._M01iDAY^ APRIL 6. 1942 GOOD £.Vii::aNG EVJ l RYBODY: All the military authorities appear to agree that we have just begun a most critical period of the war. And ecouraging episode was the failure of the first Japanese raid on Ceylon with a heavy loss in aircraft. Indicating that at least the British were not taken by surprise. At the same time, our military people in Washington point out that this was only an opener. And from now on there no doubt'.will be one Japanese raid after another on Ceylon and on India -- to soften it up prior to an all-out attack, an attack with warships, and an invasion force. Ceylon would be an invaluable prize for the Japanese. If they could get it, they would be a long way towards challenging control of the Indian Ocean. The high command of the United iiiations have been expecting and dreading ine attacK on Ceylon ever since I LEAD - 2 the fall of Singapore. And then the next step by the Japanese would be to try and seize French i^adagascar, off the coast of Africa. Tonight even the news about the Philippines carries a different tone, a tone that sharpens the imminence of the approaching crisis. This evening*s communique from the War Department reports that the Japanese have gained more ground on the Batan peninsula -- not much, but still some. General Wainwright and his 1 ittie army fought back stubbornly by land, sea and air and made the Japanese pay with heavy casualties. Savage fighting is going on now. General Yamashita brought a new method of attack to bear on General Wainwright. The Americans and Filipinos! had to fight not only the Japanese in front, but artillery fire from barges off the east coast of Batan. Our beach defenses on the east coast had foiled two previous attempts of the Japanese to land behind ;|t- V/ainwright' s lines. The army communique reports that the guns on the barges harassed those beach defenses LEAD . 3 though most ol the shells were short of the targets. In the morning report from the War Department, ^ we learned that Wainwri^ht*s Bataan army had repulsed one particularly ferocious Japanese assault while at the same time fighting off another effort to land troops on the east coast. The ominous note in tonight’s report is the statement that the Japanese made what the Army calls, some gains." Looking back we find that they made some small gains on Saturday, then were stopped yesterday, and now today pushed the Americans and Filipinos back still more. So, there is not too much optimism in Washington tonight. The resistance on Batan has been extraordinary and heroic. But it can hardly go on forever, against such odds. ^ _ _ _ _ _ _ —-- - - - - - Obviously, the strategy of the Japs is to capture the north-south highway. General Wainwright’s lifeline, on which he depends for food and munitions f LEAD - 4 from Corregidor. That's what the Japanese assaults are aiming at. I I ■3 1 INDIA American public opinion need not be afraid of v.'hat the people of India raipht do if they cl 'e given independence. Let them be given control of their own country, their own policies, and they’ll fight not only Japanese aggression but any kind of aggression. That OLxn. -JUSl message comes f rom Nehru, leader of the A ^ ______JiX All-India Congress. it was given to Louis Johnson, former Assistant Secretary of V/ar and President 1 Roosevelt’s own soecial envoy in India. ^Johnson, A we learn, has already forwarded a report to the Presi V-VV • This assurance was given by Nehru to allay the suspicions fcii£rtr-ir<voiced in this country that if the Indians were given independence now they might follow a course not favorable to the Allied cause. I is Nehru also assured Johnson that Gandhil will not oppose the mobilization of India. He won on't. "T r i INDIA - 2 help any war effort. He*ll not take any part in it. Neither will he try to hamper it. Sir Stafford Cripps seemed to be keeping out of the limelight today. He was to have held a press conference, but postponed it until Wednesday. A communication from the British Cabinet in London is on the way, a communication believed to be the British government's answer to the resolution adopted by the Congress last week. J JAPANESE FOLLOW INDIA While the statesmen were talking at New Delhi, a Japanese fleet was attacking the eastern coast of Hindustan. This of course was not entirely unexpected, since the fall of Rangoon just next door; and since the Japs seized the Andaman Islands. Nevertheless, it came at a dramatic and ironic time. The naval forces of the Mikado attacked the towns of Vizagapatam and Cocanada. fe are beginning to hear place names in Hindustan, names that haven't been in the news since the days of Clive and Warren Hastings, back in the days when the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke was plain General Sir Arthur Wellesley. Places where