-- .ulili, 1, 19 66
b
GOOD OVIJI^G DVSR^
u
DY:
War drums are booming a a in in the Far isiast. The
reports that come from Moscow and Tokyo are confused and
conflicting! Moscow says a Japanese force raided into Cuter
Mongolia -and fought a battle with Mongol troops* Tokyo eays:-
"Gh no, no, no! there must be some honourable mistake."
The episode is all the more surprising because of
what has gone before. Some two weeks ago Dictator Stalin told
Roy Ho lard of the Sc ripps-Howard newspapers and the United
Press, that if Japan, or rather Manchuluo, {which amounts to
the ame thing, ) made any attack upon Outer Mongolia, Soviet
Russia would instantly mobilize to help her. The red dictator
also reminded the world that he had a muchtrained, mod ernly-
equipped soldiery to do the job if necessary.
When the Mikado reorganized the higher command of his
army following the bloody assassinations in Tokyo it looked as
though he had done it with peaceful designs. It was noticeable
:
that the aggressive general s and so - a i 1 le ^ war lords had been
shuttled into the discard' and that the more conservative
officers were at the helm. So now this Japanese-M.anuku'kuan
foray into1 the Province of Urga follows almost directly upon
the heels of Stalin fs warning - and of the Japanese emperor’s
suppress! ai of his most bellicose c oramand e rs, That makes the
p i o tu r e rath e
r
star
1
1 in e..
It happens, moreover, in the middle of negotiations
that have been going on for some while between Japanese and
Russian diplomats. We have to remember that Tokyo all along has
disclaimed any hostile intentions against the Republic of Outer
Mongolia, The Japanese tone on this question has been quite
pacific. The Mikado’s men have pointed out that all these
border clashes have come about because the Kanchukuan border-
1 i n e has never be en ac
a
u rat el y au rv eye d , it is rath er v agu e in
places. That’s been the subject of conversation between the
Soviets Vice-Cowmissar of Foreign Affairs and Mr, Ota, Ambassador
fro
m
the Son of Heaven to Moscow
■Uiii/iD “
o
At present there are no further indications that this
little confire in Kongo!ia "111 flare up into the flames of
war* After all, the forces engaged in this encounter were not
more than a fer' hundred on both sides. But coattidering the
temper of the world at large all such episodes are alarming.
I*
so happens that Hoy Howard returned to Hew York
from his tour around the world, the tour on which he got those
startling Interviews with Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler. And
here’s what he has to say about that Mongolian business,
"Outer Mongolia is the tinder box of the world today,'*
says Roy Howard. "The situation there is far more portentous
than any in Europe." And he went on to say:
"War, when it
comes, may start in Asia and spread to Europe,"
AUSTRIA
Another scrap of paper has been torn up in Europe,
This time it's Austria tha*• openly announces her repudiation
of a treaty, the "reaty of Saint Germain, At least that's what
Chancellor Schuschnigg* s statement amounts to. He told the
federal Diet, {Austria's parliament, ) that con script ion is to j
be resumed
And so the country takes one step further on the
path back to the ways and practices of the haughty Hapsburgs,
Actually, this is merely a public avowal of what has
been for a long time an accomplished and poorly concealed fact.
By the treaty of Saint Germain, the crushed little republic
of Austria undertook to abandon compulsory military service and
to restrict the military establishment to thirty thousand men.
It is mighty easy for conquerors to impose such strict
terms, but believe me, it is quite another thing to get them
respected. To all intents and purposes, Austria has long had
trained battalions numbering a hundred and sixty thousand; one
hundred thousand in Prince von Starhemberg' s Heimwehr, sixty
thousand in Chancellor Schuschnigg's Catholic Storm Troops.
Of course, it was von Starhemberg who started it all. In
-
2
Nineteen Twenty-three, the young Prince took part in Hitler's
first attempt to seize power, the abortive Munich beer revolt
in which General Ludendorf was also involved. That taught him
the inadvisability of starting anything unless you've got a
good, strong: organized army behind you. So Starhemberg went
home to one of his humerous estates and started organizing the
family retainers into a trained corps. Of course his little
army didn't amount to much. Eight hundred men - that was all
he had - hardly enough to make a battalion, nevertheless, it
was a start. It gave the swaggering Prince an excuse for
dressing up
and
parading and maneuvring. In every country
there are young ’ men who like to drill and march and click their
heels and wear uniforms, Starhemberg Vs little private army
grew and so did the mortgages on the family estates. By dint
of calling it a Heimwehr -- which means; home defense - he
thinly disguised the evasion of the Treaty. So from the original
eight hundred personal retainers, servants and tenants of the
Starhemberg domains grew the so-called home defense army of a
hundred thousand .
