—-SUNOCO PHI, , DEC . 27, 1935 CPU ic,r '-he firs* time in forty years the Tennessee River is frozen ovor. In Florida the cold is raising havoc V;it i tne citrus fruits. Jack Frost is gleaming white on the t fields in tne 'jetton Belt, The iiqvjb comes "frigid and icy" from way down South in Dixie, so you can guess what it is farther north -- blizzards in the West, snow storms and hitter cold in the Mississippi Valley and snappy here in the East. Two hundred people reported to have perished in the countrywide cold snap. Around on the other side of the world, itfs the same story -- with tales of perilous adventure thrown in. Look at the map of Eastern Asia, Siberia, - on your Hammond or Rand McUally Globe that you got for Christmas. The barren and frigid Peninsula of Kamchatka extends south and half** encloses the Sea of Okhotsk. There a hundred men and women are toiling in a cruel journey tonight, struggling amid the ice- hummocks of a frozen sea, trying +o get to safety. r?o:LD - 2 "hey were passengers of the Russian steam-ship LC2GVSKI, wlxiol'i was navigating in the Sea of Okhotsk, when the ia e formed so swiftly that the ship was caught, locked in, ice-bound. Calls of distress went winging. /aid rescue started on its way. mhe Soviet ice-breaker, KrassinJ The Krassin, with the driving specialized power of an ice-breaker, went churning and crashing through the frozen barrier. Then the rescue ship itself got stuck, the Krassin locked immovaoly in the ice, thirty miles from the marooned LOZOVSKI. And there the trwo ships stayed, both helpless. So the hundred passengers and the crew of the LOZGVSKI, in danger of having their ship crushed about them, had to start out across the ice afoot. Right now one sailor and one passenger are known to have been lost - while tonight the rest of them are trudging in a desperate bli zzard - swept journey across the ice. How, on your map, you'll see that the Russian city of Baku is thousands of miles from Kamchatka— on the Caspian Sea. The Caspian is not far northern sea. Yet in the world-,vide odd COLD - 3 snap it’s frozen over too -- solid. in spite of the fact that its water is a heavy salt brine. There, too, a passenger steamer is ice-looked. Eighty passengers aboard, not counting the crew. They’re sticking to their ship, while airplanes have been trying to rescue them. But the snow storm has been so dense the planes have been unable to reach the ship -- driven back by the blizzard. CHINA The missionaries are getting some of the blame in the Far East* The Japanese are accusing them of being Partly responsible for the student distsorbances in China* The Tokio Foreign Office issues a statement that most of the students xs storming around in all that anti-Japanese agitation are from the missionary schools —— American and British narssxozvaxyi schools* \ Tokio claims moreover that Ml the missionary^aehcgjta^ have beai inspiring the anti-Japanese raging and rioting of their pupils. ^ -fit# '• Maybe there is something in it -- in « seose that almost any school is likely to be a center-of national and patriotic fervor.^Meanwhile, the student picture in China remains about the same —- only more so* The fact that it is the same is astonishing enough -- those crowds of students still staying obstinately in those railroad trains. It is several how days ago now since we heard they seized trains in Shanghai and demanded to be transported free of charge to banking, there to protest against Japanese aggression, ^They are still sitting in the coaches* refusing to budge. The railroad CHINA - 2 authorities won’t move the trains and send them puffing on their w^y -- not as long as the students stick to the coaches. So it1 s a deadlock with the trains at a stand still. And that curious form of rehellion now has spread to other parts of uhina. The stuhoorn students sitting in the coaches hour after hour, day after day, daring the authorities to oust them >’* use of violence, a spectacular demonstration of that characteristic and passive resistance of the Orient, Railroad service is disrupted £» many parts A A of china. Angry feeling against the Japanese is running so high in the old Par Eastern land^ it has made even Tokio pause. The Japanese are holding off, delaying —« refrain**^. • to from making any announcement as yet^what they are going to do about it all FRANC fl Last nights forecast of what Premier Laval would tell the Chamber of Deputies was borne out pretty blosely . & ' by what actually said today. One of the things predicted was that he would make a formal public statment