L.T. bU^OCO. FhlDaY, OCTOB^K 13, 1939. GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY; Nazi Germany today came forth with a denial. It concerns the reported Berlin appeal to the United States, with the Nazi press chief saying that only American intervention could avoid the flare-up of savage war, and what he called - na blood bath.” There’s no denial that the Berlin press chief did say something of the sort. But now Berlin hastens to explain that this did not mean that Hitler was appealing to President Roosevelt for intervention. It inifcht seem as if the press chief tallied a bit out of turn - or maybe it was a trial balloon. Tne official word is that Germany’s response to the Chamberlain rejection of the Hitler peace proposal will be - consultation with Soviet Russia. A*so Italy, says Berlin. Vve care told there will be a confab betweenGermany, Russia and Italy GEfUlAN^ - 2 concerning what the German statement calls - ncommon defense matters.” Home has not yet been heard from - after all those Italian newspaper attacks launched against Soviet Russia, / Oft the Allied^ side, the general expectation seems the German army will burst into military action. One curious thing is noted. During several days past, Wazi patrols were rnm exceedingly active in the skirmishing in No Manfs Land between the Maginot and Siegfried Lines. Now suddenly that busy military activity has ceased. Today no German patrols were in action, pushing forward, shooting, skirmishing. A lull - and the French are inclined to think it's a lull before the storm. FINLAND ( A conference of the northern powers was called today. King Gustav of Sweden invited the Kings of Denmark and Norway and the President of Finland to gather at Stockholm on October Eighteenth^ V/e are informed that this confabulation of the northern governments is to be heid with some hope of doing soufithing to estaaiish peace inEurope. The tone indicates that it is rather a vain hope^ The main purpose will be - a disjaai demonstration of Scandinavian soiidarity. And this, of course, has reference to the peril of Finland.^) / a Finnish governuient statement was issued today, an appeal to Moscow. nThere is reason,” announces the Helsingfors Government, ”to continue the Moscow negotiations in the hope that the Soviet Government will be reasonable and understanding of our attitude.” Those negotiations continued in Moscow today, between the Finnish delegation and the Soviet leaders. V.e still ha./e no official account of what Stalin is demanding - what sort of concessions he is requiring Finland to make. DOSCH-FLiUKOT iiie locus of the riev.s is so much on F ini and tonight tnat I tnought it %ouid be a good thing if we had some facts and impressions straight from that gravely threatened little republic of the north.. It happens that one of the most famous of European correspondents landed in. this country yesterday, fresh from a news-gathering visit to Finland. He's Arno Dosch-Fleurot, whose native state is Oregon, and whose stamping ground fear the past twenty-five years has been the troubled, areas of Europe. I myself have imownDosch-Fieurot since tne autumn of Nineteen Eighteen - met him of all places, in Berlin, where the revolution was on that overthrew tne Kaiswer. We were among the very first outside newspapermen to get into Germany after tne Armistice - I through Switzerland, after having crawled under the barriers at the border. Dosch-Fleurot had come from Soviet Russia, where he had been adventuring among the Bolsheviks. And we met in Berlin - two lone Americans. Tnis European correspondent of wide renown has returned home for a stay, to tell. American lecture audiences about the desperate state of affairs in Europe. For the next several -ontns t, /«■ —» DOSCH-FLEUROT - 2 he1!! go on a speaking tour far and wide. Right now Dosch-Fieurot has a report to give us about Finland, a report that will be astonishing to most of us. We've been told that the small Nordic republic would have only a pitiful chance in a fight against huge Soviet Russia, would immediately be crushed. X myself have been saying just that on the air for the past several days. But let’s hear what Dosch-Fleurot has to say about it. D.F.- I’ll say just this, Lowell - the ned army is likely to have a real battle on its hands if if attacks Finland. The Finns have an army of several hundred thousand men, and they’re full of fight. They'll put up a desperate struggle to save their country. L.T.; But have they got the equipment, the mechanized, motorized armament - to meet the war machinery of the Soviets? D.F.; They’ve got better equipment than you’d suppose. Right next door to them is tne great Swedish armament i actory DO^Ch-FLbUri^T _ 2 at Bofors, aucl you can bet that the Swedes have provided tne Finns with, the best they have. Tne Bofors plant turns out some of the fine st artillery in the wor1d, especially anti-aircraft guns, which the Swedes sell everywhere. L.T.: So, if it should turn into a fight, the