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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Farm Implement Quota Boosted 30; Hitler's Disasters Mount as Russians Speed Up Caucasus-Ukraine Offensive; Tripoli's Fall Spurs Tunisia Drive (FI)ITOR'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.) Released by Western Newspaper Union. r " - ' . .1 I 6 ,. x s I jj M -(;- '-,''-' '- . - I I it...... f 4 , ' HARD COAL: Miners Boiv to FDR Dangers of a crippling hard coal shortage were averted and a face-saving face-saving maneuver for labor executed execut-ed when 12,000 Pennsylvania miners returned to work after a three-week old unauthorized walkout following a curt ultimatum from President Roosevelt The President had served notice that unless the miners ceased their wildcat strike withirf 48 hours, he would take "necessary steps" to safeguard the war effort. A tangled skein of labor politics had complicated the eastern hard coal situation. Efforts of John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, and the War Labor board to get the strikers back on the job had failed. Strike leaders said the miners had walked out in protest against a UMW dues Increase of 50 cents a month. The strikers, however, how-ever, had also demanded a $2 a day wage increase. AXIS TRUMP: Subs Still Potent Hurled back on all world fronts by the ever-increasing ferocity of United Unit-ed Nations attacks, the Axis still controlled one ace offensive weapon German submarines. Hitler was said by British Admiral Sir Percy Noble to be maintaining200 U-boats of his fleet of 500 at sea all the time in . an eflpct to keep the tremendous putpub of Allied war factories fac-tories from the battlefields. Unofficial Unof-ficial British estimates placed Nazi submarine construction at 15 to 20 a month faster than naval experts believe the Allies are sinking them. Elmer Davis, director of the Office Of-fice of War Information, reported that German submarines had sunk more Allied shipping in January than in December. A brighter side of the picture ernerged, however, when the Lend-Lease Lend-Lease administration announced that the United States anc Britain had sent Russia 5,800 tanks and 4,600 airplanes up to January 1 and promised prom-ised that aid to the Soviet "will grow still more in 1943." Regardless of submarine wolfpacks, convoys were getting through. RUBBER: Jeffersvs.RFC With his synthetic rubber program pro-gram facing further curtailment so that more convoy escort vessels can, be built and more high octane gasoline gaso-line produced for fighting fliers, Rubber Rub-ber Conservation Director William M. Jeflers assumed control of all rubber . import programs formerly exercised by the Board of Economic Warfare through the Rubber Re-J.' Closer relations between the United States and Chile and a harder crackdown on Nazi espionage in South America were results expected from the recent action of the Chilean government in breaking diplomatic relations with the Axis. Shown above are Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles (left) and Senor Don Rodolfo Michels, Chilean ambassador, discussing dis-cussing the situation. "--' FOOD PRODUCTION: Gets New Incentive Two significant steps to spur the "Food for Victory" campaign were taken when the War Production board authorized a 30 per cent increase in-crease in production of farm machinery ma-chinery and Secretary of Agriculture Agricul-ture Wickard announced a program of federal credit designed to extend from $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 to farmers for stepping up essential food production. The WPB increased the steel allotment al-lotment for farm machinery from 137,000 tons to 187,000 tons for the i first quarter of 1943. This new tonnage ton-nage was in addition to an increase previously authorized for the production pro-duction of repair parts for farm implements. im-plements. Mr. Wickard said loans needed mostly by small and medium-sized farmers would be extended through the Regional Agricultural Credit corporation. Size of loans will be limited only by the amount needed to do the production job. The loans will be of short-term duration at 5 per cent interest. NORTH AFRICA: Death of Empire Tripoli's fall had various meanings for various interpreters. To historians histori-ans it wrote finale to Mussolini's grandiose dreams of empire, for it was here the Duce had begun his disastrous expansion policy. To military observers it meant that the Allies could now concentrate closer attention on cleaning up the last Axis strongholds in Tunisia. It had been apparent to observers ' that Marshal Rommel's retreat through Tripolitania had had Tunisia Tuni-sia and not Tripoli as its goal. Rearguard Rear-guard efforts to protect the main body of his retreat had constituted the only action in and around Tripoli. Allied airmen had not only strafed doomed Tripoli, but General Montgomery's Mont-gomery's British eighth army and ..... General LeClerc's Fighting French had constantly harried the retiring Afrika Korps. In Tunisia the Axis had made ' strenuous efforts to cover Rommel's withdrawal by launching offensive ' thrusts against French positions southwest of Pond-du-Fahs. While junction of Rommel's army with those of Nazi Col. Gen. Von Arnim would strengthen Axis forces in Tunisia, the Allies would similarly b strengthened by the addition of British and Fighting French troops to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's legions. PRICE RISE: Predicted by Brown As additional rationing and price regulations were promulgated, the American public learned that Price Administrator Prentiss M. Brown's direction of the OPA would be less dramatic but no less firm than that of his predecessor Leon Henderson. Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen were assured by the new administrator, adminis-trator, however, that the OPA would be operated solely for the protection of the American people. Frankly acknowledging that price rises were inevitable, Mr. Brown promised that such rises would be "slow and well-ordered." RUSS STEAMROLLER: Impact Hurts Nazis From Leningrad to the Black sea the Russian steamroller offensive rumbled on, gathering momentum on all fronts. Nazi armies were forced to yield ground won in bloody battles last year, to surrender strategic strate-gic "hedgehog" strong points and to see supply and communication lines shattered. Russian sources asserted that 500,000 Germans had been killed and 200,000 captured since the winter offensive was launched in Novem-beij. Novem-beij. Red strategy had specially con- centrated on five key Nazi-held cities between the Ukraine and the north Caucasus. These were Kharkov, steel producing center; Rostov, communications com-munications city at the mouth of the Don river; Voroshilovgrad, industrial industri-al metropolis of the Donets- basin; Salsk, important- rail junctibn;v and Armavir gateway to the Baku-Rostov Baku-Rostov oil railroad. Possession of these cities would not only open a vast reservoir of materials and machinery to the Russians, Rus-sians, but it would loosen the Nazi stranglehold on the central and southern front. It would mean that the Germans would have to fall all the way back to the Dnieper river and hold lines dangerously close to Rumania, Poland and Lithuania. CHILDBIRTH: Pain Is Stilled To a world snuffing out lives in pain on scores of battle fields, the American Medical association brought tidings that the sufferings attendant on life's beginnings might be banished through a new method of childbirth anesthesia that is without with-out danger either to mother or baby. Designated as "continuous caudal anesthesia" the new technique was developed by Drs. Robert Hingson and Waldo Edwards of the Marine hospital at Staten Island, N. Y. Their report was corroborated by statements from 19 other clinics and hospitals which tested the new method meth-od on 589 patients. SOUTH PACIFIC: Prelude by Air "Softening up" attacks by air on Jap-held Lae were carried on by Allied fliers as a prelude- to land movements by General MacArthur's forces. For Lae was the next calling call-ing spot on the Allies schedule after mopping-up operations had been successfully suc-cessfully concluded in the Sanananda area, last Jap toehold in the Papuan peninsula. Aerial activity was not confined to the Lae area, for American and Australian Aus-tralian planes bombed shipping at Finschaven and hit the airdrome and wharf sections of Madang in New Guinea. Elsewhere Allied airmen air-men visited Cape Gloucester and Gasmata in Jap-held New Britain and strafed an enemy barge concentration concen-tration off Willaumex peninsula. In Australia, Allied bombers continued con-tinued their pounding of enemy warships war-ships and merchantmen far to the north. At Ambon, 600 miles northwest north-west of Darwin, they scored hits on a cruiser and cargo vessel. WILLIAM M. JEFFERS serve company, a Reconstruction Finance corporation subsidiary. This action meant that henceforth Jesse Jones, as head of the RFC's Rubber Reserve company,' which supplies the money for operations, would take orders from Mr. Jeffers instead of from the BEW on rubber imports. It meant, moreover, that Jeffers hoped to bolster lagging synthetic syn-thetic rubber production by imports as a means of keeping civilians supplied sup-plied 'With automobile tires. NAZI AIRRAIDS: RAF Welcomes Reprisals Tragic as was the death of scores of school children in German bombing bomb-ing raids on London, aviation authorities author-ities hailed the renewal of Nazi attacks at-tacks as a further opportunity to weaken the Axis in the air. Every raid means a further thinning thin-ning of Hitler's already over-extended air forces, these authorities pointed point-ed out. In the biggest daylight air assault on London since the 1940 battle bat-tle of Britain, the Nazis lost 13 planes while the British lost two. Because of improved anti-aircraft defense, destruction and loss of civilian life were held to minimum levels. The German raids have been in reprisal for gutting attacks on Berlin Ber-lin by large flights of RAF bombers raining down four-ton "block busters" bust-ers" on the Nazi capital, and spewing spew-ing incendiary bombs that caused untold damage. British losses on these raids were comparatively light, officials revealed. MORE BLOOD: Asked by Red Cross Mounting war casualties prompted prompt-ed a request from the army and navy for the Red Cross to procure 4,000,000 pints of blood during 1943, or more than three times the amount obtained from donors last year. Red Cross Chairman Dwight F. Davis disclosed that the request had come from Maj. Gen. James C. Magee and Rear Admiral Ross T. Mclntyre, surgeons general of the army and navy respectively. |
