L^l.. - SONOCO. MONDAY. JDNE 16. GOOD EVEl^ING EVERYBODY: President Roosevelt certainly produced a sensation in ordering all Germaui consulates closed, yjpong those taken by surprise are many Nazi consular offices. The chancellor of Hitler’s consulate at St.Louis admitted thay the President’s order had been expected, but, not so soon, ^yalso said, what many others are / saying, that the Nazis wij»l no doubt retaliate. f i Captain Fri^z Wiedemann, Hitler’s quondam pal who is now consul-general at/San Francisco, admitted the President’s order , /, comes as a comble^re^^^rprise to him. I " Mr. Roosevelt’s order makes a pretty clean sweep of all the Nazi activities in this country - that is, all open activities. all the open sources of propaganda, espionage and sabotage He orders all the propaganda offices closed including the German Library of Information, the German Railway and Tourist Agency and hm - ^ Trans-ocean News Service. first it was assumed that this meant a well nigh complete break-up of diplomatic relations. But in later disoatches from Washington it was emphasized that this positively does not go tJaat far and that the order does not affect the German Embassy at Washington. So, there will still be formal means of communication between Hitler’s government and our own. In WasMngton it was taken for granted the Nazis will retaliate as the chancellor at the consulate of St.Louis predicted. There is even speculation as to whether the Nazis will throw out the American correspondents at Berlin. Retaliation for the President’s kicking out of the Trans-ocean Goebbels News Agency. Immediately after Mr. Roosevelt’s order was promulgated. the police placed a guard around the consulate in New York. Merely as a precautionary measure. When Father Knickerbocker’s cops arrived they found a crowd already there! Today’s startling order was aommunicated to the German Embassy by the State Department and its text is interesting. It sets forth that it has come to the knowledge of this government - i LEAD - 3 4. ^German Retch In this country, Including German consular establishments, have been engaged in activities wholly outside the scope of their legitimate duties. AncL^adds, .Wwifthese 7\ ^ \ activities have been of an improper and unwarranted character. The communication of the State Department states further that these activities rendered the continued presence in the United States of those agencies and consular establishments inimical to the welfare of this country. ^^The communication was over the signature of Sumner Wells^*# Acting Secretary of Stat^and stated he that ^ was directed by the President to request that all German sxisxH± nationals connected with the agencies mentioned and all German consular officers, agents, clerks and employees of German nationality shall be removed from American territory before July Tjp- Tenth. n Sumner V/elles ends with ttx© A words, "Accept, L Sir, the renewed assurance of my high consideration." J^lly The new^ wa# a complete surprise Pik Berlin^ ^ut g y\jp evokoA no official comment. The Wazis have not yet taken time to duplicate Mp. Roosevelt's order freezing Italian and German funds LEAD . 4 in America, ,>c- ■ ■ V .-.'w One sensational feature ffrflnv' M tlrat lt~ly liU i d<r>ioi. >j / r / ' ^ Ul fu. .V while the ink is hardly dry on the decree froze all <r\y^ ---------------------- -----L Ayis funds here, A Today it became known that the freeze order goes for the funds of the German-American Bund and other Fascist organizations in the United States, It also became known today that agents of the Treasury, Department of Justice and the State Department are sleuthing around, tracking down disguised Axis funds. Over in Rome, M^^ssolini beat Hitler to it in retaliation for that freeze order. But he made his more drastic^ BB~T!iurdi^it apply to the personal funds of all Americans now •N residing in Itily, some five thousand of them, That^produced some serio-comic results. For instance, Americans in Rome suddenly found All their charge accounts shut off in their favorite restaurants and cafes. Then came the butcher 2 nd the grocer asking for cash, which the banks would not cough up. Very soon the telephone lines in Rome were exceedingly busy with Americans LEAD - 5 trying to borrow from one another. Reynolds Packard, head of the Dj^ited Press Bureau in the Eternal City, had been asked out to dinner tonight. But his host told him that the dinner was off unless Packard would lend him a hundred lire, meaning five bucks. The host in question had a five hxindred dollar express order which arrived over the weekend mmk couldn^t A get a nickel on it. So officials of the AmericaiiEmbassy were busy around the^&Mc±!