from Berlin with a startling' souni. it states that tw‘=^nty ViAR -ere»s tne latest war bul etln tonieht -- a dispatch thousand Red Army troops in a tay body nave deserted to the Gormans, after killing tnelr political commissars, vhls Nazi claim is direct from Hitler’s field headqurirter^ and It reads as follows:- "After shooting their political commissars on Friday, twenty thousand of the still encircled parts of the Soviet Army near Minsk deserted. The mention of Red political commissars is unexpected, because that type of Communist functionary whx was supposed to have been abolished in the Red Army. The time was when political commissars were attached to every Red regiment -- ts to iCeep the soldiers firm in tne faith of bclshevisra and Stalin. Then, when the Rpd Army looked so bad In the war with the 5knns, the news was that the Communist political experts had been ousted - and full control given to military officers. But now Berlin tells of soldiers shooting the commissars. I m Y/AR - ^detSl 2.. r' The Hitler claim refers to MlnsK. Tnat*s Althln the hure trap in which the blitzkrieg is suppose! to have caught a large segment of the Soviet forces - half a mllHoh men. Several days ago Berlin told us that the encircled Red legions had been annihilated, and that only a mopping up process remained. Which makes it all the more surprising to hear of a body of twenty thousand troops deserting in the encircled area today. The German high command reports that the blitzkrieg forces have crossed the Berezina River, and are resuming their drive in the direction of Moscow. Tne River-crossing is atKxz described as a clashing affair of tanks. Ihe Soviets mobilized a ponderous tank force to oppose the Nazi iiechcnlzed column. Berlin claims that Stuka dive bombers blasted the Red tanks to defeat. -oontlnuti iflth'tlrL pai'agpaplfi^ P—The Wtn-pto^ujirj in gegep^l ” Berlin states that the Soviet retreat all along the front has now reached, what it calls, "The Stalin Line". Just wh'.t this may be is none too clear, but presumably the Stalin line is just inside the old border between the Soviets and Poland. I -J In the -‘‘ ^orth, at the Berezina River, the Panzer units have plunged more than fifty miles past that one-time frontier. Have they at iixir. this point driven through the Stalin line? ..e don’t kno^. Toaay’s Berlin version does not ^ive us so much about fted Array disorganization as yesterday- so such copious statements of desperate retreat, a veritable rout* Instead, the GeiTmans tal^c of bad weather, rain and even snow. This has slowed down the advance,^wet ground hampering the mechanized equipment. In London, i^oviet circles claim that the Nazi machine nas not yet encountered the main forces pf^the^ hed Army. These f are sti 1 to go in battle.^Neutral observers in Britain are of the opinion that the blitzkrieg is running behind schedule -is not up to the t.me table whicn the German high command had set. This - in spite of the fact that in driving to the Berezzina the Panzer forces smashea on for two hundred miles. They say that, according to the time table, the mechanised columns should be all the way to Smolensk by now - x* as, indeed, the unconfirmed rumor tells us they are. AS London sees it, the issue of battle d^ipends upon how much the ned Army lost in its early reverses, how much damage •Siih —o i^ji the Geraiiiis did in tacs swift drives that slashed through. Viliat A proportion of the coviet forces were cut off and eliminated? Berlin, of course, states that a huge Bed froce of hundreds of thousands was trapped and destroyed in one area alone. One London military expert pops up today and announces he was wrong. He made a mistake - in fact he made two mirntakes. hgo is this military expert, admitting his errors? He must be quite a paradox. He is infact that maste^of paradox, George bernarci oann’. in ti ^haw offers his apologies for naving be n wrong, before the war began - when he said that Hitler could take anythiiig in hurope he wanted and Great Britain wouian»t do anything about it. and more recently- when he proclaimed that Hitler would neyer attack c^talin, G.B.to. esplains today why he wai in error. "Knowing the strength and rtisourees of Russia," he *vrites, "I could not believe any man nith ntelligance enough to lace up his own shoes, could in the middle of a very xjib tough war deliberately If a. 7 \ V»iiR “4 cn>^ complete his ov»ri encirclement kmjlx and make war o>tf si> fronts.” And then George Bernard dhav. maKes the melancholy confession - that he may be losing his infailibality. London has an interesting rumor a^out what Hitler intends to do with Russia - v.hen and if he ousts his one-time pal, Btalin. They say that Germany pians a Russian monarehy - give the -.