history was made when that great sub-continent was being conquered by a handful of British soldiers, led in the beginning by mere amateurs, adventurers. clerks. Vizagapatam and Cocanada were attacked by planes from Japanese aircraft carriers, and at the J/^ANEE’F FOLLOW i:JDIA - ? D same time Japanese warships were attacking merchantmen in the Bay of Bengal. These naval attacks followed a warning broadcast by General Tojo, the Japanese Prime Ministerl . ' T/arning to the people of India that the A Japanese were about to attack military objectives in 'tc Hindustan, rhh the Indian people ex u m t ijd~tu / / A kx rebel against the British. BURIiA From the Burmese front the news is that the Japanese invasion army is now lacing the vanguard of the British positions fifteen miles north of Prome. Only some eight miles from the Burma oilfields, one of the richest in Asia. According to Japanese claims, they are even closer than that, but the high command in India denies this. Furthermore, some thirty-five miles east of Toungoo is an area of tin mines. And the Chinese Army there has shifted some of its positions in order to protect the mines. But there is some good news from Burma A flight of American flying fortresses, protected by swarms of British fighter planes, has plunged into the thick of it. Led by U.S. Major-General Lewis H. Brereton, who sat at the controls of his flagship of the air, piloting her through heavy Japanese fire, ana making a direct hit on an emeny cruiser lying in harbor at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, and setting J ■ M BURJA . 2 1 A Japanese troopship alire. Today the flying fortresses made another mass attack Irom India. They raided the ne^ Japanese base y at Rangoon. \ Ail the flying fortresses returned safely; one of them damaged a little. General Brereton told an American correspondnet that this was only a sample of what is to come. And some more good news -- from Seattle; that since Pearl Harbor we have been turning out twice the number of flying fortresses we were producing. The army officer who watches over production at that plant celebrated Ar^y Cay with a message announcing that deliveries of flying fortresses have been consistently on schedule or ahead of schedule. ^1 BURiA Yes, we seem to be gaining air strength. By official count, the Japanese lost at least ninety-two I planes destroyed or damaged this weekend over the Island of Ceylong off India, and over New Guinea two hundred and forty-five planes last week. And that year, since the baginning of the enemy-Germans and Japs -- have been.losing aircraft at the rate of two hundred a weeK. near Australia. British newspapers are adding up, and | they now calculate that altogether the Axis lost AUSTRALIA From General MacArthur’s headquarters in Australia we hear that Allied nlanes have either destroyed or damaged thirty-five or forty Japanese aircraft over the weekend. There was another raid on Port Moresby today, but not much is being said about it. There were no casualties and » damage, A ^ 3 r SUBS ] There was definite evidence today that Italian as well as Nazi submarines are parading off our Atlantic coast. The captain of a medium sized British vessel which was torpedoed recently, came ashore with the report that the undersea boat that sank it was of I j the larger class of Italian submarines. \He also reports^ that the Italians behaved in civilized, even courteous, i t fashion. The Italian commander came to the surface "th. after the crew had taken to lifeboats, and shouted out ; A -i asking whether they were all right. He then asked whether they wanted anything, after which he waved good-bye and sped off to sea And the Navy tells us that three merchant 0 • A shins were attacked by enemy submarines got back / 1 . to port safely. Also that thr^e more Japanese vessels have been sunk by our ov/n submarines in the Far Last and the southwest Pacific. 1 SU^EEMF COURT ^trikea by sailors aboard shioa—u'gfty f<FgTr~irh< //^ j -rtCio still rautin^^^ in the eyes of the law. tt was conceded today by the Supreme 6ourt of the A United States with Justice James F. Byrnes, the former Senator, If. reading the decision of the majority. ”A sweeping requirement of obedience, throughout the course of a voyage, is not without basis in reason,” says the feg.ri't!ijj 1 :1'STDiT^ if^The case they were deciding was that '1 /\ * of a vessel from Philadelphia, moored to a dock at Houston, Texas. The crew struck and claimed to be protected by the National Labor Relations Act. The majority of justices, headed by Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, held that they should have waited until they got back to their home port of Philadelphia. Even though the ship was gratt^ safe in harbor and in a ■j domestic port, obedience was required of them until the | 3 * 5 - SUPBE’^E COURT - 2 vessel returned to its-home port. In vvriting the majority’s decision, Justice Byrnes pointed to the disastrous fire on the transport LAEAY^TTE, formerly the French liner NORMANDIE. That, said the Justice, is grim enough proof that the xxxzxxii hazard of fire is ever present. So, he said it is by no means clear that a ship moored to a dock can be safe if V ■/ the crew reTnirs tu-a LLuud~JL-Ut J ! WAP PROFITS The idea of profits on war contracts^by Act of Congres^does not meet the approval of War Production Chief ;ielson. His reasons are that / such a la?