Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 10, Number 30, DeMotte, Jasper County, 13 June 1940 — WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS BY ROGER SHAW Fighting Shifts From Flanders As Nazi Air Force Bombs Paris; Malta Looms as Trouble Spot [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS BY ROGER SHAW Fighting Shifts From Flanders As Nazi Air Force Bombs Paris; Malta Looms as Trouble Spot

(EDITOR’S NOTE—When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of the news ana it and not necessarily of this newspaper.) by Western Newspaper Union. _______________________

If Italy should move against Great Britain in the Mediterranean she might very likely direct an attack at the great British naval base at Malta. Malta has been on a war footing since the beginning of the European crises. Map at the right shows the relationship of Malta to Italy. Vulnerable perhaps to bombing attacks it would be a tough nut for Mussolini to crack by sea. Top left is a view of the harbor at Valetta with British man o’ war at anchor. Below 7 , one of the big costal guns that ring Malta is blazing away during gunnery practice. (SEE ITALIC NOTES.)

II GERMAN WAR: Flanders Battle The Dutch-Belglan-Flanders-Artois battle came virtually to an end, save for up-moppings and kitty-corner operations here and there. The Dutch and Belgian armies had been surrendered or finished, and the First, Seventh, and Ninth French armies were destroyed. Nobody came out of it with any laurels save the British navy, which somehow succeeded in ferrying perhaps twothirds of the British army out of Dunkirk by means of warships, transports, yachts, barges, and lifeboats—and under heavy aerial fire. It seemed that the German air force fell down on this debarkation operation, for British losses, in retreat, were smaller than might have been expected. Somehow, the allies secured a temporary air supremacy in the Dunkirk sector, and the British Spitfire machines showed a slight superiority to the German Messerschmitt combat craft. British morale, strangely enough, was reported as excellent, but French morale did not appear in quite so favorable a; light. The German general headquarters was strangely restrained in its moment of triumph. Lille, fourth city of France and its “Pittsburgh,’’ was in German hands, along with Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne, The Hague, Liege, etc. Would refugee-choked, hysterical Paris be next, wondered the railbirds? Even as these railbirds wondered, Hitler’s warbirds came out of the skies and rained showers of bombs upon southern France and later upon Paris itself. In the first attacks about 150 German bombers swept over the city, dropping their cargoes of high explosives, setting many fires, inflicting huge property losses and killing at least 45 persons in Paris and its suburbs. The allies promised to repay Germany bomb for bomb in the new air offensive they were launching.

Italic Notes All private motoring stopped in Italy, due to government conservation of gas and oil. Italy has no native - petroleum, iron or coal. Pro-Italians were jailed in England’s Mediterranean naval base, Malta. Possession of this strategic island is a leading Italian objective. The English suspended Italian papers read by the Italian-speaking Maltese. A minority of Maltese talk the ancient Carthaginian tongue of Hannibal and his elephants. Mussolini said he was too busy to see U. S. Ambassador Phillips, who was toting a message from Roosevelt. Mussolini also broke off a shipping deal with the English, in the matter of illegal contraband control, which puL-the shivers into London. Italian journalists left Paris. I). of C. AND— White Housing's President Roosevelt made another request for money. This time it was for more than a billion, for the army, navy and civilian training program, coupled with a fear that all continents may become involved in the II German war (he did not mention Germany by name). Roosevelt asked for specific authority to call up the national guard and army reservists —if and when needed to “safeguard” and “defend.” And Roosevelt asked for a corps of dollar-a-year men, to expedite national defense preparations. Also, there came a request for a million dollars* to expand the navy department and munitions buildings in the capital. Talkative young Elliott Roosevelt assailed so-called fifth columns in Mexico. Elliott is a radio executive. War department plans called for immediate orders to get 2,800 planes, 1,700 tanks, 500 heavy artillery units, and big consignments of anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. The senate voted, 55-4, for a new alien control resolution, already

passed by the house. The immigration - naturalization bureau would be transferred from the department of labor to the depart ment of justice. Senators Norris and Wheeler, lib-

erals opposed to the transfer, assailed J. Edgar Hoover and the Gmen, while Wheeler censured the current American “hysteria.” Archibald Macleash, “radical” librarian of the Congressional library at Washington, said that the II German war was not a revolt of the masses. He said that, instead, it was the revolt of a gang. $65,000,000: Battleship The $65,000,000 battleship, Washington, was launched at the Philadelphia navy yard. It is a 35,000tonner —l,6oo tons bigger than any American battleship now in operation. The Washington is our first new capital ship in 19 years. It is 750 feet long. Fifteen-year-old Virginia Marshall of Spokane, great-great-great-granddaughter of Chief Justice John Marshall, was the Washingtonian christener. The boat was named after her home state.

U. S. REDS: Don't Love i\nzis The American Cornmurrst party, in the last six months, has sent $5,000 to German reds, to help them in ' their underground struggle against Hitler. This fact was announced at the C. P.'s national convention in New York, which gathering appeared to be unabashed by the Russo-German pact of last August. (This anti-Hitlerism, however, did not make things any easier for the Finns early in the year.) There were visiting reds at New York from Mexico. Chile, Haiti, Iceland, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. A Mexican delegate condemned Congressman Martin Dies and his committee. The convention opposed participation in the national advisory defense commission “and any subordinate boards.'' ANTI-ROOSEVEI.T: On Champaign Wendell Willkie said, out in Denver, “I’d love to go. to the people

against that fellow.” “That folio w ” meant Roosevelt. To get rid of Roosevelt, Willkie,felt, was the only way to unite the nation against the totalitarian threat. Willkie was equally hard on Hitler. He called the Fuehrer a “m a d m a n.”

Planes and guns, said 'Willkie, are not built by emotional appeals over the radio. “We have confused liberty with license,” added tire Republicans’ dusky equine. But Candidate Dewey, in New York, characterized certain of Roosevelt’s defense measures as “progress in the right direction.” He added, in sorrow, that much remained to be done. Dewey had not yet selected a nominator (for himself), to boost him at the Republicans’ Philadelphia convention this month. Dewey, on the whole, tends to be more kid-glove and velvetine than the rugged quipster, Willkie. Liberals, for some reason, much prefer western Wendell to the “O. A,” ART DEPT.: On P. P. Rubens Hitler’s Vienna paper, on the 300th anniversary of Rubens’ death, said that Flemish artist was a “Germanic pagan” who painted Christian sagas with a fleshly relish. This seemed fairly obvious to art critics, some of whom call him the Falstaff of the Palette. Rubens liked to depict “mountains of flesh,” said the Vienna journal. Rubens, too, added the paper, was fond of “Christian Venuses” and “Nazarene wrestlers.” He was “without, the blinds of churchly virtue, and fearless in the face of nature. - ' It will be remembered that many of Rubens’ themes were religious. BILLY PHELPS: And the 1,400 Prof. Billy Phelps of Yale, bookman of renown. sa:d he’d rather lose the war with the allies than win with Hitler. Billy said Hitler had changed “Athens into Sparta.” But some 1,400 Yale students thought otherwise. They signed a petition asking that America’s isolation continue. They were of draft age! COUP IN CANADA: ‘Mosley of Montreal * The Canadian mounted police, turning into a local Gestapo or OGPU, seized eight members of the National Unity party in Montreal, the British empire’s great French city. Most important of the victims was Adrien Arcand, French Canadian Fascist leader, important “in Quebec provincial politics, and opposed to the war. There were simultaneous coups in at least three other Canadian cities including Ottawa, Toronto and Windsor.

Senator Wheeler

Wendell Willkie