RIVER I'Jjd., Va*. 2 3'^ x3£ \ The biggest storm story of the day is provided for us by the Father of Waters, 014 Man River. tale of elemental forces on a wild rampage. The mighty Mississippi has reached out with its swirling waters and surrounded a whole While the blizzard was sweeping, the river flooded suddenly, anari rtnshigrfxatyRlitBElRXHfxfaugiag joined hands with a smaller tributary, and rushed a circle of turbulent water around the town of Sledge,^ is an island tonight, with all- communications down, isolated A 7F~ from the rest of the world, a thousand people marooned. The Mayor of Sledge wadded through miles of water, got to a telephone, and told the story. He says the Mississippi Is thirty miles wide down there, a sea of water, and ice. At some of the narrow points it is frozen two inches thick. And he gave warning that the people were in dire distress, the cotton pickers and gE&fcfc cotton growers. There are seven dead, drowned or frozen. Food is running short and clothing is insufficient for the ‘Combination of blizzard and flood. That was the first word from the flood marooned town. The R d Cross got Immediately on the job and with government boats broke through the Ice and "went to the rescue. fl '■ If WEATHER The blizzard is one of the biggest on record, in area anyway. It has been snowing from Canada to Florida, and from the Atlantic seaboard two#thirds of the way across the continent. The earth is white as far west and south as the Rio Grande Valley Thousands of cattle are reported frozen to death on Texas Ranges near Dallas, On the Pacific Coast violent gales are lashing Hie sea and shore. Under blizzard conditions, transportation is having all sorts of trouble, slowed .up everywhere, in some places broken down. The motor clubs of the country are asking me to make a plea to children, asking the youngsters to be careful where they go sledding. So I will just remind any of the small folks who may be listening that it is dangerous to go sliding on streets and highways where automobiles are passing. So,do your sledding in I ill * I public^gagksoKtm highways •Uiat are^roperly guarded i EJa S?" —_____ r , . If Meanwhile, the blizzard brings a boom for many Is industries — coal companies of course, and manuxacturers of anti- ) freeze solutions for automobiles report a big jump.^ The cold I! weather has worked havoc with the fresh vegetable crop in paits of the south. Tha^neans a boost in the sale of canned vegetables. ! i ■ WEATHER - 2 The WalX Street Journal says that the American Can Company alone is shipping more than thirty-five million cans to theSouth because of damage by frost to vegetables down there. PRESIDENT 1 S BALL The President’8 Birthday Ball is rising to "Believe- It-Or-NotM proportions this year. What would you say to fifty thousand people tripping the ninible toe in one single dance in one single place? I heard about it today when I ran across Lucius Boomer, the hotel man who presides over the destinies of the Waldorf. He told me how many dances have been arranged all over the country by the Henry L. Doherty Committee, in charge of the festivities. The moving spirit is Carl Byoir, the publicity executive. The number of presidential dances that Carl has lined up is already over seven thousand more than last yeart And the biggest will be in Chicago - Fifty thousand people dancing on one floor that night. Where? Why at the Chicago Stockyards Arena, a really immense place. All the great hotels of Chicago, such as the Palmer House, the Stevens, the Blackstone and the Drake will lend their orchestras. A total of twenty-one hote"1 orchestras will provide the music for the fifty Stockyards fox-trotters. The nationf s feet will shuffle on the President's thousand ■PH-RSIDEMT' S BALL - 2 birthday, and an ocean of funds will p0Ur into the coffers of the National fight against Infantile Paralysis. While we are on the subject of dancing, let rae observe that through the windows here at Rockefeller Center the night certainly is white - snow, a blinding blizzard sweeping all day. What have fox-trots to do with snowflakes? Well, when I was talking to Lucius Boomer he said it looked as if the snow man were celebrating in honor of the Snow Ball, one of the year's stellar social functions, to be held tomorrow night. New York's hoity-toity paying homage to the Snow Man* Get in trim for that frosty society stare. I was asked to say a special hello to one hundred people up in Liverpool, Nova Scotia tonight. But, if it's snowing there - like it is here the Liverpool Committee of one hundred is probably lost somewhere in the Nova Scotia snow drifts, - unless they use Blue Sunoco which push their cars through any drift. [ 1 - LINDBERGH The day at Fleming ton tsaaay closed without the appearance of Hauptmann on the witness complete its case. ThatTs left stand. The State did not over until tomorrow. The complications oi expert cestimony dragged out from the opening of court until the closing. The question was raised — what is a dendrologist? Is there any dendrologist? The dictionary defines dendrology as the science of trees. A dendrologist is an expert concerning trees and wood. And the dendrological reasonings today concern the kidnap ladder. The defense tried to keep the wood expert, Arthur T. Koehler from testifying, claiming there was no such thing as a wood expert, no such thing as a dendrologist. The contention was / that the law does not recognize that particular hrand o± expertness and experArising. 