oc g^_j;R ID A Y^^££ 124 2 GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: Today at New Delhi in India, two swarthy men handed a three page document to a lean, blondish Englishman, who received the communication with all the gravity that the occasion demanded. He was Sir Stafford Cripps, British envoy. The other two were Maulana Abul Kalan Aza(}, the Moslem President of the Indian Nationalist Congress, and Jawaharlal Nehru, foremost of the active Indian leaders. 8 Today, Sir Stafford Cripps was handed his answer, thEee pages of answer -- three pages of rejection. Cripps^as informed that the Nationalist Party will not accept the offer of dominion status after the war. They demand -- full freedom right away XThe argument made by the Indian leaders points ■ ’ \ INDIA - 2 to the long standing distrust and hostility that India feels tovrard its British rulers. They argued that this hostility and distrust cannot be immediately obliterated by promises for the future - self-government after the war is over. To get India whole-%heartedly in the war oh the British side, the grant of freedom must be now. Today’s turn-down, however, need not be the last word by any means. The dispatch from New Delhi notes that Azad and Nehru talked with Cripps for an hour; with both sides trying to escape the responsibility for a break-down. And later on, Cripps made the following statement:- "I hope to have many more meetings with ray Indian friends." The assumption is that the talks will continue -- in search of a compromise. It is understood that London is willing to give the Indian leaders an immediate voice in the direction of the defense of the country. tr BU^MA The most important war news today is the Jaj'anese seizure of a place with a curious name -I Akyabi Few people will ever have heard of this town. I*m sure I wouldn’t, save for the fact that out East I traveled quite a bit in Burma and several times made the boat trip alonp the coast from Calcutta to Rangoon. Traveling that way\ you couldn’t help knowing ^Akyab|iiuraind^iu :B3aig»oa. usual sort of oriental harbor, iaxHiixHKKXXx rice port. That is, its xxxi peace time importance was - rice. /Today, i ». Akyab assumes an ominous significance, because it is north of the British-Chinese defense line extending from Prome tc Toungoo. By driving inland^ th'e Japs utflank the battlefront that the United Nations are holding^ The news of the enemy seizure of Akyab comes -J BURMA - 2 from the Chinese, who inf^icate that the operation bef’an se eral days a^o. They report that five thousand Jap soldiers were landed under the protection of more than a dozen v/arships. These included two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and five destroyers. And ^re Japs are still being landed. So no v/onder the Chinese Vre of the oninion that this new ominous move by the ene^ represents a major attempt to drive inland and outflank vhe whole Brit ish-Chinese front in central Burma. Mtrr^ovo^^ihe defenders face an even more sinister flanking threat but perhaps not so formidable. On the other side of their line and to the rear of it, a force of Burmese enemies have gathered. London has repeatedly made the comment that the position of the United Nations in Burma is constantly jeopardized because the people of Burma J MMA - 3 are consistently aiding the enemy - units of Burmese operating along with the Japs. All of which culminates with today*s account of a Burmese V force gathering to the rear of the defense line - and threatening to cut its communications. (/V The rice port of Akyab^has a meaning even larger than its flanking relation to the present battler in Burma. ^^It*s ‘only seventy-five miles from the border of India, and is less than three hundred and fifty miles across the Bay of Bengal, from India* metropolis, Calcutta. These are ominous distances - with reference to a possible Japanese blow at India. PHILirPINES Today on the far away fortress island of Corregidor they held a requiea service -- on Holy Thursday. And the music of the requiem was a thundering bombardment. Roaring Japanese guns and bursting enemy shells -- in place of the solemn tone of the organ. And so they buried Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Harries, an officer of distinction and fame. He was a veteran of the First V/orld War, and his father was a idajor-General in that previous conflict. Lieutenant- General MacArthur, now United Nations Commander, -^0 served under Major-General Harries in France a quarter of a century ago. Today*s funeral