Of course the most import sat thing irj SchuschnlgH. s
AUSTRIA - 3
amiounc ernent is the notice it serves on the rest of Europe that
Austria too eonaMers itself free from the provisions of an
unjust anr* oppressive mreaty. he didn't take the deputies into
his confidence as to the details of his plans. He didn’t tell
the riet how strong the future regular army was to he. He
merely announced that all men between the ages of eighteen
and forty-two will Oe subject to a call to the colors. Also
that they won’t necessarily be used for fighting* Some of
them will be summoned to service
in the labor corps.
All in all, the Austrian Chancellor’s statement
sound a another warning note in the European
symphony
of fear
and hatred
On llonday it seemed
-
as
though the Hauptmann case
sur ly had reached the limit of extravaganza. Today, there
seems to he no lit;.it to its weirdness. Every day, almost every
hour, fresh bulletins pour out of Trenton, throwing more
obscurity and confusion into the legal and political c razy-
quilt. "This is an unprecedented case", declared Mr. Marshall,
the prosecutor of Mercer bounty, when the Grand Jury threw him
out. Prosecutor Marshall was understating it by several shades.
As the matter stands now, Hauptmann will be got ready
for the chair all over again Friday evening. Eight P.M, Friday,
that's the fatal hour as reset by Colonel Kimberling, principal
Feeper of the penitentiary. But of course in view of all the
incredible events that have gone before, that may not mean
anything. Hauptmann was all ready for his doom last night at
five minutes past eight, his head shaved, arrayed in penitential
suit with slit sleeves and legs, fully dressed for the appli
cation of the electrodes. And then came the telephone message
from the foreman of the Grand Jury to Colonel Kimberling. After
that, we have to be prepared for .anything in the way of new and
p repo st e ro us sensation s
LAUI'™:,./!!,., -
2
mhe
political aspect of the scene becomes more and
:ncr• ■ pronounced. Allyne Fre'Mnan;,, forenrui-i of that Grand Jury,
is a Republican, a strong partisan and champion of Governor
Hoffman. 11 r. Marshall, the prosecutor whom the Grand Jury threw
out of the room, is a Democrat, of the same political faith
as Attorney General Wilentz who convicted Hauptmann. Even the
smiling and hitherto tranquil Wilentz threw up his hands in
diE-nay today. "I’m utterly confused”, he said, "Hothing
would surprise me."
Hauptmann
’ 3 attorneys, Lloyd Fischer and Frederick
Pope,
appeared
to be just as much in the dark as the Attorney
General, The atmosphere in " rent on is electric with rumors,
hints, intimations, promises of "startling developments to cornel1
With Hauptmann's execution set anew for Friday, the
Grand
Jury announces that it will not consider until tomorrow'
that
so-called
Wend el confession, the confession which ’Vend el
repudiated, tomorrow, incid eii tally, will be fourth anniversary
of that night of April second when Dr. John .F, Cond on
KAUPTMAIlIti - 3
of the Bronx threw fifty thousand dollars in. bills over the
wall of St» Raymond's Cemetery to the man named "John."
One of the most strivirur facts in the sporting world
is the hU'-ts growth of the popularity of basVefball. The
Olympic finals will be played in Hew York on Friday, Rooting
on the sidelines there will be a seventy-five year old. gentle
man by the name of Dr, James Haismith, V/hat makes that interest
ing is the fact that .Ur, Jamas Haismith is the man who invented
ba
sketbal 1, And that happen ed j u st fo rty-f iv e years ago , and
now icok at him!
Dr, Kaismith at the time was physical instructor of
the
Y.M.C,
A. college at Springfield, Massachusetts, He was
cudgeling his brains ope day to find some pastime to exercise
the boys on cold, rainy days %vhen they couldn’t get out into
the open. He wanted a game that didn't need any elaborate
apparatus. He lifted one idea from this game, another from
a
something else* For the goals he borrowed the LaCrosse
idea. The ball of course is like the one used in soccer. The
technique of the new sport resembled one feature of Australian
football, Naismith borrowed a couple of peach baskets from the
janitor of the gym, and used them as goals. In order to elevate
3ASKl1
./”BAIL - 2
tlieirij he aailed them up on the balcony that ran around the gym
That’s how nine feet came to be the standard height of basket-
ball goals. He then adapted the lob throw, as in duck-on-a-
rock* Out of all that mixed parentage, grew the game of
basketbal1 as it is to4ay,
/
Dr, Kaismith for a number of years was director of
/physical education at the University of Kansas. That’s the
place where Dr. Forrest 0. Allen - the famous Fog Allen - has
Vcoaehed so many big xix six championship teams.
