h*.X, - Sunoco . THTTRgnAY. jamtaby 1Q^R LONG Secretary of War Dem still refuses to pass any military judgement on that most warlike question from Louisiana. The problem is - would it be all right with the government if they had a little civil war down there among the Bayous? The revolt against Huey Long, not having got any place in particular with ballots, now threatens to try it out with bullets. The anti-Kingfish Square Beal Association has been under cover ever since Huey ordered out the state troops to squelch them. The report is that they are now openly drilling with rifles preparing to use force in the overthrow of the Kingfish dictator­ ship, But being law-abiding citizens, the insurgents first appealed to Washington for permission to start their local civil war. They inquired of the Secretary of War if it would be okay with the United States Array, You can hardly blame the Secretary for not venturing a reply on such an embaraesing question. He has turned the appeal over to the legal experts of the War Department. A month from tomorrow will he the anniversary of the arrangement between the government and the airlines, the arrangement that concluded the period of dispute when the Army Air Service was flying the malls* More important than any anniversary angle is the fact that the aviation agreement was made for a year, and expires on March 1st* Some new set-up will have to he worked out between the administration and the airlinea* And that leaves one month for Congressional adtlon* Beeause today the President put the matter before the lawmakers* He did this by sending to Congress the report of the Howelfc Commission* This advisory body was formed to investigate air transportation and to formulate a plan for the future regulation of the sky routes. In Collier's Weekly, aviation expert, ¥. 4. B. Courtney, gives us an intimation that all has not been peace and harmony within the oommissiou. tt* He mentions two factions, one headed by Postmaster General Farley* The oommission finished its job and handed its report ,, * „„ turn passed it along to Congress today — to the President, who in turn passe in that Roosevelt expresses his ; jjh ill; h ll ' with a special message AVIATION - 2 disapproval of one section of the report. Publisher Clark Howell of Atlanta, and his associates, came to the conclusion that air transport in the country ought to be unified as a separate thing in itself — aviatioi to be regulated by a separate commission, (ve’ll recall that a few days ago the President sent to Congress a report on transportation by Coordinator Eastman, who advocates that all transport, railroads, boats, busses and planes, should be harmonized in one grand system and placed under the single regulating authority of the Federal Trade Commission. Obviously, there is a contradiction, A seperate air unification is one kind of fish. A general unification of all transportation, with airplanes as merely one part, is another kind. The President disagrees with his aviation commission on this point and supports Coordinator Eastman. He tells Congress that he does not believe that air transport should be organized separately. The program he urges on Congress is, in his own words:- "To create a unified federal control for all transportation facilities, air. railroad, land and water.- The other points aviation in the commission-report were given to Congress without comment by the President* They recommend that the aircraft of the Army and Navy be increased by eighty percent — also that the United States should establish a Trans-Atlantic air route by dirigible similar to the zepplin skyway the Germans operate between Europe and South America 1 LINDBERGH Tha last Incident in the court at Flemington today, came when the judge admitted the defense handwriting expert as competent to testify. His name is Charles U. Frendly and he will talcs the stand as the documentologist for • rf prosecution objected strenuously to letting Documentologist Frendly testify as an expert. They reeled off oases in which he had been mistaken^and laid empahsis on one in which he had made a crucial error, had been obliged to reverse himself, and lost the case for his client. Expert Frendly admitted that th4» was true. He explained it by saying he was testifying under very trying circum­ stances, and had gone up in the air. The other proceedings of the day featured four different witnesses on the stand* LODBERGH —• ^ T- 94 «js> three men swore - it was Hauptmann! Und 316 man sv-ore it v.as n_q_t. Each of the three testified he had seen Hauptmann in the Bronx on the night of the kidnapping. The other witness told that on uhe day of the kidnapping he saw -two men in a car® near Trenton* New Jersey. They asked him the direction to the Lindbergh hame and they had a ladder in their car# - something resembling the kidnap ladder. Neither of the men, he declared, was Hauptmann, The day began with the continued examination of yesterday alibi witness, the Swede, Carls trout. Today that young man was by no means so effective and unshaken as yesterday. In a rush investi­ gation, Attorney General Wilentz had dug up enough to frame some exceedingly awkward questions. There is a shroud of mystery around why" refused to say where he had been on the night of the kidnapping. He declined to