L.T .-SUNOCO.___WEDHFSDAY. MARCH I. I9i2 GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: r > In this war,good news is ominous. A- 5^ followed by reports of disaster worse than before Yesterday we had favorable accounts from Java, the hig I command of the United Nations claiming that the situati was well in hand. That’s an unfortunate phrase, "well in hand." We heard it frequently from the British side while the Japanese were talcing the Malay Peninsula. ' I Today the sequel to yesterday’s well-in-hand pro-tty—diciiitato "TWf V I «-fr A It is revealed in one small sentence which the censor allowed to slip through, a sentence which reads that the air support of the United Nations apparently has collapsed. That-p LEAD - 2 I iilT IIII f'ltfi liiiH tiiil.i ftnce the air force of a defend irg /A army becomes impotent, it*s only a matter of time*' \ =»telct==fei»^=jLt tlia’t. The immediate consequence is that the Japanese control of the sea approaches to Java is practically absolute. J kxsd Nit seems probable today that the naval forces of the United Nations in those waters have also ? ggt aanihi"lg^'g4^ Evidently a good deal had been censored out of the reports that came to us during the past two weeks. were given imoression that the Allied naval and air forces had blasted the daylights out of the Japanese in the nearby waters ia < l uo , Tonight the Netherlands headquarters in London | announces that the Japanese have torpedoed and sunk two Dutch cruisers:gut not say whether those were in % I'. m ^ j iv' V f LEAD - 3 addition to the two cruisers which the Netherlands high command in the Indies had already admitted r iTTT-ino^ lost. At any rate, the Dutch in London acknowledge that the torpedoing of th<=^«^ two cruisers "tdii cjUJUlfl*. is a crippling blow to the Allied sea power^^and that the Allied nations* fleets in the Pacific area have been so cut up that it is impossible for them to attempt a counter-offensive now. The Netherlands officials in London go even further. They declare that the southwest Pacific command collaosed when General Wavell was withdrawn and sent to India. Tokyo today claims that its army in Java now 1 has comolete control of the railroad between Batavia and Bandung, and that the firces of the United Nations have been separated. Analyzing the story from Japan, it looks as though the number of troops in Java kxx« has been^e xaggerated. The Japanese have eighty-five thousand LEAD . 4 landed on the island, and they say that the Dutch to begin with had no more than fifty thousand, but since then their army has been increased to a hundred thousand. Whatever their numbers, the soldiers(of the United Nations, including a crack American outfit from Texas, were finding out today-what the British defenders of Crete and Singapore were up againiZjAn American reporter with those troops uses these words:- "I know how great is the Jap air superiority, for I lay in a roadside ditch with our soldiers this afternoon and joined in their curses when no Allied planes appeared to challenge the enemy fighters and bombers that were blasting the highway in front of us.*’ He adds that the Japanese are not having it I all their own way.^^^.e Allied forces are fighting if stubbornly, sometimes even throwing the enemy back. ! 1 though they have to match their eight ton tanks against EAD - 5 Japanese ten tenders with heavy cannon. I American and British newspapermen visited tlie 5 front today following the same road they had yesterday, but when they got to the point they had reached yesterday, the Dutch soldiers turned them back because of the increased dangers from Japanese filtering through thejlutch lines. One big Dutch soldier grumbled that he had been looking for Japs for three days but hadn’t found one yet, .because they hide so well. tedVVe have of fic ial word for it that this battle of Java is a bitter struggle, but the Netherland A army will fight on to the bitter end. The only miracle that could save them would be the sudden and apparently unexp<=cted arrival of several hundred bombing % fighting planes AUSTRALIA Another raid on Port Darwin Australia. Reading between the lines of the official coramunicatio! a savage one. The Japanese bombers, amply protected by fighters, came over in two heavy Low flying planes machine-gunned the airdrome, destroying on the ground not only Australian planes but installations. r I 9 ■ % b -0 r MACARTHUR iSf news coaies (3ne note of cheer in today’s war from General MacArthur, As we have known, his air force is almost .1 * i 1 non-existent, just a couple of pursuit planes. But those few were mighty effective today. They staged a surprise raid near Olongapo, former United States Naval base. Also at Grande Island in Subic Bay, northwest of Batan. Tiny as it was, MacArthur’s diminutive air force did real damage to Japanese shipping. sinking two large ships and two smaller craft: one a ship of ten thousand tons, and another of eight i thousand.’ Nice going, that! And, the latest communique just in reports that MacArthur’s fliers bagged still another Japanese vessel, one of twelve thousand tons. : These raids,we learn, are in accordance j with the MacArthur stmtegy, best expressed with the J MACARTHUR - 2 words "Hit 'em and keep 'em guessing." General MacArthur today gives us the first report we have had on Japanese prisoners. Some his troops have taken. The average weight of the captured Japanese is a hundred-and-twenty-five and a-half pounds; average age between twenty-three and twenty-four years. The youngest prisoner, nineteen years old; the oldest, thirty-one. The average length of service a year—and-a-half. Seventy percent i of them have grammar school education, fifteen percent! high school. The news from Burma tonight comes to us from Rangoon by way of London. That's rather encouraging because it means the British High Command still is in Rangoon. 11 Burjaa^^uU et-rh^tells^us is that the^ritKi'sh h^e been Jm conta^ol with n;yfth§,arat of j^^u witlx^oth ta^s" and inf^jrtry RUbi-IA The nev/s from Russia tonight again centers around that Nazi army corps that the Peds have encircled at htaraya Russa. The soviet dispatches report those ninety thousand Germans as hopelessly trapped, enclosed in a ring of steel. The Russians say they have frustrated’ all Nazi efforts to fly in provisions to the trapped Germany army corps. I I Lioscow also claims to have destroyed more than hundred German planes in three days. ..As for the Nazi communique, it refers principally to Sevastopol and Kerch, and claims to have inflicted further loss and damage to the Russian defenders of both. But in London the German communicue is interpreted as an admission that it's the Nazis v^ho are now on the defense in that peninsula - in the Crimea. BOMBING There is no doubt today about the effectiveness of that British Royal Air Force raid on Paris. The damage the British bombers did is announced with loud complaint's by fix Vichy. The R.A.F. bombers left wide industrial areas of the suburbs of Paris in ruins. So says the Petain Government^ They also killed six hundred and fifty people and injured fifteen hundred. The Nazi- ^ controlled press and radio ‘of Paris claim fifteen hundred dead. The R.A.F. lads who took part in the raids, j| using the new heavy bombs, relate that they flattened buildings and factories like packs of cards. In fact. 1 some of the heaviest blew the buildings hundreds of feet into the air. But no attack was made on Paris itself. Only the outskirts, where factories are located,where munitions for the Nazi Array are turned out. And the raid is to be repeated. Naturally, there’s a good deal of wonder as to what the ] b ± 7 BOMBING political repercussion will be: Will it drive the ^4 u II Petain Government further and further into the arms of Hitler and deliver the French navy and French bases in Africa over to the Nazis? At any rate, we hear that Petain is going to proclaim a funeral day for the victims of the raid, a national day of mourning. The descriptions of the raid confirm reports r' l that the latest types of heavy bombs create j destruction such as nob-ody has yet seen. If Goering*s;| air arm had used bombs of such weight -- some of them | four thousand pounds -- that is, used them on London and other British cities, the story of the raids of Nineteen Forty andForty-one would have been even more terrible. ■I TROOPS Several thousand more of Uncle Sam*s doughboys have been landed on the soil of ^hat is politically called Northern Ireland. (The last time I called it "Northern Ireland" v^ithout qualifying, I receiveda salvo of indignant letters.) At an unident­ ified spot somewhere in the north, of Ireland, the first man to walk down the gangplank was Master Sergeant Dorrance Mann of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Eis colonel had picked him to lead the disembarkation for the excellent reason that a little over twenty-four years \4 ago, Dorrance W. Mann, then just a buck private, was i in the A.E.F. that wdnt to irance . In World War Number One he fought at the Marne, Chateau Thierry, Toul, the Argonne and St. Mihiel. ?or that previous war he landed in Liverpool -- December Twenty- First Nineteen Seventeen. Said SergeantqMann today: "I never TROOPS - 2 thought twenty-four years ago that I would come over again.” Then he added v.'ith a grin: "This time I rode A a little higher up in the ship." Active service at forty-five years of age^offer^ no forbidding picture to tha4: master sergeant. As he explained.