And now Dr. Naismith sees the game he invented forty
five years ago at Springfield become one of the international
Olympic sports. For one week of last month all the fans at
all of the games in the country were asked to contribute one
penny each. The object was to accumulate enough money to ®nd
Dr. and Mrs. Naismith to Berlin this summer. So that’s how it
is that on Friday Dr. Laismith will officially open the
basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden,
HQhbB
Last year the newspapers played up the human interest
story of how twelve-year-old Leroy Johnson and his ten-year-old
brother wrote a letter to the v'var Department, Their father, they
explained was in afeiagg? of losing his farm unless he could plow
r*
the field and plant a crop. But he didn't have a horse for
the ploughing. So the boys asked, ,,Wouldn,t the General send a
couple ol old army horses to their father?’1
Major General Upton Birnie had memorized the law of war
well enough to know it couldn’t be done. He refused the request.
Then he asked all the officers under his command to contribute
three cents each. That brought in enough to buy a couple of
Artillery chargers that were being sold at auction at fort
Sheridan, Chicago, but the General also knew that the articles
of war prohibited a regular officer from buying army property
sold at auction. So he wrote to Colonel Robert McCormack, the
Chicago publisher, and. sent him the money and asked him to buy
two horses. Colonel McCormack i s merely a reserve cf fleer — in
the field artillery# He could do it legally. He did, and the
HORSE -
2
two military mounts were sent to Leroy and Loger Johnson^
so their father could do the Spring ploughing and save their
South Dakota farm.
Now, coming down to this year — the word comes that the
two steeds of war are not doing the ploughing this Spring.
Not only did Farmer Johnson save his acres, but the crop
vms
such
a bumper one that he
jac
has been able to buy a tractor.
PRODIGY
mo the north of Mew York Rity there’s colony called
Eronxvil .le, inhabited by many millionaires. Those millionaire
Bronxvillers have just had a touching illustration of the
truth of the quotation "
a
little chi 1 d shal
1 1 ead them,f*
Maye
e you'll rememb er little Marj ori e Sd. -,vard s, 'th.e thi rteen
year-old violin prodigy from San Jose* California. The young
la^y received a pathetic letter from Pittsburgh recently. It
carried the news that in those devastating floods a young
Pittsburgh friend of hers has lost not only her violin but
every scrap of her sheet music. The young virtuoso realised
with a shudder what it would mean to her if she were to lose
her precious violin and all her music. So entirely of her own
accord, young Marjorie Edwards went to the heads of the Red
Cross in Bronxvil.ie, She said;- "If you'll get up a benefit
concert for the flood sufferers. I'll play,,t The Red Cross
chiefs said alright. The concert was arranged: for next Sunday
at the Bronxvi 1 le Theatre and 1 o and behold already every ticket
has been sold
MAR^IKBLLI
My grandfather used to tell me that in Scotland they
call an April Pool a "gowk*1. The word ,,gowkH is really Scotch
for cuckoo, 'and cuckoo is another word for a fool. And so on
the first of April the sport on ye hanks and brays of Bonnie
Sc o 11 and , i s Mhun t ing th e gowk. n
All this leads up to a prank that was played today -
April Pool’s Day - upon Martinelli, the famous tenor of the
Metropolitan Opera Company, Now, it happens that most rnusicianB,
if they are good musicians, are also good cooks. They pride
themselves on it, But the Metropolitan's great tenor happened
to pass by a New York cafeteria and observed a sign which
announced that the cafeteria had a new secret recipe for cooking
artichokes. And that recipe, os the sign read, had been
furnished by the world famous Martinelli, The roar that issued
from his golden throat was on this occasion not a musical one,
Martinelli was sore and he didn't care who knew it. "They can't
make a fool out of me like that," he proclaimed in stentorian
tones. Then, to save the precious larynx, he got his lawyers to
say it for him. They .rushed to Justice Carew in the hew York
MA^TIflELLI - £
ACourt. And they demanded twenty thousand dollars in damages.
The defendants^ they told the court had made a fool of ^ignor
Hartinelli. The French have a word for it too. They call it
an April Fish.
Somebody will probably make a fool
h
£ out of me
before the night1s over. Well* when I come to think of it*
I have probably already made a fool of myself in this
broadcast.
So goodnight — 1111 see you tomorrow