that rrance would give rritain arsed support if the Italians made an unprovoked attack on the British fleet. Let’s see xk how the French Premier expressed that today. He put it in the sharpest form when he replied to an attack by Leon Blum, Iris* Socialist leader sax. in the chamber of deputies. Blum attacked Laval’s policy, saying it was: "A personal foreign policyw — and that it had been discredited by other European nations. In a^siwHP^reply to the Socialist leader the Premier described kot his diplomatic action in these terms; "I unders-feow#* said he, "that France would help Britain if she is attacked by Italy, and I want to repeat that publicly. ^ ^his is the first outright^ statement before the world .trench support to Britain. Of course, we heard often enough before that the thing had been agreed upon in private promises between FRANCE - 2 statesmen. Kow it’s public. Last night we heard that -Uaval again would come out for pe^ce, would declare himself for settlement of the Etniopian trouble so as to avoid the danger of a European war. And he did just that today in significant phrases. He made the cool observation that the purjjose of international law was to avoid war, not to enlarge and extend a war and spread it to other nations. Similarly, while announcing that France was loyal to the League of Nations, he said pointedly that the League was created to help the cause of peace — not war. Laval flashed his cleverest mental acrobatics when he defended the boomerang-peace-agreement with Sir Samuel Eoare. He said it was unsatisfactory in spots, but that it would have been an effective way to strike out the danger of a European conflict. His reasonings followed the line taken oy Sir Samuel Hoare in his own defense before the British Parliament the line that the peril of a disastrous struggle was so great FRANCE - 3 that heroic peace-making-remedleg were justified. I j i d efend ing th at same peac e s ch eme, Lav al add res sed some sour remarks in the direction of Mussolini. He said the Suce Didn't help the pe.ace proposition along. He should have accepts i i promptly. Instead he didn't display a proper appreciation o* its merits. And he mentioned how the Suce in a speech had made some menacing remarks that hadn't helped things along either. All day the Chamber of Deputies rang with oratory as the parliamentary debate swung along. The chamber will reconvene again at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. More than seventy Deputies are scheduled to speak in the discussions and that's a lot of Deputies sJk and a lot of speech making. Still it looks as if they will confine themselves to com­ paratively few woids each because the predictions are that the proceedings will end late tomorrow -- with a vote. They will vote confidence or no confidence -- naval in or out. The chances are -- in. ITALY Tl'1ie Itallan8 continue to prepare for all possibilities of trouble. It is hard to tell how far LussoXini will play .his hand) but the faces he is making are giim and serious -- making war-like faces on the sea an;> in. "-he sky,. We have the latest word from Colonel. Pedro de Valle. Not an Italian Colonel. He’s American Attache assigned to Rome, He gives us some comment on the warship maneuvers the Italians have just staged in the Red Sea, He's with them. The oceanic sham battles were under the command! of the Duke of Spoleto and the American Attache cables that the Italians have concentrated in the Red Sea the most powerful fleet th-.y have ever had on the waters between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, out there on the shores of their embattled colonies in Africa URUGUAY Diplomatic relations broken -- no not between Great Britain and Italy. And that's lucky. A diplomatic break is frequently a prelude to war, but in this case the two quarreling nations might have difficulty in getting together for a fight. Because one is South American Uruguay, and the other is^Soviet Russia, They are well separated by plenty of distance. Today the government at Montevideo handed the Soviet Minister his passports. They told Bed Representative Alexander Minkin and his whole communist staff Uruguayan government anno1,meed yesterday that they would expel the Russian mini ster« but. tod ay it's not only that — it's a / complete severance of diplomacy between the two countries. South America without one shred of- diplomatic relation witn the Soviets, Uruguay was the only nation of the southern continent which recognized Red Russia, tne only one ->hat had direct diplomatic and trade