at Corregidor was final homage to a victim of wai^-- but what war? Lieutenant-Colonel Harries died in the Corregidor hospital where he was taken to be .treated for a leg wound. But the wound was not sustained in’the Philippines -- not in the present war at all. It was incurred in that other World War, -- from a bulletin battle in France^ The PHILIPPINES - 2 injury never quite got well, and because of it, Lieutenant-Colonel Harries retired fron the Army He started on a trip around the world to help to cure it, but never got any further than Manila. He liked it there and stayed. When the Japs attacked the Philippines he returned to active duty as a staff officer. And in the hardships of campaigning the old leg wound grew worse -- fatal. Today the funeral procession on Corregidor picked its way l^etween gaping bomb craters. Then as the Chaplain was reciting the service enemy guns across Manila Bay roared eut -- a bombardment. The Chaplain went on in a steady voice -- continuing the requiem on Holy Thursday with enemy cannon fire playing the part of the organ. Meanwhile further north on the Batan Peninsuia the American forces under General Wainwright were beating back two heavy enemy attacks. The Japs assaulted furiously but were repelled with equal fury. F.A.F. The British have been raiding far and wide in Germany and in German - controlled territory. The most effective blow reported today was against a fxKtpx factory in the suburbs of Paris, a plant making motor equipment for the Nazis/ The E.A.F. reports that its planes smashed the factory with heavy explosives. However, it would appear that the loss of life was not as great as in the previous P.A.F. bombing of factory near Paris. The latest Vichy dispatch states that only one nerson was killed, several injured. At Paris, the P.A.F. was aided by the weather,^bright moonlight^lSut British planes that flew into Germany tell another kind of weather story. It was moonlight when they took off from England, but they ran into heavy storms of rain and sleet. when they got to the Rhine. Desperately bad visibility. but still they were able to locate a railroad freight m B.A.F. - 2 concentration point, and bombed it heavily - blowing up a train. In all the raiding far and wide, fifteen R.A.F. bombers failed to return - a normal expenditure, says London, considering the magnitude of the air activity. I- SPEED Here's just about the strangest case of speed limit violation. The culprit didn't break the speed law in any automobile - but in a bomber flying the ocean in th*" ferry service from Newfoundland to Britain. He broke the record of the trans-oceanic flight - went winging from America to Europe in six hours and forty minutes. And that clipped more than an hour from the previous mark for the twenty-fou] hundred mile journey. It seems that there is a speed limit for those bomber ferry flights. The pilots are kept down to a certain of swiftness, and if they go any faster it is a punishable offence. So the speed demon pilot was put on trial, The inquiry revealed that his record-breaking exploit was accidental. Navigation conditions were exceptionally SPEED - 2 good, and he had a strong tail-wind all the way. So he didn’t know how fast he was going. In his big American-built bomber he had to circle the British airport for three hours before he could land. ^ had o A too large a load of gasoline to come down safely - RELIGION Here’s a report that in Nazi Germany, Paster Neimoeller has founded a new religious movement. The Reverend Martin Neimoeller is the y famed i« lira n rrb-er:r:o^ Christian conscience would not permit him to accept the doctrines of Hitler and the Nazis. So, he was put in a concentration camp, and has been there ever since - acclaimed by the democratic world as a martyr. Stockholm now reports that Paster Neimoeller, in his concentration camp, has founded a movement to unite Catholics and Protestants in one religious group, an All-Christian Church. The Swedish story says that he has gained many followers, Protestants and Catholics- this in snite of the fact that Church leaders are opposed to the new unification. And they say the Vatican is going to warn German Catholics that the Neimoeller plan is - "impracticable.” li 1 r BRAZIL In Brazil today, police arrested a woman cook - who, however, was neither a cook nor a woman That is to say, the kitchen work^ merely a blind. The prisoner is a Japanese army captain, on an espionage mission. For five years he had been masquerading in feminine clothes, and doing housework duties - as a disguise for his spying. DIES Hot words were flung in Washington today, an exchange of warned up syllables between the White House] and Chairman Martin Dies of the Dies Committee. 