STRESA a /Z/ 5 J ..%vj ni An announcement was made today which sounds as if* it might affect the history of civilization for many a year. It comes from Stresa — where Foreign Minister i*aval of France declared today that the three powers represented at the conferen;e had reached an agreement. I! Great Britain, France and Italy have decided to take a common stand, to present a united front, toward Germany.1Together ■) they will take a course of unified action at the League of Nations meetbg next Monday, the League session which will deal with Germany’s action in re-arming, thereby defying the-Treaty of li | ji Versailles. The details of this three-cornered agreement have not compromise been revealed, but the indications are that it’s a^ffiBamsus^laKK h between the British policy of mildness toward Germany and the French demand for severe measures. The one clear and definite ■ f fact is this -- that the three formerly allied powers have I decided that 'whatever they do about German re-armament 7/ill be kept wi thin the scope of the League of Nations. That has been tne English view__that they should confine their action to the ill -S-r m STRESA - 2 procedare of the League. It is apparent thatEngland must have made atfi^some concessions to France and that this takes the form of a greater firmness and a stronger argument in presenting the case to Geneva. The moment the word of the three-power accord flashed over the wires you could guess that it would have immense ment repercussions. It was, in fact, followed swiftly by an announc^ from Berlin, an indication IrntiutiMiig that Hitler is backing down a bit. ^Remember that non-agression pac-t for Eastern Europe, that Eastern Locarno, which the Western Powers had been wanting Germany to join, and Hitler refused pointblank?^ Well, today!s communication-from Berlin, tells us that the Nazi Government has informed the three poers conferring at Stresa that Germany has changed her mind about that Eastern Locarno and is prepared to sign a non-agression treaty guarantying the peace of Eastern Europe. The news from Stresa and from Berlin should be taken S^^^S^-^Britain, France and Italy agreeing to stand together. 1 I ‘ \ i i rlj .tifciHKEdxfcjcxB STRESA - 3 followed by Germany agreeing to the Eastern Locarno. These look like exceedingly hopeful facts, which should ease the terrific strain in Europe. Just how intense that strain has been is indicated by an ominous note from Paris. The Prefect of Police today issued a warning to the people of the city to buy gas masks. The Prefect told the people that they shouldn't think of waiting for trouble actually to break out and then rush to buy gas masks. Because it night be that sax sudden large orders could not be filled. The warning gave a list of stores where masks could be bought. And the Parxs police w-ent on to tell about buildings that have bomb-proof cellars,and announced arrangements according to which these bomb-proof-cellar-buildings will display illuminated electric signs that will tell^people where to duck in case of air raids. Inhabitants of isolated, houses in the country were told * hew to protect themselves against exploding bombs and shell, by taking refuge in trenches which they could easily dig. STK353A - 4 And the word from Berlin is similarly warlike. Preparations for Germany’s new great army have seen extended to the tailors. The thread-and-needle experts are being conscripted to make military uniforms. It is officially announced that in five leading cities of the Reich — Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, and Dresden, the tailors have been ordered to get ready to make uniforms. They will attend special classes in uniform- making so that they will be ready to clothe the hundreds of thousands of conscript recruits that have been summoned to join the colors next fall. It is explained that German re-armament is faced with a serious lack of skilled military tailors. These flashed of warlike news make it all the more reassuring to learn that England, France and Italy have agreed to act in harmony, and that Germany has agreed to sign a safety peace-guarantying treaty for Eastern Europe. A war scare is always accompanied by spy scares. We’ve heard of all sorts of espionage cases of the grimmest sort. But here's one that comes to a mild ending. It's about the American Richard Roiderer, held in a Nazi prison for ten months as a spy. '“'oday, before the dreaded Berlin Peoples Court he was acquitted. He was almost hysterical with joy as they turned him loose. He said he was coming right back to the U.S.A, Roiderer was arrested, accused with making notes about a Nazi military display. A German friend announced him as a spy. At the trial he explained that this friend had framed him because of jealously over a girl. The friend wanted to get Roiderer’s sweetheart and thought the way to do it was to have him put in prison as a spy. The stern and inflexible PeoplexCourt accepted the story and in dismissing the case declared that Roiderer had come under suspicion because of a chain of accidental circumstances. STUDENT Over in this country