OCR Text |
Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS , Allies Jolt Nazi Grip in France; Reds Carry War to German Soil; Summer Drouth. Hits Ohio Valley ) Released by Western Newspaper Union. (EDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) SOLDIER READING: Ease Restrictions Irked by the army's interpretation of the political propaganda ban in the soldier's voting law, which resulted re-sulted in exclusion of much popular reading matter in military camps, the senate moved to ease the tight administration of this provision of the act. Originally, the law stipulated that no newspapers, magazines, motion pictures or literature paid for or sponsored by the government, and containing political propaganda, could be distributed to the armed forces. Much of the trouble lay in the army's rigid interpretation of the word "sponsored," which it took to mean permitting the sale of popular popu-lar reading matter containing political polit-ical material at service posts, or use of company funds to subscribe to newspapers. WHEAT: Perennial Brand Agricultural pioneers even back to the days of the Czars, when they developed de-veloped artificial insemination at royal stables, the Russians claim to have developed an edible perennial wheat with a gluten content of 60 per cent. According to the Soviet's ace agronomist, Prof. N. V. Tsitsin, the perennial evolved from cross pollination polli-nation of wild grasses of the agropy-rum agropy-rum family with wheat, produced satisfactory initial harvests, with real tests to come next season. Although plant breeders in the U. S. have long worked on development develop-ment of a perennial wheat, they have met little practical success thus far, with one hybrid composed of wild grasses and the grain lacking lack-ing regular qualities. !?. t"5l CHERBOURG VW5v loROCHEUE FRANCEVVAsTRASbW. I W -f LIMOGES T IX ffcSJn ""L ONNi rJ (grnOBLE "" SPAIN Amarseiue N1C j2?S WLpNUs6 N With landings in southern France and sweeping advances in the north, the Allies are forming a huge pincers to squeeze German forces in that country, as arrows in picture show. llo Fun FRANCE: Form Pincer With Allied forces everywhere on the move, the Nazi hold on France loosened, and German troops fell back to escape the death trapsHhat lightning U. S. armored thrusts were forging. In the north, U. S. columns that drove on Paris threw out a long arm around the left flank of the German Ger-man army that wriggled out of the Falaise-Argentan pocket in Normandy, Norman-dy, threatening the retreating enemy ene-my with still another entrapment. While these U. S. columns under leadership of Lieut. Gen. George S. Patton pressed the Germans around Paris, British and Canadian forces hammered at the enemy in the region re-gion extending to the English channel chan-nel to the north, pushing him back on a continuous front. Swift Allied advances in the north wore mntci1 h-17 onnallv cnfrpcc. i : ...j ful gains in the new invasion area ' nf cniithem Frarjc, where liberation troops spearheaded by Maj.-Gen. Alex-I Alex-I ander M. Patch's I American Seventh I army thrust far in-, in-, land before encountering encoun-tering stiffening CIVILIAN GOODS: Reconversion Step Although the War Production board has allowed the use of surplus sur-plus labor and factory facilities in the manufacture of civilian goods, no appreciable increase in the output out-put of such material can be looked forward to until Germany is defeated, de-feated, when it should jump 39 per cent to prewar levels, WPB Czar Donald Nelson declared. WPB'S order permitting limited manufacture of civilian goods constituted con-stituted the fourth and final step in its program for gradual reconversion, reconver-sion, previous provisions allowing use of aluminum and magnesium; construction of postwar working models of products, and immediate ordering of machine tools. Under the WPB's latest ruling, manufacturers able to employ surplus sur-plus labor will receive priority assistance as-sistance for producing such items as electric ranges, heating stoves, pails and buckets, electric flat irons, farm machinery except tractors, and water wa-ter storage tanks "for agricultural use. PACIFIC: Step Up Bombing With U. S. bombers operating west of New Guinea and pounding the enemy's shipping plying beyond the Philippines and Celebes islands, the position of 150,000 Japanese troops trapped within American lines in the South Pacific continued to deteriorate. As U. S. bombers continued to range to the west of New Guinea, other U. S. aircraft hammered at Japanese bastions in the Bonin islands, guarding the southern approaches ap-proaches to the Nipponese homeland, home-land, 600 miles away. While U. S. bombers continued their softening up campaign of the enemy's strategic island defense system, American ground forces dug into newly won positions in the Marianas, Adm. Chester Nimitz declared de-clared that it might not be necessary neces-sary to invade Japan to win a lasting last-ing peace. DROUTH: Crops Periled With only half