answer on the ground that it might incriminate him. And h'ilentz blandly refrained from pressing the question. So thel&tS&st*! bystanders wert-Cdering whether ^ nllpst for amusement that the witness did it might have been some quest ioi not want to mention, Yesterday he that when he saw Hauptmann in the Bronx bakery he expected that night to wa younr lady L DTO BERG H - 3 named Esther, The Attorney General seemed to have learned a few things about Esther, and today Carlstrom was forced to admit that his acquaintance with the girl was not as cordial as he seemed to imply. The report is that Esther is willing to testify that she had never gone out with Carlstrom and that his statements on the witness stand were just a bit of masculine peacock struting. But more damaging than anything else was the man who lived with Carlstrom, Yesterday the witness testified that he had lived with a certain Larson lor months* but did not know his first name. Today Wilentz had Larson in court. Whereupon Carlstrom exclaimed; "Oh yes, Arthyr Larson," He did know the first name. Carlstrom swore that at the time of the kidnapping he was living in an unfinished house in ii ew Jersey, a house on which he was working - that he lived in it alone. With Larson in court, Wilentz com- pel led the witness to admit that Larson slept in that same house with him every night of the week except over the weekend. So it was all a flagrant contrad ition. It ended with young Carlstrom* s story hadly shaken, rathe* discredited, - hence not such a powerful aliti witness for Hauptmann. L IltDBERGH - 4 Much more impressive was the line of alibi that concerned a dog. This centers around Hauptmann's claim that on the kidnap night, whil<; he was waiting in the bakery for his wife, he took the Danish proprietor's German police dog out for a walk. The stories of the other two alibi witnesses today, centered on that dog* Both admitted that in pre-prohibit ion days they had had dealings in that forbidden demon, called rum. One was a local Bronx resident, named von Henkel, who told how he had lost his own police dog. On the kidnap night he saw a man leading a police dog on the street. He accosted the man, thinking the animal was his. The man told him it was the baker's dog. And Henkel identified that man as Hauptmann, This story was sharply corroborated by a citizen who answers to the sentimental name of Kiss, Louis Kiss, One interest- ing thing about him is that he is a Jew, with the broadest kind of Yiddish aceent. Yet some foolish people have even said there is Jewish antagonism to Hauptmann as a part of Jewish antagonism to the Uazi regime in uermany. Well, this refutes that. *or Mr. Kiss told a story of how he got into the wrong subway and ended wander­ ing around in th- Bronx, how he stopped in that Banish bakery for LXKPBERGH - 5 a Bite to eat, and while he wae there a man came in with a police dog, and complained angrily about some fellow on the street who had accused him of stealing the dog, Mr. Kiss identified the man who came into the restaurant, by pointing to Hauptmann, The testimony concerning the two men with the ladder in the automobile looking for the Lindbergh home on the day of the kidnapping was enlivened by some admissions the witness made. His name was Harding, and he talked with a southern accent. The prosecutor went at him on the subject of his having been convicted of assault and battery. Then it was brought out that he had been convicted a second time, for what in legal language was called "Carnal abuse.'* That gave the state's lawyers a chance to grin satirically at the attorneys for the defense. The witness was not such a success. But his testimony does strengthen the suspicion that many people hold, that the kidnapping might not have been a one-man joc. WAR The statesmen of Europe had yesterday as %fee time to reflect on the United States Senate's rejection of the World Court. Today, having recovered somewhat from the s y are casting worried g^nces^various points on that interesting puzzle^ the map* Of course, the Senate’s ohjection was a shock to the League oJ^ NationsJpeople, who had Sermaggy hoped that the United States would A. Joint hands with Europe, at least to the extent of becoming a member of the World Court. So now they are saying that Uncle Sam refuses yCJr to cooperate. The old boy won't play a melodious fiddle, either first A or second, in the grand symphony of world harmony I Of course a sagacious might reply that too manyAnmsieians insist on blowing 2X3^^338 sour notes to permit fiddle—playing talents to A shine with, any advantage. Well* the sour notes are quite audible this evening. Due of them Is spelled M-e-m-e- 1 , the Baltic town of Memel. Today ihe^stately dignity Lrit7T 0f London iS* enhanced by the presence of ;he Premier and Foreign Minister of France. And the liquid word . Tins Premier Flandin and Foreign ■Ierne 1. not mammal, ^ on their lip • A . with the British Foreign Secretary, Einister Pierre Laval, conferred WAR - 2 Sir John Simon. And they were discussing that faxi±kxxsstti familiar old problem - how^curb Germany? Having got the Saar,^ Hitler is said to be cast! .g his eyes at other juicy morsels - j morsels, to be sure, that had belonged to Germany before the / idor - / h novi / World War. Prominent among these are