war planes of the Red army won't have things all to themselves. But what about the long frontier between Finland ikg and the Soviets? It looks wide open on the map, no mountains of any sort. Have the Finns a f ran tier that is at all defensible? D.F.: Fes, it is defensible. The country is flat or rolling, but not easy to attack. There are maxes of lakes and forest. You'll find thick, woodland all the way from. ^a.k,e Ladoga to Lapland — with only the most primitive roads* The motorized equipment of the Red army won't have much luck in getting through the dense northern, forest. Anyway, there'll soon bedeep snows up there near the Arctic - to make things harder for tanks and tractor artilrery. nnfica-FL^UriJT.,- 3 _L.T.: I Saww that General jiamierheim is now in coauaand cf the Finnish army. HeTii be the leader if the Soviets attack. Field larsh&l Saron narl Gustav kmil iviannerheim, tne national hero of Finland. How did he impress you? D.F* ; I’ll just say this, L0weli. I first saw him surrounded by staff officers and there was no mistaking the commanding officer - he was that impressive, n© was taller than most of tne Finns, something Swedish about him - and in military bearing he was as correct as a German general. One look at Mannerheim, and you Knew he was theCoimaander-in-Chief. A couple cf years later I saw him in Stockholm at a 6ala performance of the opera. He was a guest cf the King - and the general from Finland looKed more re6al than the democratic King. : so that’s the military figure who will rally the Finns to war withSoviet Russia, if need be. And I think, Arno Dosch-rleurol^ tnat most of us Americans will be heartened to near that the sturdy orthern repucxic of Finland is not as defenceles supposing. ' s os welve been The British government today reports German losses both in the Air and under the sea. Six Nazi planes shot down or forced -lai fighting between aircraft and the A A, British fleet on Monday - so claims the London Admiralty. This is followed by a story from Copenhagen, in which four German aviators tell their story. It!s a tale of aviation chivalry, such as was so notable during the first World War. The German war aviators say that their plan© was one of eighteen which struck from the air at a shipbuilding center in Scotland. Their own bomber was shot down by three British fighters and landed on the water. The three British planes kept circling the sea, waited until they saw the German fliers had got away from their disabled sky craft and into a boat. Then the Britishers bombed the German plane and destroyed it. radioed a Danish ship and cdled it to the rescue of the A four Germans in the &t»rtZo "terksty ~ts£S(/ rbLe Today’s British Admiralty report about the undersea. tells of the destruction of German submarines.—tliree-e^thea. It happened today, Friday the thirteenth, an unlucky / - BRITISH - 2 day apparently for the raiders of the deep. The Admiralty adds that some of the U-boat sailors were saved. But the submarine s had some succes^^^^4 &s the United States liner, the PRESIDENT HARDING, had occasion to find out. The PR u -SID e NT HARDING was called to the rescue of a French tanker which had been submarined. On the way, the American liner picked up thirty-six survivors of the British steamer HERONSPOOLj a five thousand ton British freighter, torpedoed by a U-boat, all hands rescued. When the PRESIDENT HARDING reached the Brench tanker which had sent out the original distress call, the tanker was found to be ablaze on the sea, a roaring mass of flames, no sign of the crew. T,Not yerified said the President/- just another exj^ple ofV/^ tconfirg&ecl rumors,^of which/the White l^ouse takes no notice,said lie Back in the previous wartime, there was a master German spy whose name made headlines - CaptainFranz von Hintelin, chief of German espionage in the United States. Today this notorious secret agent of the first World War faced a British tribunal, as the second World War is raging. Present at the proceedings was Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, British Director of Admiralty Intelligence twenty odd years ago. -‘■t was he wno was responsible for the unmasking of von Rintelin in Nineteen Fifteen. the World X juq War master spyiwen^on trial for his life- was given a secret hearing, and allowed to go free. Be is at large in London tonight. He said the reason he went before the tribunal was to get full permission to go about as he pleased in England, tie fiefs—-nofe 'been II" Gyrnwn^oifc'tDurT* Today he described himself as - na conscientious objector to Nazlism.’1 And he went on to say:— nI believe in western Christian civilization, which exclud.es anti-Semitism. And he added, "I was brought up in a Catholic ho3le.,1 The one-time spy for the Kaiser declares that he has been providing the British Government with important information concerning Nazi joiaagy plans and schemes, and says he has applied for a commission as an officer in the British Army. SAF'ETY BAND