a month of the June-August summer season remaining, re-maining, the Ohio valley anxiously hoped that showers east of the Mississippi Mis-sissippi would develop into substantial substan-tial rainfalls and break a two and a half month drouth, during which Tennessee had only about 45 per cent normal precipitation, Illinois 50 per cent, Indiana 52 per cent, Kentucky Ken-tucky 44 per cent and Ohio 61 per. cent. Besides inflicting damage ranging from 10 to 70 per cent on corn crops in some areas, and threatening threaten-ing soybeans and gardens, the heat and drouth seared pasturage, compelling com-pelling farmers to dip into dwindling feed supplies, and inducing many to hold back on purchases of stock-ers stock-ers for future fattening. Although the Ohio valley remained re-mained hardest hit by the drouth continued dry weather threatened crops and pasturage in a wide region, re-gion, including the North Atlantic coast area, the Northwest and Texas and Oklahoma. enemy opposition m Maj.-Gen. the mountainous A. M. Patch country. As the regular army formations drove inland, they joined hands with scores of paratroopers, para-troopers, who had been dropped far back of the beachhead areas to sever enemy communication lines and hamper his forward movements to the fighting zones. As was the case in Normandy, many Czechs, Poles and Russians were included in the German units which manned the coastal defenses, and as the fighting raged further inland from Toulon to Nice, the Allies Al-lies bucked up against a better caliber cali-ber of enemy troops. Encouraged by the Allied successes suc-cesses the French underground intensified in-tensified their sabotage of Nazi communications com-munications and installations. EASTERN FRONT: Enter Prussia In the face of heavy Nazi resistance resist-ance and repeated counter-attacks supported by rocket fire, Russian troops under 36-year-old Gen. Ivan Cherniakhovsky crossed the East Prussian border to carry a war to German soil for the first time in 30 years. As the1 Germans savagely countered coun-tered the Russian invasion of East Prussia with continuing counterattacks, counter-attacks, the Nazis were reportedly throwing fresh reserves into the battle bat-tle from Himmler's home guard. : On other sectors of the 1,000-mile front, German resistance was equally equal-ly bitter, with the Nazis yielding ground grudgingly in the Baltic states and employing tank and infantry in-fantry forces to slow the Red drive on Warsaw. To the south, the enemy also brought his mechanized units into counterattack to impede the Russian advance on the central German border, bor-der, 75 miles away from the front. i No different than a million other young men but not as ---lucfey- Gesfgs Darfiirss.-Z, zt Pittsburgh, Pa., crawled halfway half-way through the opening of an eight inch areaway between the walls of his home before he got stuck. Firemen were compelled com-pelled to chop part of the living liv-ing room wall to free him. If the picture's any indication, it was no fun, fellas! COTTON: Seek Parity In an effort to raise cotton prices to parity, which is from $6 to $8 per bale above 1944 loan rates, Sen. John H. Bankhead (Ala.) urged growers to keep the commodity off the market. Senator Bankhead's action came in the midst of his conferences with government officials and cotton manufacturers over elevation of the price level in conformance with his congressional act calling for attainment at-tainment of parity of agricultural crops. During the conferences, Senator Bankhead said, it was agreed that early OPA revision of textile prices to reflect parity would help boost the market. As a last resort, he said, 97 to 100 per cent parity loans were considered. DEMOBILIZATION: Study Discharges The ' all-important but complicated compli-cated problem of how to release servicemen and women from the armed forces after the war is receiving re-ceiving the consideration of both President Roosevelt and the high command, it was reported. Under a reported proposal, personnel per-sonnel would be discharged under a point system, with so many points granted for service abroad, length of service and number of campaigns, cam-paigns, and marital status and dependency. de-pendency. Personnel with the largest number of points would be the first released. At the same time, the President was said to be considering use of some camps and training facilities in this country for vocational study and rehabilitation of vets, and modernization mod-ernization of others for future defense de-fense forces. EGGS The War Food administration holds a huge stock of eggs, purchased at a cost of between 100 and 150 million dollars to maintain prices at 90 per cent of parity. Col. Ralph Olmstead of WFA testified before a senate committee that some five million mil-lion cases have been bought. Colonel Olmstead stated that he was uncertain what disposition would be made of the eggs, although he said that probably a large part can be sent to Britain and liberated countries coun-tries in a dried state. |