Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 6, DeMotte, Jasper County, 24 December 1940 — WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Greeks Continue to Push Back Italians As British Seize New African Bases; Laval Loses French Government Post; Knudsen Claims Defense Program Lags [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Greeks Continue to Push Back Italians As British Seize New African Bases; Laval Loses French Government Post; Knudsen Claims Defense Program Lags

By Edward C. Wayne

(EDITOR'S NOTE—When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) i Released by Western Newspaper Union -

DEBACLE: Italian Version Unquestioned was the fact that Italy had been kicked wholeheartedly out of the war by Britain, Greece and the Free French, together with other sundry allies such as Polish, Czech and other hands that had joined into the Battle of Greece and the Battle of Egypt. The invader, who stepped briskly into the war just at the moment of France’s collapse, shot forces along the Mediterranean coast from the border of Libya to Sidi Barrani, and who sailed across mountains for Athens from an Albanian take-off, had become the invaded *on both fronts. * As the British and Greeks summed up huge supplies of war materials captured, and enormous inventories of prisoners in hand and still coming in, the Vesuvian rumbles began sounding through vari-

Persistent rumors current in Europe say that Bruno Mussolini (above), eldest son of 11 Duce, was shot down and killed during an air raid on Salonika, Greece. Official Italian circles have denied this report and say he is serving at an airport in southern Italy. ous parts of Italy, but more particularly in the north, and about the industrial cities of Turin and Milan. Despite all efforts of censorship to keep the true situation from becoming generally known, the debacle was too enormous to be hidden longer, and Mussolini’s aides had to take to the radio and to the Italian press to prevent a spread of the disaster to home fronts. Dismissal of leaders, disaffection in the Dodecanese islands, riots in the streets of the two big factory towns had leaked out. and then the Fascist party line editors and commentators began dishing out orders to the populace from the higherups. at the same time issuing warnngs to Br lain and the Hellenes as to what ' v might -expect from the Italian troops when “they get really mad.” While there was some news of sporadic increased resistance at certain points in the fronts, the general words were two—retreat and eVanuatu • all along the-line. And the press' articles about the might of the British enemy .and the “unfair” bayonets of the Greeks were just a foretaste of what was to come, with Tirana full of wounded and dying soldiers back from the front lines. IN REST: French I ersioti Britain was getting little comfort, according to her own sources, from France’s governmental upheaval which sent Pierre Laval, pro-Fascist foreign minister, flying out of the Petain cabinet presumably into confinement. and put Flandin, pro-Nazi, into his place. In fact. British circles frankly doubted the authenticity of any internal disturbance to amount to anything. and laid the whole change to orders direct from Hitler. However, it was a notable occurrence, and accompanied by a scurrying about the streets of Vichy, and presumably Paris of a body of GPmen—France’s new Gestapo or GPU. In Italy they were calling them squads,” but they are all the same sort of strong-arm governmental police. France called them “Groupe de protection.” hence the GP on the arm-band. It was a GP band that

took Laval into custody, thus putting into at least a momentary decline the man on whose shoulders rested considerable of the onus of France’s surrender. Rumor floated double - barreled around the French overturn. Rumor No. 1 had it that Old Man Petain, realizing that revolt was stirring beneath him, charged LavaF with plotting to get France into the war against England, and had summarily ousted him. Rumor No. 2 was to the effect that Laval had plotted to overthrow Petain and create a new government with himself as dictator. Whichever might be true, watchers agreed that the aged general acted with much the same speed as the younger Hitler in slapping down a “purge” which shot Laval’s feet from under him with dispatch. The upheaval met the same view in most circles, that it was another evidi nee of t * ..or- r. M&r>*pean unrest that was moving through all the conquered territories, an unrest that might find no directional force for a l.'iig, long turnSIX DAYS: Slialt Thou ! ahnr Pointing toward the six-day, perhaps seven-dav week in defense industry, I efen'se Council Chairman Knudsen belabored Am dean industry for lagging, and declared the United States was “not get! u Ihe spirit” of defense work. Knudsen told the mai many things, but one of these was outstanding, and had to do with airplane" manufacture. U. S. goal, declared Knudsen. had been 1,000 warplanes a month by January 1. He said at the rate things were going, we’ll be lucky if we are getting t 350 a month by that time. The reason .for the lag is lack of comprehension by manufacturer, by laborer, of the meaning of the national defense program. U. S. is supposed to be getting ready to protect the nation in case of aggression and to help England hold things in status quo until that time. Knudsen pulled no punches and told the manufacturers that they were spending too much time figuring what to do with their profits and earnings, and not enough getting out the material. This was a double-barreled blow at the employers for temporizing with employees’ demands for higher pay, and with

