~ ' - L l T j ._Z-SUNOCO_ - WEDNESDAY - May 7._1241, I! ii d GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: The news tonight is that Uncle Sam is all set to commandeer all German and Italian merchant vessels in American harbors, as well as those belongin to the nations now under the heel of the Axis.) Meaning f about one hundred vessels. c The bill authorizing this was passed by House today by an enormous majority -- two hundred and sixty-six to a hundred and twentj The representatives who are against intervention tried to sbb copper the bill with amendments forbidding Mr. Roosevelt to turn the ships over to Britain, and preventing him from using the -^Q carry munitions to Britain. One after another the amendments were beaten down by the Administration followers. The non-in'terventionists - 2 made a last final struggle with ims a motion to send the bill back to Committee. That was beaten, two hundred and twenty to a hundred and sixty. On the final balloting, forty more votes went over to the Government side. Now the measure is up to the Senate, where the non-intervention ist Senators, led by XkssflB Wheeler of Montana and Bennet Clark of Missouri, are all set for a battle royal. But the War Aid Bill passed the Senate as well as the House. And so will this one. All those ships by the way are already being put into condition by Uncle Sam’s Maritime Commission. COMMON Tv.is was a big day in the House of Commons, a particularly big day for Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his entire war cabinet, \lt was the test, a touchstone debate to decide whether tlyf bellicose Churchill still had his Parliament and country b^ind him. The result was everything he could have A asked. ^Any rrime Minister who gets a vote of confidence of four hundred and forty-seven to three may pretty safely say that he has the approval and £ood»will of his people.\ Only three solitary members refused that vote of confidence. There was a dramatic debate, with Churchill throwing down the gauntlet boldly, as he used the words:- am the one whose head should be cut off if we do not win this war.” And he added. ”I am very ready that this should be so because most of the members of this House would probably experience an even more unpleasant fate at the hands of the triumphant hun.” Churchill was evidently unwilling to admit any probability of losing Epypt and the Suez Canal, for he said the loss of the Nile Valley, the Suez Canal and Malta would be among the heaviest blows the British could sustain, but he added < 1 :i r vfi <{1 they were determined to fight for them with all the resources of the Empire, and he said:- ^We have every reason to believe we shall be successful ___ _ __ '^ll^E/^e'^nnounced that General Wavell had an army diujL ; of nearly half a million men. he LuiiCh- ”We intend to defend to the death and without thought of iretirement the highly offensive outposts ofCrete and Tobruk." Concerning Ira^, he"It may be that the Germans MJti will arrive there before we have crushed the revolt in which case our task would be greater." But he did not admit that definitely, for he then continued:- "It might be that the revolt went off half-cocked in consequence of our landing of troops at Basra." There was a particularly dramatic moment when Churchill replied to the criticism made yesterday by the former War Secretary, Hore-Belisha. Particularly his criticism about the shortage of tanks. Churchill remarked ironically that it was easy for Hore-Jbelisha to be far-seeing now that he was no longer a member of the government. "The British tank corps knew all about h I i I 1 CQu^.iS - 3 tne shortage of tanks when Hore-Belisha was Secretary. But,” said Churchill, ”iny R^^ght Honorable friend did not grasp that importance nor did he mention it to us.” cry, accusing Churchill in of indulging in heavy recriminations and saying it was quite xn unworthy of something or other. Robody could tell of what it was unworthy, because the House was in an uproar. Churchill also paid a left-handed compliment t 3 the criticisms of former Priaie Minister David Lloyd George. declared that the Churchill Government had not been sufficiently candid with the public, hadn’t told them the real facts about the Libyan and Greek campaigns. £76^then spoke about us with A the words, ”If America is going to enable us first to catch up and then go beyond the Germans, she’s got to do definitely more than any indication I have heard up to the present.” Lloyd George added: ”In my opinion, the longer the war, the better our chances. There is a dark passage to cross but there is Amei’ica and theink God for the speech by Mr. St.imson.” I Ty^at brought Hore-Belisha to his feet with an indignant i|f i m f? S I CQaa.AQNS - 4 unhelpful and unworthy of a great war leader. But he admitted^ that, as he put it, ”We need a good deal more help from the United States, and I expect that we shall get a good deal more.” I'S ig Cviurchill in reply said that speech by L.G. had been il 7 ETIMSON V On every corner of Washington today you could hear people discussing the Stiirson radio speech. Of course the reaction was pretty much what one might expect. The isolationists, like Spnator Tobey of New Hampshire, dismissed it as a virtual declaration of war. Senator Holman of Oregon said that those who advocate war ought to make sure that at least one member of their immediate family was in the fighting line. Colonel Pyaik Knox, the Secretary of the Navy, said his colleage of the War Department had made a forthright. courageous and high spirited utterance. A lot o'f'peo-pie are A waiting eagerly to hear what^Knox himself will say tonight. Abroad the action was also what you might have expected. A Nazi spokesmen and newspapers declared that Stimson ought to be called a ^war-monger” rather than a ”War Minister.” There was no official comment in Japan but the criticism was that Stimson^s was the beginning of a series of speeches aiming to win popular support for having ships to Britain b onvoyed by the American Navy. In Home the official Italian news a^^ency said Stimson^s address would bring grave and sad consequences to the United States ■ '■'! I COAST GUARD The U. S. Coast Guard is now a part of the U.S.Navy. It was announced today by the Secretary of the Navy tliat all the sea-going activities of the Coast Guard are being transferred to this Department. President Roosevelt issued the order verbally EX about a week ago; and the switch has been going on quietly ever since. This doesn’t mean any change for the men of the Coast Guard. The ships will still have the same crews. But they will definitely be a part of the Navy under naval officers. Lighthouse work, harbor patrols, shore duties sudh as life-saving, will still be under the command of the Coast Guard officers. Secretary Knox was then questioned about the radio speech by Secretary of War Stimson last night. Was the Navy ready to carry out the job urged by the War Secretaty, to see that the ^ munitions made over here really reached Britain? Knox replied with an emphatic ’^yes.