royalties royal-ties were on a product indispensable for the use of this country in building build-ing planes to fight the Nazis. This sort of activity was what actuated the President in having ordered or-dered the seizure of such patents. Oddly enough, however, at the same time as the facts about this company were coming out, it was stated that much more information on the product had come from Germany Ger-many to this country than had gone the other way. One official said: "I don't know what we would have done about producing it for American Ameri-can planes without this information." informa-tion." INVASION: Following the return of General Marshall to these shores, there were general hints that an invasion soon of Europe was to be attempted by Allied Al-lied forces. It seemed that in this picture the Polish troops were not going to play such a small part. It had been reported re-ported from Cairo that "tens of thousands thou-sands of Polish troops" had been sent to the Middle East to organize themselves into a resisting army, to combat any German thrust against Syria. sunk a 5,000-ton enemy warship. They returned the following day and did it again. This time Bulkeley's squadron had darted by night in between a flotilla of destroyers and discharged their lethal torpedoes at a Japanese light cruiser, which had been reported badly damaged and probably sunk. - In this later foray he had had the misfortune to lose two of his boats, the PT 34 and the PT 35. The former for-mer was forced ashore on the island of Cebu and the crew presumably made prisoner. The other was destroyed de-stroyed when trapped in the harbor har-bor of Cebu to prevent its falling into enemy hands. Bulkeley, already holder of the Navy Cross, was in line for more honors. At the very time the report re-port came through, from his home in New York came word that he was the father of a baby son, a brother for .the Bulkeleys' 18-month-old daughter Joan. LUEBECK: Bloivn to Atoms Neutral sources had reported in Sweden the effect of the Royal Air force's non-stop blitz in the form of day and night bombings on one important im-portant German port, the city of Luebeck on the Baltic. Swedes returning to Sweden from this port described it as blown to atoms. They said the people of Luebeck had told of "torpedo bombs" landing in the city, and literally lit-erally flattening whole blocks of buildings. Scarcely one stone was left on another, they had reported. One big shipping firm had written to a Swedish Swed-ish correspondent on a plain piece of paper, saying their company's building build-ing and docks had been totally destroyed. de-stroyed. Not even a letterhead remained re-mained intact. Seamen returning to Stockholm reported to newsmen that very little, if any of the port installations were left, and that the destruction in the town itself was "beyond description." MARTIN AND WILLKIE "A great day for the party" torial limits of the United States, that our nation has an obligation to assist in the bringing about of an understanding, comity and co-operation among the nations of the world in order that our own liberty may be preserved and that the blighting and destructive processes of war may not again be forced upon us and upon the free and peace-loving peoples peo-ples of the earth." Outside of this, the party pledged itself chiefly to an attempt to hold down non-war expenditures. |