the Polish Corridor and Merael, a h former German town on the Baltic, which now belongs to the Republic of SrtM&J Si Since the acquisition of the Saar in the West, Nazi acitivity has turned to the east, with the idea that German sentiment in the Polish Corridor and at Memel whipped up to such fever heat that the return of those territories to Germany will become an international problem, So the French and British Mas? masters of statecraft are confabulat­ ing to keep another kind of Saar'Valley question from flaring up in the east. ASIA At the All-Soviet congress meeting in Moscow, the assembled lords of Communism are discussing a point on the map, east, in central Asia, the wild land xxwmA of Mongolia. And they are discussing it v<ith reference to military charts and the strategies of war. If is quite natural that the Soviet delegates should be thinking in military terms - after that formal declaration before thein that the red army has almost been doubled in the last two years. From five hundred and sixty thousand men it has jumped forty per cent and is now over a million - the standing army of Communism. The mcXurnk defense budget for that two-year period was 4. A a'Million-and-a-half dollars. But the Kremlin actually spent over four 'Million. This was told to the All-Soviet Congress by Stalin himself. And this Red army multiplication times, pertinently with the move Japan now is making on the borders of Mongolia, which is under Russian influence. A few nights ago. In telling how the Mikado's men were making a drive of thunder and canonade into the Chinese Province of Chahar, I observed that Chahar was in relation to Mongolia, the strategic importance of Chahar thrusts itself like a ASIA - £ the wedge between ^Japanese controlled kingdom of Manehukuo and the vast Mongolian plateaus. As it stands now, Japanese Manehukuo has only a short stretch of frontier in common with Russian controlled Mongolia, but even a short frontier leaves room for trouble to break, out. Having made an attack across the border of Chahar, the Nipponese invaders are now battering away on^the border of Mongolia, The trouble, curiously enough, is about fishery rights. What kind of fisheries are worth fighting about^p. in a far inland region, on the verge of the parched desolation of the Gobi desert? The answer is Bor Nor.. (2 lake fiiiK filled with fishes. The local tribes prize it highly as a fishing ground. And Bor Nor is on the border of Manehukuo and Mongolia, To make the matter more complicated, the border at that point Is In doubt and dispute, and the bank of the lake best for fishing is In the contested strip of territory. The trouble is caused by a boundary-marking river, that flows into Bor Hor, an uncertain and capricious river, which has a habit of changing its course, wandering around. Recently, that frontier forming stream has taken a new swing for miles. ** ASIA - 3 The Mongols claim that the new course marks the boundary. The Japanese hold out for the former line, now the dried up river bed. The Mongol army pushed in and took possession of the disputed area, with an especial eye on thd.t good fishing section of the lake. No w the J a pan ese are driving them out, with severe fighting. Reports tell how the Mongols, blasted by machine guns, artillery and air bombs, suffered heavily in retreat. I have tried to point up the logic of these topographical and strategic elements in that remote comer of Asia, because it is common opinion in the Far East that Japan, having seized Manchukuo, Is likely to find in Soviet - controlled Mongolia her next field for immediate territorial expansion. And that might mean - Japan on the way to giant empire on the Continent of Asia. And the lordship of the Son of Heaven would reach out two-thirds of the way across the greatest of the Continents. And of course, that would involve war with Russia SOUTH AMERICA. We 'taking a look at various areas of disturbance on this so commonly disturbed old planet, but such a survey would be most incomplete without a glance at South America. The revolution in Uruguay is going on hot and heavy, an army of three thousand heavily armed rebels battling with the troops of President Terra. Ami The rebels declare the President is a dictator and a tyrant and they are fighting to compel him to call a presidential election instead of holding on to power indefinitely- The Gran Chaco is not so far from Uruguay. Today, in the fourth year of that bitter war, another big battle is on, a hundred thousand Bolivians and Paraguayans at death grips. The concentration of troops in that one tremendous struggle is so great that experts believe the decisive point , the end of the war, may be at hand. And there are accounts of new terrors to add to the wthzx fantastic terrors we have been hearing about for so long. 1hey say the Bolivian troops are fighting not only against bullets ana bayonets. also against thirst. They are cooped up in an arid territory, no Idling water, nothing but the blaze of the tropical sun. A priest has just come out of that region Ig^rstf ivian soldiers killing themselves, cr _— END I was wrong last night, when I said that the Beaux Arts Ball was scheduled for tonight — it!s tomorrow night. But Ifm entirely right when I add that itfs time for me to say - SO LOKG UNTIL TOMORROW.