employees for threatening and carrying out strikes. He introduced the longer workweek idea by stating that employers should find a way to use machines on Saturdays and Sundays, making the obvious point that use of these two days on a full-time schedule would automatically speed up production about 30 per cent, or the amount it is lagging. In advance he answered the manufacturers’ plaint that they lacked the trained men to do this. Knudsen told them to get more men and train more men. He told them to “stagger” their trained men through the extra shifts, thus swiftly training the less-able to catch up to fulltime production. His address to the manufacturers was an air-clearer, like the first lightning flashes before a storm that he hopes will rain airplanes and other defense material.

PRESIDENT: bid Flying Duke President Roosevelt returned to his White House desk to face tremendous problems, behind him a 4,000-mile trip on U. S. S. Tuscaloosa which' was shrouded in secrecy before it began, turned out just vhat hal been predicted—a junket throughout prospective naval-air fa. s in the Antilles—and wound '■D in a blaze of front-mem nrticles w hen the duke of Windsor flew out 'lt all Logan when. Duchess Wallis, who bad to have an infected tooth out (translated in royal language into a “major dental operation”) decided to have .the surgery performed in a Miami hospital. She and the duke went thither in the yacht of a Swedish friend who oddly was a pal of Goering's. The day after the death of Lord Lothian, the operation was safely over, with the duchess convalescing bewitchingly, and the duke with a considerable amount of time on his hands. Suddenly it was announced that President Roosevelt wanted to talk to him. A navy bomber* soared down onto the blue Biscayne waters, a motorboat met the duke, and off he went, shrouded with more secrecy than the President himself had been when he started out. He was back the same day, and the next day the Tuscaloosa came in and the cruise was over. The public, prepared by all this for something monumental, had to satisfy itself with the story that the duke and the President had talked about the unsuitability of pint-size< ayaguana island for a naval-air base, and asking the duke if he couldn’t arrange a better one. It was the biggest anticlimax in months. CITY: Anxious Strangest public health story in years “broke” in Rochester, N. Y., with a whole city of 300,000 souls rushing o be inoculated against typhoid. First in sharp sequence of dramatic events was the “firing” of two city officials when a public health officer, “on his toes,” discovered the city’s water supply had been'contaminated with water from the Genesee river, infested with sewage. Rochester’s population, most of them modernly. health conscious, rushed to have themselves inoculated against typhoid, a job which takes three injections with an interval between. First day, the health officers distributed 8,000 “shots” of the serum, which were promptly gobbled up by private physicians and shot into 8,000 anxious arms. LOTHIAN: Predicts , Then Dies The notable, blunt-spoken British bachelor Marquess of Lothian, ambassador from Britain to the United States, lay dying in ! is Washington home from uremic poisonipg at the very moment when his written words, spoken by proxy at nearby Baltimore, were predicting what the war in Europe will be. Lothian’s “deathbed” prediction was that Britain, with the help already promised and under way from America, will win the war “decisively” in 1942. Whatever the facts may be, the shocking news of his death gave his final utterance unusual prominence in the news, editors tearing their hair over the problem of whether to put the largest headlines on what had happened to Lothian, or on what Lothian had said. His passing was the occasion for the press here and abroad to express genuine sorrow and shock at his untimely death, and his loss was believed to have left a gaping hole in Britain’s diplomatic body. Lothian was a worker, his speech was brusque, and these two qualities alone had given him great weight in Washington. As to his prediction of the end of the war in 1942, and with Britain victor, it was met with keen interest and perhaps added power because it was to all practical purposes, his dying utterance.

WILLIAM KNUDSEN Pictured as he urged a “wartime basis” for industry to speed production of vital defense needs.