the news is peace, peace with fighting. Our on pacific tidings are more warlike than E'urope^s war threats. Students staged their strike for peace today. The collegiate pacifist leaders claimed that one hundred and fifty all over the country, thousand young men and women.Kaiksdxxxxxxx^walked out ot their classrooms at eleven o’clock in the dt*xx demonstration. Whatever the actual figure may have been, there was a whole hoard cf collegians who ciuit their studies because they don’t want to fight. . In New York and othereastern cities the rainy xkskKK put something of a damper on the antiwar belligerents. At/jLiyard the students refused to take the strike seriously. Several of them paraded around Harvard Square brandishing machineguns, apparently taken from the Training Corps Hie Nazi flag, and was applauded. Still another tossed a smoke bomb into a cloud of scholastic pacifists. And Professor Albert Sprague Spaulding, a pacifistic liberal was booed as he weather wore a black shirt and waved tried to address the crowd. STUDENT - 2 Minor skirmishes were repoted on various xsKfesnsrx /V sectors of the Student peace xf front, but we will have to wait for later reports to figure out just how peaceful the antiwar student demonstration was. TC J . HIT i AR ;.C C v .a R - an sc- eti-ues *3'<e^ ; Do I uae ^ueat speakers when there isn** news, "he answer is ’♦no". X try to use guests who are vital in. the news* And this doubly true tonight. Here's sc e good news T ot you. Every important kidnapping case in this oo-ntry has been solved* I«ve been talking a lot about crime for years now. And on this visit to Washington I decided to investigate and give you a first hand report. So I spent today at the national headquarters of the men who are waging this winning battle against crime — the central fortress of that investigation bureau, the Department of Justice, which has oeen hunting down gangsters and bandits like a fateful nemesis, I can only describe that building devoted to criminology as cold and intricate efficiency, studied with breathtaking spots of melodrama: the classrooms where Federal Agents are trained, the smartly modern range for target practice, the collection and classification of underworld weap-ns, the study of balistics, the giant magnitude and exquisite minuteness of the fingerprint bureau. These had an icy efficiency of crime detection. The lurid melo­ drama came in the form of some stacks of commonplace-looking I filing cabinets. sf ff?rZ'n/£A * - n 7 INTRO TO J. KDGAH HOOVER - 2 One waa a large banked square of files off to itself. There, filed away, were dead cards, the records of public enemies of whom the Department has disposed -- public enemies captured, public enemies killed: Dillinger, ±Jaby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barkers -- mother and son. A funerial saracophagus of public enemies, a dead file. And then tViere was the file, very much alive. It was the file of the hunted, the public enemies at large. Carefully analyzed records and fingerprints of all the dangerous big-time criminals the Department is after -- twenty thousand of them. It was from this file that Courtney Ryley Cooper got the title for his sensational book that is being read everywhere now: "Ten Thousand Public Enemies^" I looked at things in that great criminological laboratory for hours, and then asked the boss of it all to tell us a story on the air tonight — J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, commander of the Special Agents who have been wiping out the criminal gangs -- the man who has made so much of our news this past year. I’m going to ask him DPRO TO J. I'IDGAH HOOVER - 5 what1 s the raost important news, the urgent problem before him right now. What is it, Mr, J. Edgar Hoover? .T.R.fl. and L.T. J.E.H.: I should say that the biggest thing to be done, is to push through the idea of fingerprinting for everybody for their own good. People think of fingerprinting in connection with criminals. L.T.: Yexf and from what you^e told me I see now thatfs all wrong. The broader aspect of fingerprinting doesnft seem to J bk apply to crime at all. J.E.H.: It doesnft. Take just one startling fact — the number of people that die who are never identified. In New York City alone, since 1868 , there have been more than four million deaths without identification. Thirty-seven hundred New Yorkers a year die and nobody ever knows who they are. L.T.; What about fingerprinting as a safeguard for business, in checking up on employees? You were illustrating that with some rather startling facts about the Federal service. J.E.H.; Some years ago we found that in the Registered Mail section of the New York Postoffice, forty-nine of the men handling the mail had criminal records. Most of them were there to fanm* witfci the mail, per , - 4 ■T.E.H, and L.T. - J.E.H.: (Cont;.) found that araong the applicants for federal jobs in general, one out of thirteen had criminal records. Since the broader use of fingerprinting, that proportion has dropped to one in twenty-five. L.T.: Some weeks ago, Mr. Hoover, Courtney Ryley Cooper r was on the