L. T. - DELCO, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1957 (.Be given by Walter Cronkite) - GOOD EVENING, EVERYBODY: The amed forces may be reduced within the next eighteen months - cut to two million, five hundred thousand. A reduction - of three hundred -- ""thousand. S-=> says secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, adding - that President Elaenhowe~ will have to give his approval to the new plan. DISARMAMENT At the London Disarmament Conference, today soviet Russia warned - that there could be no disannament agreement - except under conditions that are not likely to be acceptable to the Western allies. Conditions that include - a reduction of military forces in Oennany, Western as well as Russian. Also - the elimination of sane of the bases we have in Burope, Africa, Asia. Moscow Delegate Zorin made still another condition - concerning reductions of American and Russian military forces. The demands he presented had been rejected earlier - 11' the Westem powers. So today's development was discouraging. However, both sides are saying - that there will be informal talks before the next regular meeting, on Tuetday. With efforts to get over - what appears to be a new hurdle. Today, Zorin said - he felt that the negotiations in London have not made any progress ever since they were begun in March. But, instead - have t a ken a steo backward. CHIDSE PROPAGANDA Chinese Communist propaganda is featuring, what it calls - an American news p ~ perrnan. Who ts blasting away on the Red radio, with party line ch 0 tter. They describe him as a U.S. newspaperman operating in Britain. a.it, in London, the word is that he i s Sedrick Belfrage, British editor or a weekly newspaper - who was deported fran the UTiited States. The record shows that tn Nineteen Fifty-three, Belfrage was qu~stioned by the McCarthy Committee, and refused to answer questions concerning Cormnuniam. He wouldn't say - whether he had ever engaged in espionage against the United States. Then, in Nineteen Fifty-Five, he was deported• sent back to his native Britain. So th a t's the alleged American, now doing Communist propaganda in Red Peiping. Upholding, for example - the action o f the forty-one mertcans, who left Moscow yesterday, on their w a y o Re Chin• - n deft nee of the United St tes Government. COAL MINE A package containing photographs vf Pennsylvania ooal mines, and booklets about the black pits - ls on its way, to J.E. Witchey of Arlington, California. What does he want with them? The answer - strictly sentimP~tal. In Philadelphia, the Electric Storage Battery Company got a letter fran J.E. Witchey, who is ninety-four years old. He said he had seen a Canpany advertisement - with a picture of a coal mine. In his youth, he had worked as a Pennsylvania coal digger. So the picture evoked - memories of his youth. And he wrote: "I would enjoy looking at pictures of coal mines in my declining years." Just nostalgia - homesick for the coal mines. U -BO T e G rm· - oa , o c at n . Th e l es t G e rma n r vy - omm s on t n 1t f t r• t s - w a r s u bma rine. W h1d'l is not n e wly c on s r u c ted. h e U-boat w a s r a ised• resurrected. ln in e teen Forty-Five, the U -236 5 was a newly built cr a ft, which h a d never seen combat. e ~1 Gennany was f a llin g into disaster, a n d t he U-2365 was scuttled by its own crew, in Kiel harbor. Last year the sub was raised - in good enough condition to be overhauled and put back into service. The task - now complete. The U-boat - put into canmission today •. ... ~till another German submarine of World War Tlfo has been salvaged, and will go into service later this year. All of which certainly does bring up old memories of two world wars - when the U-boats wreacked havoc at sea. IRAN - BA DIT From th e deserts of eastern Ir a n - n ccount of a gu n battle. Between Iranian police - a nd the bandit Dad-Shah. The tribal outlaw - who, with his gang, ambushed a nd killed three Americans last March. It was a headline at the time - the murder of two members of a U.S. mission, Brewster Wilson and Kevin Carroll, and Mrs. Carroll. There was a hot pursuit of Dad-Shah - and sane of his band were captured. ait the outlaw chief escaped - and has been hunted ever since. The Iranian authorities enlisted the aid of a Baluchi tribe - which was camnissioned to catch Dad-Shah. a.it the word is that, on