^ would slow up procurement and in his / considered judgment, interfere substantially with the war program. Hoihvfor the causes that most 77 ^. people suspect. A great majority of manufacturers, large and small, said Nelson, are not much concerned with A profits. If all things were equal, they would be glad to work for nothing for vthe duration of the war. provided there was no capital impairment. But, if Congress put a statutory limit on profits, the government A would need a whole array of auditors to investigate millions of transactions. -J INSTRUMENTS Here*s a special message from the War Department, addressed particularly to surveyors and engineers, and ihefirms who employ them. Uncle Sam’s corps of engineers needs instruments, transits, levels, 4 plane tables. The Government has already bought up all of such instruments as are available but has to have more. So, any firm or any individual who owns a transit, a level, or a plane table, is requested to communicate with tie Chief of Engineers, address either buy them from them or lease them. Construction, Vi'ashington, D.C. The Government will ! ■P FARM The first ^ar jobs for women wiLi rot be in handsome uniforms around army posts, but will be prosaically, on the farm. That much we infer from information given out today by Mrs. Roosevelt at her press conference. The government is planning to organize a land army of women to help the farmers |et in their crops. Arid the United States Employment Service will do the recruiting for this. 3tt we gather from what Mrs. Roosevelt says that farmers who wise to benefit by the famerette plane will have to consent to an eight-hour day. And an eight-hour farm day sounds liKe it might be difficult to arrange. Mrs. Roosevelt also gave out the suggestion that women who want farmerette jobs should begin training, acquiring technical ability - also muscular strength and endurance. Throwing dumbells around would be one way. The kind you lift 1 mean. Or any kind of heavy exercise FARi - 2 It was also learned from i^lrs, Roosevelt that there will be some farm in c: doee on the White House grounds during the war-- truck gardening. Hhe has given instructions that a suitable place be found for a Victory Garden, to be cultivated and seeded with the advice of the Department of Agriculture. The First Lady modestly stated that she herself is not an expert gardener. BABY The young married couple who left a three weeks' 4 baby at Macy*s are now in the hands of the Chicago police^ N The youn niother, a twenty-one year old girl, explained tis with sobs to the reporters that they didn't want their folks to know they had faiI'ed and they were hoping ^ thet one of Macy*s rich customers would adopt their baby. | A i The young husband kept watch to'see that nobody was I coming, T/hile the mother left the baby, together with a ^ bottle and a formula, on the desk of the assistant manager. And now, says the young mother, she wants that baby in her arms more than bver. In Detroit, the police have the problem of a young woman, a Chippewa Indian, accused of trading l^e_r tri baby for a new Easter bonnet. The Detroit cops went to ^ -JfiL. the courts to get a warrant, but have given up idea because they can't prove that the young Indian lady Intended to abandon her^e*«^in trade for the hatc.^ BABY - 2 XI—71’? Tli^ Children ' s Aid Society is going to send botH mother and child back home.to A V'alpole Island, Ontario. r MASCOT 1 i The Commander of Bat'^jry B the Hundred and Third Coast Artillery at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, has announced the appointment of a new Duty Sergeant, B. King. B. King is to be given his warrant with formal ceremonies tomorrow. The order \i promoting him states:- "Sergeant King appears to be steady and depend^’ble, and calm under all circumstances.’ And it says further:- "With these qualifications, he will certainly be promoted to StaffSergeant if he shows attitude.” the proper ''i ^Sergeant B. King^tr^the battery mascot; a Newfoundland dog. A lot of civilian dogs who read about that are going to prick up their ears. Civilian dogs in some parts of the country are already out of luck because there’s no more canned dog food at the stores. ^ f~^n 0 1 0 1<L^o>——-e-^d n ■feha ^ J