^ Foreign Office, trying to make arrangements for American residents to get enough cash to eat on. It has been estimated that the freezing of American funds in the A^is countries won^ tie up between five hundred and ^ A six hundred million dollars. However, all those hundreds of millions were tied up already by the Nazi and Fascist governments as for several months it has been impossible to draw from Europe. ALUMINUM i.S The Aluminum Company oT America became the target ^ T ot some harsh remarks by Secretary Harold Ickes today. The Secretary of the Interior was testifying before the Senate '-'ommittee investigating defense production. Chairman Truman asked him about the shortage of aluminum. And Ickes replied. Said II he; ”If it ever has to be written that this war was lost, it may j be because of the recalcitrance oflthe Aluminum Company of America.^ ^ He then went on to accuse the Alcoa of trying to block the government in an effort to expand the country’s aluminum resources. Senator Tom Connally of Texas then suggested that if the Alcoa did not watch out, the government might take a hand. The Senator from Texas is the author of the bill which the Senate has already passed, giving the President power to take over any defense plants that fall down. OIL FOLLOW ALMtlJIOM It has been suggested that the threatening moves which Hitler is rumored to be making against Russia are caused by a shortage of oil. The Foreign Rolicy Association today tells us this is not so. And that Hitler has plenty of oil for even his prodigious military machine. B\Jt, we are told he has not enough to make the economic machine of Europe work properly A survey of the petroleum situation shows that the Nazis control only two and a half per cent of the petroleum production of the entire world. The British control ten and a half per cent, in addition to which they have access to almost unlimited additional supplies, meaning ours. In this connection. Secretary Ickes as Coordinator of the American Petroleum Industry told a press conference that he had ■ii never seen a greater or more commendable willingness to cooperate with the government than that displayed by the American oil industry. And he added that he believed there was nothing the government could suggest that they would not be willing to do. f f I'j ^6 DIET We*ve been hearing considerable of late about malnutrition in our own country. Some saying that one-third or more of the American people are poorly fed — suffer^ing from bodily deficiencies brought about by improper diet. Well, the Institute of Food Technologists at Pittsburgh heard a statement to the contrary today. Dr. Tobey did admit that the diet standards among our people 1 do need improving. But, he said, the physical examination of one million men for the draft indicated that hardly fifteen per cent might be suffering either directly or Indirectly from Improper nourishment. li; I I ii INDICTMEI^TS went into »er±w action today in a A / campaign against the rising prices of food. The law officers have started with certain people and firms in the pea canning industry. Sixty-nine companies and individuals imvm indicted by a federal A grand Jury at Chicago. Bwy=«»4ccused of being in a conspiracy to reduce the area of the ground planted to peas, to regulate the Sj number of cans each nuaning canner pack^'^and to fix 'A '•) ppiooc pQ-id by tha consumer.p-''""^’^’"^-'^^# The grand Jurors handed down true bills against thirty-one canning compahies, thirty-five officers and employees h of those companies? alsc^the Canned Pea Marketing I^titute and the Canned Pee. Market and Cooperative \ \ aowo- wao eiren oct indicates this wa# merely the first of a series of moves ^ _ ___ __ the Department of Justice.i5=:^a±ng:::to=:setesf»te I ks II^STAL^iENTS 1 An important government officiaj. issued a warning today which will concern a great many people. The gist of the warning is that we should go easy with buying things on the instalment plan. A«4-Uwa:Liiutm*4..X*<m Emil Schram, Chairman of the Board of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Schram was talking to the A National Retail Credit Convention whom the problem concerns intimately. He told the credit- men that pay checks are growing. unemployment decreasing and the national income this year will approach the eighty-five billion dollar mark. To which he added that the considered opinion of our financial leaders is that we cannot in timesjlike the present mortgage the future to uncontrolled instalment purchases. ROBIN MOOR I '> 7 As many of you no doubt have heard, the survivors of the American ship, the ROBIN MOOR, are safe at Capetown* But fortliis no thanks are due to the Nazis. For the commander of the U-boat that torpedoed the American ship appears to have been none too concerned about what