^covites a Czar once more. That*s an obvious idea. the old Imperial throne to take the place of the boviet form of government - though it sounds a bit out xb of date, like an Anachronism. The novel part about the London rumor c ncerns the person whom the Nazis p'an to make the monarch of Russia - a Prussian prince, a grandson of the late Kaiser, Prince Louis Ferdinand. He, as it happens, is well known in r>.merica. dome years ago he was in this country, and »»orked at the Ford Piant. In fact Prince Louis Ferdinand of Hohenzollem, grandson of the late Kaiser-, brags that he speaks German with - a Ford accent But what has this Hohenzollern to do with the dynasty of the Romanoffs? The answer is, he is married to urand i^uchess Kira, I i 4si^ daughter^ of to Grandduke Cyril who at one time was the A pretender to a non-existent imperial throne of hussia. That might seem to give the Hohenzollern Prince some sort of claim - though the present pretender is the Grandduke Vladimir, however, maybe Hitler won’t pay so much attention to the Gynastic theories of exiled royalty - not, at any rate, if the story from London is correct. O — lod^y, soae of the nations at war took xtos time out n to help i^erica celebrate the fourth of Jjly. ^nd here’s headline - Moscow: The doviet 'radio today gave one whole Dour to a fourth of July program - zuxuxx ^declaration of independence, George V*a3hi.-gton, no taxation without representation, and all that. The Moscow raaio expressed its fourth of July sentiments in these words:- ’’-.he w<oviet union, now fignting & great patriotic war of defense "sends ardent greetings to the -r.nerican people on the occasion of TP their glorious national holiday." It’s the first t.me csto Moscow has celebrated the f’ourth of July since i^enin and Trotsky were saying, "Comes the nevclution. 1 " OIL H6r6*s cx statement by President t'oosevelt on a subject often debated - tue use of alcohol as a motor fuel, mixing it California with gasoline. Recently, the^^^^i^AiXTWMOx Legislature adopted a resolution wnich says that alcohol as an auxiliary motor fuel would be a good thing for national defense. The President’s letter is ^ speaker Garland of the California Legislature, and states the following: ’’While it is true that‘a number of foreign countries process agricultural iKiterials for tne product .on of alcohol as a motor fuel, it is equally true that the motor fuel economy of countries possessing no petroleum resources is very different from such economy in the United States. It has. never been establiShed in this country.” ‘^i:ie Presidential epistle goes on, ’’Chat the Conversion of agricultural products into a motor fuel is economically feasible. or necessary for national defense ^nment- is at41 1 In .... . A- y plant—p ieohoJbwwith,— u.s.o. What effect is all this military training going to have on our boys^ It will make soldiers and sailors out of them; meciianics and aviators* We know thot* But^ away from home. herded into these huge new base camps, cut off from their friends and relatives, what are they going to do with themselves in their spare time, off duty? That’s a job which has been put up to the D.S.O., the United Service Organizations. A campaign is in full swing to raise nearly eleven million dollars to provide our boys in training with places to go and things to do in their off hours. And the heads of this campaign is my next door neighbor, Thomas E. Dewey. Mr. Dewey, (I forgot to mention he*s sitting beside me, our two families are going to a Fourth of July picnic together after this broadcast) Mr. Dewey, can you give us a homely illustration of why this campaign is being conducted? MR. D EWEY:- I could give you a hundred, Lowell, Here Is one There is a big army camp down at Livingston, Louisiana. One of the men there — a lad from lx Minnesota - told me why they need a recreation center near that camp, ^e's a bowling ran. And, ' '>■ I t| ttiS H Ih 'H U.S.O. - 2 by the way, I am amazed at the popularity of bowling. More people seem to be taking part in that sport today than any other. Well, he said that when he got leave from the camp at Livingston one evening and went into the town. In order to bowl just one game he had to