air with me and told what he considered the neatest story he had picked out of the Department of Justice records. And you were telling us this afternoon what you considered the strangest incident — one that helped to break up af the Dillinger gang and end the career of that ace-high Public Enemy Number One. J.B.H.: You mean about Eddie, Green, the man who never would have squealed. He never did squeal, but he talked — in one of the grimmest and most fantastic scenes of the history of crime. L.T.: As J recall, 8 Eddie Green was one of the members of the Dillinger mob. Federal agents trapped him. He reached for his automatic, but the bullets hit him first. And he dropped, shot through the head. But he didnft die for a long time. He lingered on, weird delusions running through his injured brain, sh hallucinations. JNBhR;- Yes, as he lay in a hospital, he thought he'dte: been hurt in an automobile accident. He never knew he’d been shot and captured. He thought the nurse was his wife and that the Government agents that watched at his bedside were friends, his doctors. And so he talked to them, trying to tell them things, babbling broken bits of information. L.T.:- What was it he said, thinking he was telling his wife aaifeKiRHiix and friends? J.E.H.: He spoke of one of the doctors who had helped Dillinger. And he mentioned the name of Dillinger’s girl. He told us enough to get them, the doctor and the girl. And that was the beginning of the end of the Dillinger gang. L.T.s- That’s one of the stories contained in that stack of filing cases, the sarcophagus of public enemies that have been done for. But that Department of Justice nemesis of crime has its comedy too, a corner dedicated to humor. It’s a big cabinet of cards called the Monniker File. It *3 a great record of underworld nicknames. I marked down several of the raciest. There’s TtB. & 0. Slim” and the ’Liverpool Lobster” and ”E{3.die- the-Eight-Ball. ” One gangster called the ’’Aggravated Lover,” and another ’’Billy the Belcher.” And there are moll nicknames, nicknames of crooks’ girls. There’s ”Babbling Bess,” and ’’Bobcat Lulu”. There's ”Iron-Foot Florence” and the ’’Streamlined Kid.” Wouldn’t you like to meet the Streamlined Kid? But nt o-f the Tong .ar™ ..i nw-» MUNITIONS Ihe j£si current phase of the muntions investigation came to an abrupt halt today. The Senate Committee was addressing the Colt A^ms Company of Hartford, Connecticut, when the proceedings were stopped xjo AAA suddenly on word from the White H0use. The Colt investigation a vigorous A A attack by Senator Gerald P. Nye of South Dakota, who assailed Donald Hichberg of the National Recovery Bca'd. Senator Nye declared that Richberg had been delayed in handing out punishment to the Colt Arms Company for labor violations under the N.R.A. NRichber^,11 he declared, "has been failing to nk notify Government departments that the Blue Eg.gle has been withdrawn x&sixaxR from the Colt factory for refusing to negotiate with A recognized labor agencies." The Senator bxlx ended by demanding that the Recovery Board chairman appear before the committee and explain. Io this Donald Richberg replied that any such explanation would be expedient because of negotiations now pending between the Colt Company and the N.R.A. MUNITIONS - 2 Senator Wye made that statement of his to the newspaper reprters. Just before that the Senate Committee had asked rchy high Navy officials why whether the Navy Department had fostered collusive bidding by private shipyards, encouraged the dipyards to get together in framing their bids. The high Navy officials denied this. But it all came to a stop when the President himself stepped in. The committee announces that the investigation of the Colt company has been called off. They say they have been | f!i assured by the President that all the difficulties and controversies would be ironed out by Monday. I eust Some notes on -tfea dust storms. They sound almost A like fantastic parody^ but they*re -a—jatoa^kexxoua, disaster for the 11 Western farm section. At Austin, Texas, members of the State Senate are wearing regulation surgical masks at their session, to protect their nostrils from the dust. One State Senator accused the Governor of summoning the dirt clouds to gag the Senate. Grit-covered trains plowing their way through the afflicted regions are from two to six hours late. Train-men tell of midnight at midday in Kansas. The railroads report they are spending nineteen million dollars to seal passenger coaches against the swirling soii^during the di sty summer to come. In Memphis, Tennessee, several operations at hospitals had to be cancelled because the psxxn per'-^si-e and permeating dust created a condition so severe that they could not sterilize the surgical instruments. Near Dallas, Texas, the birds try to lly above the clouds but canH make it* Sparrows are making forced landings by tie hundreds, grounded by the silt In the atmosphere. Some of the DUST - 2 ?^L birds are reported as trying to beat their way though the dry gritty clouds, but manage to flap only a few feet above the ground. \ asv $ u J$ i