7Fr. Presidential Secretary Hassett made public a report from the Federal Communications Commission, saying that Axis propaganda radio stations have been using the recent accusations of Communism made by Chairman Dies. This referred to the charge that thirty-five members of the staff of the Board of Economic Warfare have had 7/hat Dies called, ’’affiliation with front organizations of the Communist Party.” He also declared that one member wrote a book advocating nudism. I don’t know what nudism would have to do with economic warfare - except maybe along the line of stripping the enemy of' his economic and ' A TP I • u leaving him naked to his enemies.’ However, the Communist nudist roar drew an indignant blast from DIES . 2 Vice-President Wallace, who is head of the Board of Economic Warfare. Wallace charged that the Dies statement was the equivalent of Nazi propaganda. Be sa“id—have boon lone—d^maginf—i-f b e H i 11 e All of which was followed today by the White House release of the report of the Federal Communications Commission. Presidential Secretary Hassett said he was giving the report to the public on his own initiative, and added that he didn’t know whether PresidentRoosevelt himself had seen it. The F.C.C. has been listening-in to Nazi propaganda bulletins, and quotes a whole string of them as gloating in the Dies accusation. They use it to support their own propaganda that Red influences are DIES - 3 rife in Washington, with Coiamunist elements active in the New Deal. All of which drew a prompt retort from Congressman Dies, wh o is sojourning in his native Texas. Dies countered with the following -- "To prevent the Axi^rom using this kind of material, the Administration should get rid of these people on the Economic Board -- throw out these advocates of nudism and dictatorship." PLANE PRODUCTION In Washington today blame was placed for the failure of airplane plants on the West Coast to operate at full capacity. The blame was allocated in a report made by the Senate Committee investigating the war program. Who get the black marks? Not labor, and not management. Theyhave been okay, says the Senate report -- which goes on to state that there is little basis for reports that the war workers are staging "slow-downs.* The blame goes to the armed services and the Office of Production Management, which has since been abolished. The Army and Navy and the O.P.M. failed to coordinate things with large scale arrangements -- "over-ail-planning." And that*s why the West Coast plane plants have not been operating at full capacity. In spite of this. however, the production of aircraft has increased immensely, "Several times greater than it was a year ago," says the Committee. Also making charges r PLAM^PRODUCTION - 2 of excessive profits in a chemical branch of war manufacture. 5i ’: » ANTHEM 7 ^ The War Department in Washington today issued a bulletin that has a melodious refrain, stately', solemn- ”0h Say Can You the Army, the Navy, and the Marines, have agreed on a standarized version of the national anthem. Having acquired a unified command, they have now achieved a unifired - ’’Star Spangled Banner.*' Hitherto, the bands of the Army, the Nrvy and the Marines, have had each its own individual arrangement, but now they’ll play the standardized version - which is in the key of A flat. The purpose of this lower key, is to make the anthem easier for Mr. and Mrs. average citizen to sing ~ troy-won’t have to crack tonsils on Mck high /\ /i A ^ notes. We all know the complaint that people couldn’t sing the Star Spangled Banner, and most often didn’t even try. In fact, instead of asking, "Oh Say Can You _ — ANTHEM - 2 See?”, a more pertinent question might have been, ”Oh, Listen Can You Hear?” But apparently all that is a thing of the past. Now that we have a unified national anthem in A flat. Of course, it isn’t guaranteed that A flat or m other key will turn us all into patriotic Carusos^ Some of us will still warble a bit shaky and sour. But don’t let that discourage you, says Major Harold Kent, Education Liaison officer at the War Department. And he speaks of the huff and puff style of the vocal art. Go ahead and raise your voices in the anthem - "whether you huff or v/hether you puff,” says the Major. And now I’ve done my huffing for the evening. A and we'll jjb let Hugh James ■/