^^ The United States fleet, he said, is always ready, but now readier than ever, € SliNKXI^IGS A peculiar contribjition to the news was made today by A( 3 miral iLm^ry 3« Land, Chairman of the United States Maritime Commission. Accorling to Admiral Land, the Nazis have not sunk nearly as many ships carrying munitions to Britain as everybody supposed. Land wrote in a letter to Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, and Vandenberg made the letter public today. Chairman Land asserted positively that out of two hundred and five vessels that sailed for British ports from this country, between December Thirtieth and April Thirtieth, only eight had been sunk. And the whole world over,aji±y the Nazis have bagged only a hundred and fifty-eight vessels with a total tonnage of some seven hundred and eighty-one thousand tons^ If this is true, it is quite different from what we have been led to believe from the announcements of even the British A^^miralty. In fact it contradicts a remark that Land himself made on the Ninth of April. He then said that the British were losing ships at the rate of five million tons a year.,^ T If the total tonnage sunk in the first four months of this year is only some seven hundred and eighty thousand, the British are losing some two million three hundred and forty thousand tons a year. P fr fi\ L I ri % J-i i RbD g^OSS ; T Over a million dollars* worth of relief supplies from the American Red C-^oss are at the bottom of the Atlantic. This was made known today by Norman H. Davis, the Chairman. That doesn’t mean that the Nazis have sunk ships flying the Red Cross ■-rft Hi —vwa. flag, but some of th^atuff waa ecneigned abroad^ on ships that jJuuO nrt no Red C^oss flag, k vessels that carried other supplies in addition to the Red Cposs cargoes. And eleven of them were sunk. m -J i I SiiAMtM Little by little the Government is clamping down on German and Italian nationals in this country. F“ may recall that yesterday crews of the vessels th&t were seized in American ports were removed from Ellia^lsland and taken to an internment camp somewhere in the west* Today immigration officers and* policemen carried out a swift series of surprise raids in seven states of the Union. V/hen they were all over, the Department of Justice had a hundred 6|nd sixty German sailors in custody.‘They are charged with haTing U- A out-stayed their welcome, their permits to remain in the^Uii£twd 9^litti'jw All of those hundred and sixty were formerly members A of the crews of oil taniiers. They had been dismissed by the oil company that employed them at the outbreak of the war. but had failed to go back to their Fatherland when their permits expired. II I" i i iL STRIKES i|! : f It*s the Congress of Industrial Organizations - the C.I.O. - that is responsible for most of the strikes in national defense plants. So says William Green, President o^/ |li fi the A.F. Green was testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House which is investigating strikes. Ninety per cent of the labor walkouts that have crippled defense pro­ F I Hi duction Green puts at the door of the C.I.O. Hh± His 0¥m A .F. of Li said Green, was concerned in only five per cent of all the vital interruptions to work. A.F. of L. President Green added that those were not > 1 li his figures, but had come from the Office of Production Management in Washington. TAXES You may have to pay a lot more for your new car, if one influential New Dealer has his way: Leon Henderson, Administrator of Price Controls. Henderson was a witness today before the House Committee on Ways and Means. He wants a twenty per cent federal excise tax on new automobiles - not only new ones but used cars too. And he wants a whopping federal tax on refrigerators - and washing machines. Probably he*s a bachelor. Anyhow he says that motor cars and electric ice boxes and washers are competing with tanks, airplanes and cannon. Leon Henderson w’ants those astronomical taxes not only to raise revenue, which they probably wouldn’t do, but to prevent a lot of people from buying. If Congress were to listen to Price Control Administrator Henderson, an eight hundred dollar car would cost you nine hundred and sixty dollars. And even a five hundred dollar used car would co:. t you six hundred. Our prime necessity, says Henderson, is to out-produce jij0£ming that we must not only catch with with the Nazis in production, but, we must produce more - and in overwhelming planes, ships and numbers, more CAROL An American ship is bringing across the Atlantic two of the most notorious figures in contemporary European history. The great lovers. Ex-King Carol aiiixftxB^xRiix of Rumania and the 3 once beauteous red-head Magda Ljapescu,are on the EXCAMBION, bound for American waters! However, it is understood that they are not going to honor us./Some South American country - presumably Chile is to have the privilege of affording them an asylum. Whey will leave the EXCAB4BI0N at Bermuda and go to South America by way of Cuba. The fleeing couple, we hear, are passing the time board ship, playing bingo, and the horse race game, and the slot machines in the ship’s bar. The ex-King isn’t a bit standoffish,^ chats with the other passengers; and in the bar they say the King takes nothing stronger than the foaming brew, .SECRhTAKIES What does a secretary really think of her boss? That^s a secret lots of people would like to know. Perhaps it *s a wise boss who refrains from knowing. Perhaps it^s all the better for him if he doesn^t know what she really thinks. But maybe we’ll be able to find out from a dinner when that’s going to take place tonight, ^ the private secretaries of some two hundred tycoons are meeting to eat, drink and exchange compliments. Among them will be the private secretary of Wendell Wilkie, Herbert Hoover', of Tom Dewey, and of the Right Honorable W'lnston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain. It’s the First Annual Dinner of an organization called the Seraphic Secretaries of America, organized by the volatile ■I hi it' s t i better i “■ 1 : i F. Darius Benham, the same Benham who organized the C^us Saints li:i in* and' Sinners ClubTYMaybe^the secretaries will tell the truth tonight, and wtoat.they renlV^thlnk of A