relations with Moscow, '/i/hat s This event today leaves the entire continent of A happened? It's that same old story — Communist agitation URUGUAY - 2 Remember that revolt in Brazil a couple oi weeks ago, the one that was quickly suppressed. The Brazilian government at the time declared the insurrection had been fomented by the Reds. Now th^ claim £t is amplified and A the trail leads to Uruguay. Brazil relates that her revolutionary trouble was stirred up by the Communist leader Louis Prestes, and that the Red trouble maker came into Brazil from the Uruguayan capital. Such are the representations that Brazil made to the authorities at Montevideo# And this only climaxes what South American newspapers have, been saying widespread for monthsl-that t&e revolutionary csuapaigns all over South America are being inspired from Montevid eo^ the Uruguayan capital was the headquarters of agitation directed by the Third Intemationale^and that the ring leader of it all was the Soviet Minister A Those are large and spacious charges of Red plotting, Communist conspiiacy —- but they aren't all# The Uruguayans believe that the Soviet diplomats have only been fooling around URUGUAY - 3 wit!i Re^ revolution all over Soutli America but that they have been ecncentrat ing on Communist propaganda within Uruguay itself -- trying to start something right there in Montevideo. That was bringing things too near to home, and explains why today the Uruguayan government acted so drastically -- expelled the Soviet Minister and brohe relations with Moscow, CONGRESS A week from today things will get going under the big round t dome of the Capitol In Washington. Congress will reconvene. And here's one^^tetJ^that will^Sjf£s»' The Presi- denti&l message will be delivered in person by Mr. Roosevelt. this on the very sound authority of Speaker-of-the-House S Byrns^ Mfho add®# that the President make his personal appearance on either the first day of the session or the second, either Friday or Saturday.— The Speaker also tells us what Mi*. Roosevelt will talk about. Number one -- the budget, the burning issue of how much the government is going to pay out and take in Af/t f and balance the books with how much red ink. Number two the bonus. In the last session the President took a mighty decisive stand against the immediate payment to the ex-soldiers. Bonus agitation has been increasing. What will he say in his person­ ally delivered special message? Number three -- neutrality. WeT11 hear the White House stand on that immensely complicated Question of how to keep out of war. -These- speaker Pyrnij^e^th^principa! topics of the forth-coming president SENATE Elmer Benson is a prominent politician in Minnesota. Earm politics is his specialty. He’s tins leader in the Farmer- A ^ahor party. Up to now he’s been State Banking Commissioner. But not any more. He goes to the United States Senate. Today Governor Olsen of Minnesota appointed Benson to complete the term of the Late Senator SchallJ . Senator Schall, the blind legislator, was cut off in the midst of his term in Washington, when he was struck by an automobile. Jja«t/^is place taken by a Farm-Labor leader who will continue the Minnesota agricultural interest in Congress GEOLOGY It certainly was an inspiring thing today to learn the exact age of Duluth Gabloro. The secret was let out at the forty-eighth annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. (Of course, it was interesting to find out how old tae Palisades of the Hudson are. Those majestic cliffs are ratner young, one hundred and seventy million years young.) But Duluth Gabbro -- not Garbo - ah that’s really old. The geologists of the country in Hew York in annual stoney conclave at the Waldorf, give us Duluth Gabbro * s exact age as five hundred and thirty million years, how do they know? Well, by the popcorn method. Ho, those geologists don’t pop corn and count the grains .and figure out geological ages that way. '""he popcorn method has something to do with exploding atoms. But let’s not go into that. Anyway, Duluth Gabbro is five hundred and thirty million years old. But., she is well preserved for her age. But, who is she? Hot Garbo - Gabbro. Old Stone-Bace from Duluth. I looked her up in my big Eunk and Wagnalls dictionary and in V/inston's too and hound she is a whole family -- a family GEOLOGY - 2 of granular, igneous rocks composed of basic plagioclase, usually XaLradorite, with a ferroraagesian mineral (augite, hypersthene, or hornolende.) That’s what you say when you greet a Gahbro. And -- SOLOh'G ULTIL MOHDAY.