Sunday, the desperado of the wilderness killed a dozen members of the tribe. Iranian police went after him again, and caught up with him last night. There was a three-hour gun battle in the desolation of deserts and mountains. But - Dad-Shah escaped once more. McEIROY The rmed , services Comrnittee of the House voted okay, today - for Neil McElroy, as the new Secretary of Defense. The vote - unanimous. etl McElroy appeared before the Committee - and promised to get rid of his business interests, eacept his stock in Procter and Gamble. or which soap manufacturing canpany - he, right now, is President. The Department of Justice has ruled - that the new Secretary may 1·~tain the six hundred thousand dollars worth of Procter end Gamble stock. Which would not violate - the "conflict of interest" laws. The Company sells quantities of soap to the armed services - but through a system of canpetitive bids. However, Committee Chatman Russell said that Procter and Gamble would have to cancel a contract it has - for the operation of an ordnance plant at Milan, Tennessee. To Which McElroy replied - that the CQmpany, some time ago, notified the Defense Department that it doesn't want to renew the contract. McEIBOY - 2 He holds blocks of stock in the Chrysler corporation and the General Electric Company - which h a ve huge contracts with the Defense Department. So, therefore, he will sell his holdings in those two firms. He asked the Committee to give him six months - to dispose of his interests in four canpanies fbr oil exploration. Neil McElroy is expected to take over from secretary of Defense Wilson - about a month from now. BEROMA In Rome, Ingrid Bergman denies a story - that her eldest daughter, by a revious marria e, intends to marry a rephew of her present husband. She says - "ridiculous." Recently, the motion picture star was visited by her eighteen year old daughter, Jennie Ann Lindstrom. Who, in the Bergman household met Franco Rossel1n1 - the twenty-two-year old nephew of Roberto Rosseltni. A story from Paris now reporting - intended marriage between the two young people. According to a newspaper in Rome, the word was taken to Ingrid Bergman's first husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, father of Jennie Ann. Who is said to have exclaimed: "Another Italian - and, even worse, another Rosselini." But Ingrid Bergman says - ridiculous. FLU - I shin ton, the Public Health Service is pl a nning c a m p in - to persudde eople to t a ke a nti-flu vaccine. ewspepers, radio, television and posters will be used - to onvince the public. Earlier this week, half a million shots of the vaccine were made available - and eight million will be released by September First. The vaccine is being produced by six major drug firms, and they say - unless the public uses the drug, they will have to curtail production. They say they're taking a gamble - by investing ten million dollars in full scale production. They'r not being subsidi2ed by the government. The Asia tc flu, we are told, has already appeared "in all sections of the United states.' And, in Congress, today, senator Lister Hill of Alabama criticized the governm nt fo r c utting down on funds recommended for a fight against the danger of a n epidemic. R A CKETEER lle g e k tee1· Johnny Dio ha s b en n c ed for n om a vi ol 1 n - a ccused o a d . ng th p a yment o f 'ienty thousand dolla1·s i n t . es i n . 1 neteen Fifty through ·tn teen F i fty-Two. ctually, the indictment was returned by a eder 1 rand Jury in June. But it was not made public - because the Ri sel case was p ending. Die - c harged with masterminding the a cid attack, which blinded the well known labor olumnist. If convicted on the charge of tax violation, D1o could be sentenced to twenty years in prison. He already stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy in a labor e~tortion case. Likewise indicted for income tax violation - Dio's bodyguard, Theodore Rij. The two made appearances before the Senate Rackets Investigating Committee, last week - and took the Fifth A mendment over and over again. CRASH T er w s n a1 r dis as ter t Cope nhagen, Denm a rk, today - a s Sov et a irliner was coming in to land. Flying from Moscow - with twenty- hree persons aboa d. The big plane w a s flying low through an overcast, and ahead were five t all smoke-stacks of a power plant. One wing struck a