stand in line for an hour and three quarters. The United Service Organizations hope to solve that and thousands of problems like itl‘ . Another boy told me why he thought our men should have some place to go when off duty. His answer was: ^When we go to town, we want to get off the streets"( L»Tk:- Mr. Dewey tells me that the figures for the entire nation are not available tonight* But he spoke in Buffalo a few days t ago, and since then Buffalo has subscribed fifty per cent more than its quota. Indianapolis has just sent wor4 that it has raised more than was asked of the Hoosier Capital. When the campaign organization was set up Tom, I recall stating on the air that it was with the idea of having five hundred organization centers. Now I understand the campaign has gone far beyond that. Xes, far beyond it. Three weeks ago when I was on the air with you we had organized tit)thousand, seven hundred communities. Now it has reached more than four thousand. And, this is astonishing, when you stop to think that there are only about tliree thousand counties in the whole United States. Right her in our own little farming neighborhood on Quaker Hill, Lowell, the committee has gone far over its quota. As you know, our little church, here has only fifteen members, and last Sunday the collection amounted to over one hundred and thirteen dollars, all of which went to the And then in the afternoon your Nine Old Men played a Softball game and still more funds were raised. It*s going the same, all over the country. One reason I am glad the enthusiasm of the U.S.O. drive is so great is this:- Another nine hundred thousand young men are now registering for service, soon to go into training. So the need for recreational centers is going to be far greater than was originally expected. LT.And, a Fourth of July broadcast ought to be a pretty good place to point out that this U.b.o. drive is a patriotic necessity - : - 4 in the interest of our men who are being trained so they will be ready to defend the freedom and independence of this country which came into existence exactly one hundred and sixty-five years ago. SNAIL Today may be the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to you, but it^s a lot more than that to Allen G Smith of the California Academy of Sciences. The ambition of his life was accomplished today - he received a snail. It’s a snail with a shell that goes around the wrong way. It appears that the shell in which the normal snail resides has a spiral that goes around clockwise, the way the hands of a clock revolve. But imagine the shell going round the other way - counter-clockwise. That occurs about once in a million times - an extraordinary freak of nature, enough to make a snail shellologist collapse with wonder and delight. All of which inspired the California professor with a great ambition. He started looking for a snail of the counter­ clockwise variety. He had his friends join in, hunting around in their gardens, he organized a veritable corps of snail detectives — seeking for that rarest of treasures - a wrong-way snail. This began years ago, and went along without result until now. Today the professor got the snail. It was discovered last night by one of his army of sleuths - a snail the shell of vSNAlL of which the spirals counter clockwise, oo^it may be a 1 glorious to you, but for Allen tJoiith of the California A A ---- Academy of ^^jciences it’s the day of the snail. tiere’s a man who says there are altogether too many snails in this country:- Just a few minutes ago my studio telephone rang. The long distance operator said that someone ^he wj down in Virginia wanted to talK to me. ( The war news had K©i55f is come in a little earlier this evening, I had a moment to spare which is unusual so late in the afternoon. So I picked up the phone.^In a rich Virginia accent man at the other end said to me:- My name Is Lambert^I happen to be K a descendent of the only man who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Corfstitution of the United States.^ Then he went on: peiople in this country are asleep: We are fools to allow Hitler to overrun this whole world. We are behaving like snails! T wish I could repeat it with his slow southern drawl, et any rate, he thinlis we are £nails,^we shoiM wake up as our forefather's did over one hundred and sixty-five I £NAIL5_- t ? ye^rs ago, and do somrtriing about it. Knd not I wondpr v-hat i \ sort of a Fourth of July message Hugh James has for us? RETAKE