V/e have soothing British word this evening about the safety band which the Pan-American Conference decreed, a belt three hundred miles wide off the coast of the Americas, an area in which warlike activities by belligerent powers are forbidden. Today, the British Admiralty issued a statement. £ London is likely to accept the Pan-American restriction voluntarily, out of mere good-will — without renouncing what it considers to be British legal rights at sea. RED CROSS_ The Red Gross is in the news, in the same old way - girding itself for works of mercy. SapEaura Chairman Norman Davis announces that the Red Cross Committee has increased its authorization for money to be spent on war relief. An American delegation is in Europe, surveying tne relief situation in the war areas and this delegation has reported in these words:- ’’Most urgent relief needed.n So the Red Cro . oosted its war A A appropriation from a quarter of a million to a million - that much to aid those who are suffering from war ^ A Some more sensational testimony before the Dies Committee, given by Maurice Malkin, who stated that he had been a charter member of the Communist Party of the United States, also a leader of a strike among New fork fur workers, a strike directed by the Communists. In this bit of labor trouble he was convicted of felonious assault and served two years in jail. In all of this, the witness identified himself as a one-time prominent member of the American Communist Party; resigned in NineteenThirty-Six* The merest outline of the testimony that Malnin gave is sensational. He said that in NineteenTwenty-Two, Moscow ordered all members of the American Communist Party to join the unions of the American Federation of Labor. And - "bore from within." That was the phrase used at the time - in Nineteen Twenty-Two. After that there were various Communist shifts in union policy ordered by Moscow. Malkin gave elaborate evidence to show how various and sundry unions were dominated by the Reds and how’ all sorts of important people from prominent artists to longshoremen officials, were member of the Communist Party. And he named taem. Tonight many of these are DIES - 2 responding with vigorous denials. Malkin hit a picturesque high-spot, when he connected Communist strike activities with the late Arnold Rothstein, the New York gambler who was reputed to have all sorts of underworld XKriEX32U& connections and was killed mysteriously some years ago. The witness said that Rothstein had advanced a million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to finance a Communist strike. "Why did Rothstein lend all that money?" the witness was asked. "it was a question of how much profit Rothstein couM * make," he answered. It certainly sounded odd, the Reds tied up with underworld finance. The testimony grew still hotter when the name of the notorious gambler Rothstein was connected with New fork police officials. The witness said that the Communisms / bribed the police to the tune of a hundred and ten thousani dollars, fte said that between forty and fifty thousand dollars were given to five detectives on what was called the "industrial squad." And he named those detectives. The purpose of the .ji, /r DIES - 3 bribery being to get favorable police action for the Reds and their strikeC^This part of the testimony created such a stir that when it became known in New York, Police Commissioner Valentine immediately announced that he was sending a confidential investigator to Washington to study the testimony and a coiSSoboration Malkin might be able to give - any proof of the New York Police being bribed by the Communists. Ifcsti might seem to be enough sensation for any one day of evidence, but the former charter member of the Communist Party went on to state that the Reds had what they called nuclei at the Brooklyn Navy ^ard, Communist groups deep in the workings of the United States fleet. And he swore that eachCommunist nucleus gathered secret Information about naval affairs, information which was transmitted to Soviet Russia. This, he said, has been going on for years. And once more he named names. Be told the Committee that secret information from the Brooklyn Navy fard went to Moscow through Ogpu agents in the United States, said the chief of the Ogpu agents over here was a man named Dirba, Wh° 18 operatinS in Kew *ork City right now. "Unless," the DIES - U witness added, "unless he has skipped the c ountry since yesterday." Chief Ogpu Agent Dirba, he related, collected the American naval xkzku * secrets and sent them by messenger to Another election of a labor president* Yesterday it was the A.F. of L. reelecting its perennial President, William Green. The C.I.O. is also having a convention, at San Francisco. And today votes were cast. There’s no surprise. In a wild forty-five minute demonstration, John L. Lewis was reelected President of the labor organization that he founded. Mo not fired. That would be news. And Hugh, what news from you?