--- ^QCO^_FRIDAY^ JANUARY P.C) 1 iq ?7 GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: News from Washingtonj^President Sloan of General Motors and other high G. M. officials in conference with Secretary of Labor Perkins. This follows the government insistence that the company should engage in further parley to settle the auto strike V/hat1 s happening behind closed doors in Washington is not re­ vealed. But everything has the appearance that a big break in the strike situation may be at hand. This supposition is strengthened by Governor Murphy df Michigan, who predicts a break. There is similarly hopeful news from the West Coast in the seamen strike. Union leaders made a statement today tnat it won* t be long — it won't be long before the walk-out of mar­ itime workers is settled and a thing of the pa...t. most important bit of news tonight is the weather report, the forecast for the Mississippi Valley. The weatner man utters an ominous word - rain! The weekend promises wet weather in the flood areas, which are already much too wet. A few days of steady moisture would certainly retard the receding of the flood, keep the high waters from getting lower, and a series of heavy downpours might bring back the surge of the deluge. Memphis sounded a keynote this morning - saying: nIf it doesnrt rain, we,ve got the river licked.” Army officers in charge of the flood-fight at To that the weather man responded with that short simple and n^w quite ugly word - rain. The cool headed opinion of the experts is tonight that a new fall of moisture will have some bad effect, and will LEAD - £ undoubtedly prolong the fl0od somewhat, but will not eause anything very serious. ^The levee system along the Mississippi is holding up, as the flood moves southward - although there are indications of danger at various places^The dike between Cairo, Illinois, an<j Tiptonville, Tennessee, developed alarming symptoms today - water—boils. ihat*s when the vast!^^s^i|^of water washes itself through the sand underneath the levee, and comes up on the other the side,^water seeping out and foaming on the surface of the sand. So tonight, with thousands of sandbags, they are feverishly reenforcing the dike where the water-boils threaten. And the same sand bag scenes are witnessed, in the glare of electric torches, automobile headlights and bonfxres^ near many a small town along the Mississippi. At New Madrid and Mall wood, Arkansas, they are working without rest. At Slough Landing Neck, the dike is threatening to go out. The Army stands ready tonight to move the people i/ram-nh"! q Tennessee, and Charleston, out of the danger zone between Memphis, Tenues , Missouri. Colonel Fleet of the Ninth Infantry made a LEAD - .3 reconnoissance of the low-lands today, and returned a report of - peril. He recommended that the Army get ready to move a hundred thousand people.cxU-tr1'fctA. Memphis tonight is a coloney of refugees. ft±xu£:tEBii Ninety thousand of the homeless are in large buildings, now turned into concentration camps. Memphis stands on a high bluff overlooking the river - safe from flood, it’s far above the highest reach of high water. So Memphis is the mecca of the refugees. birthday ball Tomorrow the nation will dance to help those that cannot dance. There have been suggestions that the President's Birtnday Ball funds should be diverted from the infantile paralysis to flood relief. This brings a statement from the National Birthday Ball Committee, whicly explains that seventy percent of the money is placed at the disposal of the local committees, to be used for charity as they see fit. Chairman j A Coloneljffoherty points out that the committees can do as they please about applying this seventy percent to flood relief. Thirty percent is used for research work on infantile paralysis, such as is done at the Warm Springs Foundation. feels that this thirty percent should not be diverted from paralysis research. AAdmiral Grayson, head of the Red Cross, agrees with the President. "Infantile paralysis menaces thousands of children," he says. "The Bed Cross has its own^organization to appeal for Thev +h«t he is sure the American flood relief*M /Xato^Admiral adds that he is s the naralysis fight and flood people will respond to both caus > relief. 