^he used to be a ^ A A mail carrier and he likes to walk, likes to marchy and traveling on a troop transport is old stuff to him. Incidentally, the commanding officer of that contingent today, in civil life a lawyer, is a veteran of the field artillery ^Yigiin the last war. Most of the contingent are huskies from the mid-western states. They were promptly sent out for toughening in the glens of Ulster, which are rated by the British military as a mighty tough seasoning ground. One detachment of that contingent belonged to the Rainbow Division in the last war, the Rainbow Division ^ then commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. TROOPS - 3 A few hundred American troops, it was announced today, have been sent to London. How many of them there are, we are not told, but they are to serve as headauarters detachment. §■ The Army is going to make one thing easy for men : •; who -are drafted. They will be given time to wind up their f affairs before going t~g caia^ This was announced by Brigadier-General Hershey,Director of Selective Service. There was a misunderstanding about it because according to the new procedure, men who pass ^he physical I 1 examination to return home to wait for notice,Tbe^*^r1^^^^?l^ But.n^ those who have unfinished business at home will be given furloughs by their commanding officers. W--- ROOSEVELT This was an anniversary for the White House. t was just ten years afo th^t Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President of the United States of A America.^ As in previous years, Mr. Roosevelt celebrated by poinr to Church. With a number of other top-ranking officials, he went to St.John’s Episcopal Church, just across Lafayette Park from the White House,^*3^ heard his former headmaster at Groton, the Reverend Endicott Peabody, offer the prayers. \l 0.C.D. Civilians, like soldiers, must learn to take orders. That's the v/ord from the Office of Civilian | ^ 1 Tefense today. But the O.C.D. qualifies and adds that A A it does not mean people must take officious dictation on their personal af‘fairs. However, free men must learn to cooperate self-defense. A The O.C.D. evidently was prompted to this —A-—^ announcement by the number of .crackjgr-Jiax. critics who have been trying to tell* the defense officials how ^ to run a blackout^ grnixing grousing ^ (yTiJUrvL/Ct^, the manner in which the blackouts were being ririv. A ^ They should remember, said the O.C.D., that the first % purpose of a blackout is military. They have been sounded in a hit-or-miss manner, and that, says an official of the O.C.D., is just the way they should be. 1 ANTI-AIR - JARMAN 4.-vV<si^r^ aid a visit to the anti-aircraft defenses of New York City. That is, I called on Major General Sanderford Jarman, at his headquarters on Long Island. The General is in command of all the anti-aircraft defenses of these Eastern United States, i from Maine to Florida. General Jarman is the leading expert in America on anti-aircraft. One of his recent jobs was strengthening the defenses of the Panama Canal. Viell, if the defenses up and down our East Coast were as impressive as General Jarman himself. it would be most reassuring. Jarman stands six-feet- j five, weighs around two hundred andlfifty, and is a most impressive soldier. But he admits frankly that v/e have a tremendous coastline to protect, and it will take some time before we have adequate defenses. \ AaTI-AIRCRAFTp-_jX In company with General Jarman I visited 1 I one battery on Long Island, a battery that defends the | apartment house in which I live and this skyscraper J from which I broadcast. So I naturally was vas tly interested in that particular battery. The guns were I formidable-looking. The instruments for spotting planes and drawing a bead on them, most complicated, ^ and likewise impressive. And the troops in that battery, some old-timers, andsotne lads who have recently joined up -- made one feel that they could handle their job. The guns and range-finders ixsid incidentally were cleverly camouflaged by a chap who sometimes plays on my ball team’, the NINE OLD MEN, the well-(^nown artist, now an officer in the Navy, Lieutenant McOelland Barclay.-- If Goering sends one of his long-range ^ j^2]^across the Atlantic to drop a few sticks of / bomfca on Radio City, that bomber will be shot down, \ by the battery I visited:—— ANTI«AIRCRAFT_-^ A plane from La Guardia Field passed overhead while we were there. General Jarman suggested that the lads in the anti-aircraft battery get its range, and go through all the motions of shootingjit down. Reassured though I was at everything I saw, and particularly by General and his men, the priicipal thought in my mind as I came away was: ”How right is the Chief of Staff General Marshall in warning.! us that we can*t. expect our soldiers to defend every d (j citizen's home. We are jTO^ spread over too much % territory for that. The war can only be won by concentrating our fighting power, and sending it against the enemy, and preferably against him somewhere^!