3£x And here one of the defense attoineys wno hasn’t figured so prominently in the trial, jumped into some well-deserved limelight. Fred Pope astonished the public, the jury, the judge and the witness by displaying a copious knowledge concerning lumber. He knew all about beams and planxs. This is LISPBURGH - £ explained by the fact that Pope himself oTOs a small lumber hiZtJ mill. He's a local Jersey attorney, and like so many small-town lawyers, has other business activities on the side. cP Thensi t . ixl flair of dendrological science concentrated on the vital prosecution—attempt to. connect Hauptmann with the ladder. kidnap Ax ihere v/ere two principal clues. The first was the grain in the wood. If you saw a plank^in two, the grain of one piece will match the grain of-the other piece. The police found a piece of board removed from, the floor of the attic in Hauptmann’s house. This piece of board had been sawed from a longer plank. The grain of the strip of wood removed should match the grain of the strip that. remained in the floor. The prosecution claims that the scrip-removed was used in making the kidnap ladder. And -the expert today swore that the grain of one of the nieces of board in ,tlie ladder matched pei ± ectly the grain in the sawed-off plank in the attic ilooi. He declared it impossible for two boards to.mxA match up so perfectly unless they were merely the same board sawed in two.Jlhe second clue was a matter of nail holes. The board removed from Hauptmann house had been nailed to supports underneath. And it was ffTNDBERGH - S testified that the nail holes in the plank in the ladder correspond** perfectly with the nail holes in the attic. It was pointed out that one nail had been driven in at a slant. And the slanted nai^ hole in the ladder-piece matched the slanted nail hole in the attic. dcndrol-ogical* oonolusi-rjn is that ■ the- aomo—teo^m-ic-al ■ testimony tending -t-O"eemioct 'Ilmiptmann^r.r-^ii ladder Then Hauptmann* s tool chest was brought into court, and it was testified that when the authorities got hold of it all the tools were in place — save one, a chisel. A chisel was missing. and a chisel was found near the ladder outside the Lindbergh home at the time of the kidnapping. Hauptmann* s tool chest khh contained a set of chisels of all size-s, except the three-quarter -1- II - !i;! { i I i I HI !! Ij: fi ill II! inch size. The chisel found on the kidnap scene was^the three- quarter inch dimension. Moreover the-kidnap chisel and the Hauptmann chisels ere of the same manufacture. The arguments about the ladder mill be continued . to last long. The State will tomorrow but are not expected to ia t -i t^ rase fairly early in the day. V.itn virtually undoubtedly close its case xamy ; I 1 II i LINDBERGH - 4 m J; j| I ;i: 1] !ii f all the testimony against Hauptmann in, Anybody can see that Attorney General Wilentz has beenlteaping^a powerful lot of circumstantial proof. As I see it,- the only point of vtreakness in his case concerns txiat original qustions— How could a stranger II I; il without special information have gone to a house and kidnapped a cnild? They brought witnesses to place Hauptmann in the Lindbergh vicinity just before the kidnapping. there^| been ; no witness to swear that he asked questions, sought information. acquired any knowledge that would tell him about the layout of the Lindbergh household and the room in which the child was kept. And you can depend upon it that this will be one of the central arguments of the defense. Meanwhile it’s fairly definite that Hauptmann will take I I 1 ill !!! I the stand tomorrow. And I for one am going down to Fleming ton to get some first-hand impressions of how tnis singular stolid character tells his Improbale-sounding story I etrid stands up under cross-examination, ROEBbRfo The countrywide public enemy hunt has graphically featured the xx federal agents of the Department of Justice. Tonight we find another branch of government detectives joining the manhunt - the Post Office Inspection Service. Post office men are concentrating on Fall River, Massachusetts. It's all because of that daring A robbery/of a postal truck which was on its way to the Massachusetts mill town with money for payrolls, money to the amount of a Hundred and thirty thousand dollars. That was the loot the bandits were after. The driver of the truck, a veteran of twenty years.in the government service. was suddenly confronted They seized the truck. r^Soi3ft^mask by masked men^ pointing machine guns, They tied, up and blindfoldeoLthe