1“(e find the weird and fantastic in the news tonight* And, of course, one weird item is that fantastic trial in Russia. A Sw,defendants made their last speeches, replying to the Red prosecutors demand for their death. liadek, the brilliant journalist, provided something out of the ordinary in these trials of wild confession. He was not so abject, not so full of self-abasement and voluble repentance* Radek declared that he was a Trotskyist, and still is one. He still believes in Trotsky’s theory that you can’t build Socialism in only one nation^ Russia alone. It was a different story with the other chief defendant, the old Bolshevik, Piatakoff, one of the original apostle3 of Lenin. He protested his complete repentance,utter change of mind. Admitting plots and treason against Stalin, sabotage and espionage, he shouted that he has now come to believe in Stalin. He denounced Trotsky bitterly. Walter Duranty, Moscow correspondent the NEW YORK TIMES, contributes a telling detail - writing that Piatakoff himself, in the day he was a powerful lieutenant of Lenin, had presided RUSSIA -2 as a judge at one of those^Goamiunist trials Socialist revolutionaries were the defendants then, facing their doom* I mow Piatakoff, the former Red judge, faces his own* The Communist prosecutor todayr added another touch, when he reminded Radek and Piatakoff of what they had written when those other old Bolsheviks, Zinovieff and Kameneff, were tried as Trotskyists and executed several months ago* Then they wrote savagely about the defendants, and were merciless in demanding their death. jSow_they themselves are facingACommunist music, with other Red journalists writing ferocious demands for their execution. The Moscow court will give its decision over the week­ end. And the decision is virtually certain to be — death by the firing squad. v. :' SPAIN No„ - some more of the weird and fantastic. This time. I it concerns war. the clash of Left Wingers and Fascists in Spain. The Spanish war news has been dominated by the terror of the air raids on Madrid* Tonight we can have a first hand picture of a sky attack on a great city* We can have it told^us by somebody who was through it all, a trained newspaper man, skilled to observe and gather impressions -- the United Press correspondent just returned from Madrid* Lester Ziffren broke the story cf the outbreak . ■ "> J; of the Spanish army revolt* He covered the Civil War all along, and was in Madrid through the siege until now. He’s here to tell us about the greatest of all those air raids that hit the Spanish capital*-- he was in the thick of it. You were telling me, / Lester, that it was a nightmare of terror* ****^*************** SPAIN - £ ZIFFERN:- can Yes, Lowell - a nightmare so vivid that I still see it. The terror of that November Seventeenth, will always remain with me. The planes came over late in the after­ noon. An incendiary bomb hit the Palacio de Liria, home of the Duke of Aloa, Spain's bluest blooded noble. I made a quick trip to the palace, to cover the fire. The flames were licking their w^y through the building reddening the sky as they shot high in the air. The palace had been converted into a museum of art treasures. Itcontained Goyas, Rubens, Titians. I saw the Militia removing the pictures as rapidly as they could. I helped save a large portrait or two, although the heat was terrific and the inside of the building was like the inside of a furnace. It was an infierno, as the Spaniards would say, A few blocks away the Montana army barracks were also ablaze. All Madrid seemed to be on fire. I! !j! n 1 L.T.; You were telling me that the bombers came over again. continuing the air raid. ZIFFERN: It was a second installment — after dark, night attack SPAIK - S I wda bacH: in the center of the citv m+-4 * o-he anti-aircraft guns on tall building s let loose with red tracer bullets arching their | way Into the blackness of the night against the unseen foe. I dlcked Into a doorway in a sidestreet off the Gran Via. 4 i' ■' :''f" I Madrid^s Broadway. A bomb landed 75 feet away tearing out the W&11 ^ five—and—ten cent swt store and digging a hole from sidewalk to sidewalk^ about forty feet across and forty feet deep* dH®:f§ I ill I I ' And you were on the go, covering the story through all ! S that? 1 I ; -b-' ' ' tl | ff I] I ZIFFREfli Yes, I moved south-.Oraa-Vla. hote3r-eHid> I I | down towards the Plata del Carmen, a typical Spanish market place. The square was completely in flames* I took refuge in a small fish shop where I found a dozen men, women and children. There l were three elderly women dressed in black, their drawn laces , :/ - |i § streaked with tears. One of them - she appeared to be about j sewenty —was mumbling, "mi hi Ja, mi hija my daughter, my | I . ^ t hfbl ned women down into a cellar daughter", shrieking her fear, I helped wome !j . and went back into the street*^ iit____ ai --------- I ■^Che planes were boobing the very center of Madrid. gfiFflM* Thb heart of the city. I ran to the Puerta del Sol, the Times Square of Madrid. Two explosions rocked the area. One tore up street car tracks and dug a terrific hole and set, fire to buildings alongside the Ministry of Finance, Another smashed into a subway station and flames spread to another block of stores and offices. I».T. | And all of this In darkness, the blackness of night 1 ZIFFBEMs I moved back towards the Gran Via and saw a new phenomenon. The bombers had dropped calcium bombs which gave off an eery greenish blue light. The calcium fire ran along the streets and on the roofs of buildings until the entire section was illuminated with a weird brilliance of greenish blue. Men . ^ running in all directions screaming and women and children were running , wr,mpn rlatched their children to their fright. Terror-stricken women cxatcueu - 4 SPAIN L.