happened to them. Full details have not yet come, but the seven missing passengers and twenty-eight of the ROBIN M00R*s crew were rescued by a British craft and landed at Table Bay, at the tip of South Africa, So far as we know, here^ what happened when the Nazi U-boat stopped the ROBIN MOOR. The submarine signalled to the freighter's master to send a boat with its papers. A lifeboat commanded by the chief officer rowed a mile-and-a-half to the submarine, where the mate identified his vessel as an American ship. Thereupon, the German gave the Americans twenty minutes to abandon ship. The mate expostulated, pointed out they could hardly lower their boats and get the crew and passengers into the boats in such a short time. Thereupon, the Nazi said all right, and gave them half an hour from the time the chief mate returned to the ROBIN MOOR. When the passengers and crew were in the boats. £OBIN MOOR - 2 and had rowed clear of the ship, the Nazis fired a torpedo at the helpless Yankee vessel and then shelled her until she went down. The brief bulletin from Capetown hints at another of those thrilling stories of an eleventti-hour rescue on the high seas. For over here hope had been abandoned for the thirty-five Americans adrift on the South Atlantic. All the lifeboats of the ROBIN MOOR had rowed off together after the torpedoing. They had headed towards the Brazilian coast. At the end of five days they became separated, and only one lifeboat was seen by the Brazilian steamer, the one that took eleven persons to Recife, in Brazil. The eleven survivors in that boat say that the Wazi submarine commander had promised to broadcast the approximate position of the ROBIN MOOR’S lifeboats. Whether he did so, we don’t know. Depositions made by the eleven survivors from Brazil are being sent to V/ashington by airmail: WAR A fierce battle in N^rth Africa, another just as ferocious ^ in Syria I Sir Archibald Wavell appears to be making an all-out drive on L^bya, B^th the Italian and the German high commands 4 admit that the Imperial forces have let loose^^^a(i=a»=«^ attack on the Solium front# From the British side we hear that Sir their Archibald Wavell*s desert fighters have pushed jth* lines to /< A within forty miles of Tobruk, but the Australians are still Withstanding a desperate siege.y — 7 ^ The Nazi high conmylnd claims that the British have / lost sixty tanks in assault and that German X / planes have bombed enemy/columns and mechanized concentrations / with disastrous effect^ hut the British claim to be pushing ahead toward th^ ^^li^f of Tobruk# In ^ria, the French General Dentz started a counter-offensive against the Free French column advancing on Damascus#) However, the British and Free French allies have captured the place called Kissooe, ten miles to the south of Damascus, and Vichy admits that in spite of the counter-offensive the Allies are still holding that place# ’ ; : /l H i 1 WAR - 2 From Beirut we get a story of a dramatic naval engagement, British warships came steaming up to the entrance of the Bay of Beirut, early this morning, w'hen suddenly the citizens of the port woke up to the thunder of naval guns. Two French destroyers had the hardihood to engage the British warships and for half an hour cannon thundered not only within earshot, but within full view of hundreds of Beirut citizens. Finally the British withdrew, and the French destroyers retired into the inner harbor. I CHURCHILL The baccalaureate ceremonies at the University of Rochester, Hew fork, were quite unusual today. One of the men to receive a degree was the Right Honorable Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain. B^t he couldnH be there in person to be made a Doctor of Laws by Rochester, so that part of the exercises was conducted by radio. Churchill’s address accepting the honor was broadcast over the networks of the National Broadcasting Company, ^^e said he felt he almost had the right to speak from Downing Street to Rochester University mi Uliu jjiiiyiil because his Mother was born there, and his Grandfather, Leonard Jerome, lived there for many years. In fact, Leonard Jerome used to edit the ROCHESTER PLAIN DEALER, It was a speech full of characteristic Churchill phrases. Whatever happens, he said, the British will endure to the end. The old Lion with the lion cubs at i her side stands alone against the hunters armed with deadly weapons and impelled by desperate and destructive rage. Then he asked;- "Is this tragedy to repeat itself once more?" He answered the question himself with 4 i : Li r CHDRCaiLL 2 tne words, "No, thi^s not the end of the tale. The stars in their courses,” declared Churchill, ^proclaim the deliverance of mankind. United we can save and guide the world.” (f ' M t T i I