smoke-stack, and was torn off. The cabin, with twenty-three oersons - plunging into the water. No survivors - one amertcen among the victims. I TRODUCTIO L . T . Toni ht we find Lowe ll Thomas on a jungle voya g e, in some of the wildest p rts of thi e e ar th. hrough equ ator ial forests of ew Guinea. n a river trip - L.T.:- l· I a h I 1. n I WO 1 . . l· 1 l 1 . mor f wh , why. . . u ·m I y r 1 g iv ny 11 form to in adv nc h n h d f r s e t er r mot r ion ; for h reason tha I so often h v fou th t my pl ns h nge at th l a st mo n . Howev r , I am in he uthwe at Pacific, on the island of ew Quine , within a few days of he region th a t is our final objective. I am member of an Australian expedition heading for one of the great rivers of the world, a part of which runs through country still unexplored. New Guinea -- now that it has been established that Greenland 1s two or more islands instead of one as had been thou g ht -- New Guinea is the world's largest island, a land mass a bout one-sixth the size of the Continent of Australia or the United states, a thousand and five hundred miles long, and so mountainous that if you were to flatten it out tt would be the largest land mass in the world, within comparable boundaries. There are literally hundreds of rivers, of which the Sepik and the Fly rank among the mighty rivers of the world. ew Guinea is directly across Torres Strait, due north of Australia, and due east of Indonesia, with the Moluccas only a few miles away off the northwest tip which - 2 - is on the Equator. While at the opposite, southeast end, the Milne Bay tip or the Owen Stanley mountains, you are 10 degrees south or the Equator. Other neighboring land masses being the large islands of New Britain and New Ireland, the Bismarck Arehipelago, the Solanons, the Trobriands and the Louisiades; with the Csrolines a thousand miles to the north and the New Hebrides a thousand miles to the east. While New Guinea is largely an 1slam broken up by mountain range after mountain range with peaks up to 16,000 feet high, sanetimes snow-capped, it includes one swamp area that ts one of the largest in the world, cover1.111 a hundred thousand square miles, extending to the Ply River . country to the J{ukukuku Mountains. The Dutch hold three-tiftha of New Guinea, Australia two-fifths, the Australian part divided into two vast areas - Papua and the Mew Guinea part under a U.N. Mandate. Except around the edges, the island is populated by some of the most primtttte people on earth, still living in the atone age, several million of them, and of many races. Papuan pygmies in . the interior, also tall Papuana in the Highlands, Melanesians, Micronesians, and a few Polynesians. Speaking several hundred languages and dialects so different that they au can•t understand their neighbors in the next - 3 - valley. Still using stone axes, each axe taking six months to make, but r a 7or sharp. An island with animal life related somewhat to Australia, of which continent New Guinea, long ego was a p art. But there ts so little animal life that birds flourish more than almost anywhere, birds with the most gorgeous of all plumage, including the greater Bird of Paradise. vast Jungles inhabited by kangaroos that climb trees at great speed and descend tail first. Huge bats with a wing span of five feet. A hundred kinds of lizards, and an equal number or snakes including more pythons than found anywhere else - the most poisonous snake being the giant taipan. If it strikes you are dead in a matter of hours. So far no anti-toxin for it. Also another called the Dead Adder. An island that seems a continent, with swamps and rivers that swum with crocodiles. New Guinea's top crocodile hunter is with us, a character named Tom Davidson. And along the coa•t are mammoth turtles that weigh '. up to a ton. We have just made another flight, this time from Madang on the Bismarck Sea, to Angoram, last outpost on the Sepik River. on this one we again flew inland over mountain ranges and swamps, also along the coast with the two live volcanoes off to our right - Manum a four thousand foot cone rising out of the sea, and Barn, a mountain half as high and - 4 - even more e~plosive. There is a belt of active volcanoes all along this north coast. Prom here on we go by river scow and dugout canoe up the Sepik to cannibal country. LTP.1957.08.15i.pdf LTP.1957.08.15ii.pdf