$. their breasts and yelled with horror. It was madness SPAia - 5 it sell • ooiqg oT the calcimn set fire to the top of my car* burned omough and destroyed the seat before X could out out the flames. L.T.: Yes, that must have been the weirdest of the fantastic - and now I will contribute a weird one, in the American news today. MINE In a y*est Virginia coal mine there' s an abandoned shaft. a ci eepy} spoolcy sort of Dlaop Tn ■u - . In the shaft there's a pool of water, deep and ley, water that <V wellg* out of the subterI.anean ro.no. It is mighty seldom that a miner ventures into the shaft, and goes near the chilly pool. But today men were working there, driving a trench to drain the pool. »■!=»** looking for a man’s body. And all this because of a mournful, lugubrious scene. Robert Johnson, a miner, was missing. He had gone into the depths of the black pit, with his dog. The dog came back. A searching party went hunting for the vanished coal miner. His dog went^ESSuag^ They followed his footsteps through the damp passageways to the edge of the pool. There the footsteps ended. While the searchers stood wondering, there was a commotion. The dog plunged into the icy water, swam out to the middle, and began to whine. Swimming there, tne dog let out m * A- howls. A ghostly scene, as the cavern echoed with the howling of the missing man's dog. -f-hnr the miner had fallen into From that they surmised that tne the cool and drowned, and today they were draining out the water, ------ i£ji __________ FOOTBALL Major Lawrence Jones has a first rate military record, but it's the football record of Coach "Biff Jones that is significant in the news today. It explains why Major Lawrence Jones is retiring from the Army. In his football career, nBii f" Jones xxxxiaxi has coached teams which won fifty-nine game% lost nineteen, and scored ties in ten. So now he is giving up the parade ground for the gridiron, renouncing the rank of Major in favor of the permanent title of ”Coach.n Biff is forty-one. ^lorizon^fn the role you'd expect, coach at West Point. As boss of the cadet, kickers and passers, he gained a dignified and meritorious distinction, but it wasn't until he was loaned by the Army to coach at Louisiana State, t the headlines with a bifi^ and a bang! U p t Uiiiul . ..... . Long. The Klngfish tried to take a hand in the running of Biff Jones's team. was to get the players together between halves A- and give them "tough talks." Huey was pretty good at talking tough. But Biff said he was running the team, and hurled his FOOTBALL - 2 defiance at the mighty qh y English. After a series of I Later on the Array lent him to the University of Oklanoms as a coach. He's still there, but is scheduled to leave^ on June Eleventh. She Army cancelled ^ because of regulations. But the call of football is strong, with ten I 1 thousand dollars of strength. The University of Nebraska indicated its willingness to pay Biff ten thousand for the first year, eleven thousand the second, and twelve thousand dollars a year thereafter - a five year contract. At least, those : B I g are the figures reported. So Major Lawrence Jones is leaving the Army to hq&Q7lfi5^#»e>^w» Biff Jones^.t Nebraska. VV a . nsCv"^^ University of Texas. E SHIP i TherefS no M0HR0 CAS^E Story to be told tonight, no repetition of that frightful disaster of fire at sea. There was worry and misgiving this morning when the first distress signal came from the SHAWNEE - a message of fire aboard the six thousand ton 1 uxu v of the ^lyde—Mallory Line. Steaming in the Gulf Stream, bound to New York from Florida, with a hundred and ninety vacation passengers, and a crew of a hundred and eighty - xx£ flames were raging in the Number Two hold. The SHAWNEE called for help seventy-five miles off the Virginia Capes, and skippers of ships in those watnrs raced to . '' the rescue. The thought in their minds - MORRO CASTLE! An hour later,\ n S«^3Dc3bKoacEia[t*/ the radio signals from the ship on fire, ! changed the story to cheer. Captain Chelton wirelessed that his crew was battling the flames, making headway against tne blaze^^^, as the SHAWNEE was steaming for Cape Henry through heavy seas, ■ i The Ca'otain said he didn’t need any assistance but asxed that rescue ships be ready,to help the SHAWNEE - Just in case, 5 i Later on, a wireless came that the fire was definitely a , c.n mnoh that the SHAWNEE, instead of V «>“ “• __ - /L\ MORRO CASTLE story tonight—^