driver. and tossed him into the road. K. The next word was that the postal truck had been found on the highway between Fall River and Providence* The bandits were gone, and so was the money. Yes, that insolent slap Uncle Sam is enough to send the postal detectives on a hot manhunt. It's an old axiom that the post office is a relentless bloodhound in cases involving the mails. JAPAN ■«HP#*** It looks 8S if Vv6 could announce tonight* that the long expected Japanese push against China has definitely begun, Nipponese military forces have advanced, storming into the Wl th ■ ■*m~**^ Province of Chahar, a sudden violent drive^J For weeks there ^ naiMliJJ I"1"11* have been rumors that the Nipponese high command in Manchukuo was about to begin what they call the third invasion of China. The two previous invasions are reckoned as,the seizure of Manchuria -tU and a further conquest of the adjoining Jehol Province. The V /V third invasion, of which we now hear, concerns the Chinese province which lies to the west of Manchukuo, Tokio has for some time been laying ground for an aggressive program, by complaining that bandits from Chahar were raijing Manchukuo. The generals of Japan declare that the Chinese are not able to maintain order in Chahar,-and are letting the brigands have their own way. Today1s reports of the invasion do not come from lokio, Japanese sources are silent. The word comes from China, and tells of a bombardment of Chinese military positions and a series of fierce attacks. Japanese artillery banged away and eight Japanese JAPAN - 2 bombing planes dropped their explosive eggs. The offensive movement across the Chahar border was directed against towns held by Chinese garrisons, and It was made with a blasting vigor of full military force. Of course, it may be nothing more than some sort of punitive military gesture, but there are probabilities that would seem to point to a beginning of, a military conquest of still another Chinese province. Chahar is-of Tc±Teary«inwrystrategic importance. It thrusts northward like a wedge between Manchukuo and Mongolia, which latter is under Soviet-Russian influence. If the province were aces* to Manchukuo, It would put Japan in extensive fcwwia^'iFy boundary contact with the great world of central Asia. Bwt-dsiiexr Chahar only sparcely inhabited, We hear much about Chinese over— population, not so much about Chinese emptiness. But there are many vast stretches of China almost bare of people, and this province which seems the new theatre of Japanese activity, is one of them. CHINA HereTs a Chinese echo of that missionary tragedy, the killing of Mr, and Mrs, John C, Stam by Vliinu»•. bandits. Their baby was spared and rescued by Chinese soldiers. Word now conies about the bandit chief who committed the outrage, Ch4n Wing Chow, After the murder of the two American missionaries, Ch«n Wing Chow and his outlaws were attacked by government ‘troops. The bandit chief was wounded. He ?/as carried away by his brigand gang. Now the report is that he died of his wounds, and the Chinese authorities have found his grave. In Oriental fashion, they have dug him up and hung his head on a pole in the public place, as a warning to other bandits. There is an echo too of that baby saved from the bandits, now in care of its grandparents. Hundreds of letters have been received from people who want to adopt the child, but the old grandparents answers "We are going to keep our most prized possession.T! WHEAT Thirty-five years ago, in Nineteen hundred, Benito Mussolini was an obscure young school teacher. In that same year, an Italian professor began to make some experiments with wheat. Today Mussolini, the Dictator, looks to that professor to solve the Italian problem of food for i! population. II ill The professor, whose name is Strampelli, spent year after year making innumerable tests and tries. He got every sort of il wheat known in the world, Japanese varieties, African-American, \ |j ^Russian. And he crossed and re-crossed the various grains, seeking K to create the type of wheat that would be best adapted to the thin poor soil that is found in most parts of the mountainous, rocky penninsula. And they say he has produced something that from this distance looks like an incredible miracle. The magazine nCOUNTRY HOME”, declares that Professor Strampelli and his assistants have produced the kind of wheat that will xxaxatxJm grow jjiundred_and^ thirty-one bushels to the acre*. Compared with the average American yield of fourteen bushels an acres - it does sound fantastic. Nevertheless, the word comes on the soundest authority. WHEAT - 2 and it may be that Italy will turn into a great wheat producing nation. And furthermore, it is sifcxiiKKX obvious that a hundred and thirty-one-bushel-an-acre. of wheat would create something of an economic revolution all over the world, “Redt CW'ep-'V) £TV\ '“ttCodt I ^ /O ^ — ____ \w ^ r^et^cJL —$~e<e-vv. rVz-J^, 'v~3"j <y ^ •; ••••• ’ l __ \9V f-e^i d^—tx^x^r “feoe. ^<^>v vvu^ ^-urzrvc^