The French Chamber of Deputies early today voted confidence in Premier Edouard Daladier by 315 to 241, approving his decree laws and strike-smashing methods. The vote came after an uproarious night session during which opposing deputies screamed insults at each other and Edouard Herriot, president of the chamber, twice suspended debate by putting on his hat and walking out. By the vote the premier obtained the chamber’s approval of his stiff stand against Italian colonial expansion at French expense and his methods of governing France, which many of his enemies had called dictatorial.
The vote was accepted in the chamber as marking the official death of the leftist People’s Front which ruled France under the Leon Blum government after the 1936 elections and was more or less active in power until Daladier took office last April 10. The premier clearly had swung his government as well as his own radical Socialist party — a former member of the People’s Front with socialists and communists — into the rightist ranks. Whether rightists would back the premier when he asks for decree powers to continue his “strong man” government remained a political question.
In Corsica, students stone the Italian Embassy.
Virginio Gayda, Italian editor, who is regarded as a spokesman for Premier Mussolini, today denounced France for having failed to carry out the treaty of 1935 covering Tunisia. He demanded that France make concessions and said Italy is receptive to new negotiations to settle the question of Italian rights in North Africa. Writing in the newspaper Il Giornale d’Italia, Gayda warned that vast change has occurred in the political situation since 1935. He made it plain that Italy is looking for more comprehensive concessions in Africa in any new agreement.
The treaty of 1935, signed by former Premier Pierre Laval of France and Mussolini, provided that Italian citizenship rights in Tunisia should continue until 1956, that Italian schools should be protected until 1955, and that civil rights of Italians should be protected until 1945. There are 94,289 Italians in Tunisia as compared with 108,068 Frenchmen, exclusive of the French army of occupation. Gayda blamed the French for not having negotiated a special Tunisian accord as contemplated under the 1935 agreement. “The French government has never even proposed opening negotiations,” he wrote. “The Tunisian question, therefore, remains open.” He also upbraided France for its attempt to obstruct the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy. France took part in the league of nations’ economic penalties against Italy.
The Spanish government is extensively fortifying its Catalonian front in northeastern Spain, expecting an insurgent offensive toward Barcelona, it was reported tonight. Work was said to be proceeding rapidly, while adverse weather delayed launching any attack. In Barcelona the government issued orders to ensure that every man fit for active service be sent to the front to meet the threatened onslaught. Insurgents in Saragossa said the government was using 900,000 soldiers to build a new line of fortifications about thirty miles east of the present insurgent front from the Pyrenees south to a point below Tarragona, a coastal city sixty miles southeast of Barcelona.
The border between insurgent Spain and France remained closed, but reports said the insurgent offensive awaited completion of naval preparations, presumably for bombarding coastal cities in government territory. Insurgents indicated that a movement of Italian troops to a point just south of the French-Spanish border was only a part of preparations for the offensive and should cause no alarm in France.
The Spanish government today created a commission on religion. It was charged with the supervision of all religious activities in government territory. Jesus Maria Bellido y Golferich, dean of the Barcelona University school of medicine, was named general commissioner, and a consulting committee to aid him will be named. The commission was charged with disseminating information and taking care of requests concerning religious worship. A decree said the Spanish constitution respected religious beliefs to the extent that they conform with, but do not exceed, the right of a civilized country to establish “freedom of conscience and the right to profess and freely practice any religion.” The statement added that the government “reaffirmed as one of its aims of the war [to effect] liberty of conscience and the free exercise of religious belief in conformity with the law of June 2, 1933.”
Nazi organizations are bringing pressure to bear on Aryans married to Jews and half Jews to compel them to obtain divorces. Thousands of Aryan men have been ordered to divorce their Jewish wives under threat of losing their jobs. This pressure is being exerted despite the fact that no official decree has been issued ordering the dissolution of such marriages. Couples who have been married thirty or forty years are being ordered to dissolve their unions. Elderly men who are faced with the prospect of living without their lifetime partners are desperately seeking a way for their elderly wives to leave Germany. They have no financial means of supporting them abroad, and in most cases the women, who never held professional jobs, are too old to support themselves.
Field Marshal Herman Wilhelm Göring, Nazi minister of aviation and Reichsführer Hitler’s right-hand man, is negotiating with wealthy Jews for an agreement to speed up Jewish emigration. The aim is to provide Jews emigrating from Germany with coupons. These coupons will enable them to draw small quantities of foreign currency in foreign lands after they have sold a certain amount of German goods to clients abroad. The greatest problem facing the negotiators is to find goods that can be spared by Germany and at the same time find a market abroad. The Nazis hope it will be possible to sell jewelry and other goods manufactured in Sudetenland which lost their foreign markets after the Germans conquered that area. Göring demands that every rich Jew who emigrates must devote part of his holdings to help poor Jews to leave. Officials assert that since the Nazis conquered Austria, 50,000 Jews emigrated from there.
Fritz Todt was made the Commissioner-General of Construction Industries in the German Reich.
Ethnic clashes continue in areas of Czechoslovakia and its former territory, in some cases whipped up by radio broadcasts.
István Csáky became Hungarian Foreign Minister.
A French army bombing plane crashed in flames near the Nancy air base today, killing its five occupants.
Four persons were killed today when a KLM (Dutch) airliner fell and struck a dike near Schiphol airdrome and caught fire. The plane was on an instructional flight.
The British army in the Mandate of Palestine struck against Arab rebels today in a series of dawn raids. More than 100 were arrested, including several wanted by authorities on charges of terrorism.
President Roosevelt says all intelligence agencies will coordinate efforts to stop foreign espionage in the United States. President Roosevelt today indicated that a war on foreign spies, to be waged without setting an army of secret police upon the American people, was included among his proposals to strengthen the national defense. The President said he would ask congress for funds to enable existing agencies to meet a situation which he declared was by no means ended by the sentencing of four persons in New York on espionage charges. Secret police are not needed to watch the American people, Mr. Roosevelt told his press conference, but more funds should be available for a closer watch of the secret police of other nations operating in this country. Both the army and navy advise against creation of a new agency to combat spies, informed persons disclosed. These persons cited the odium attached in this country to activities of Soviet Russia’s OGPU and Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, which are secret police agencies.
Britain’s former Foreign Minister Anthony Eden visits the United States. Eden, who broke with the Chamberlain regime for treating with the dictators, tonight accused the totalitarian states of substituting “idolatry” for democracy and stifling the progress of centuries toward freedom. He spoke before a crowd of 4,000 at the annual dinner of the National Association of Manufacturers in New York. Mr. Eden made no direct plea to the American people for participation in Europe’s affairs. But in its studied modesty and wide generalities listeners detected the familiar theme of “Hands Across the Sea.” Setting foot for the first time in the United States four hours before he delivered the address, Eden denied that England was “faint hearted” or “decadent.” Instead, he declared, the faith of his countrymen in democracy was unshaken and they were preparing for future crises which would arise from the policy of “force” adopted by other nations.
“We know that we are destined, in our land and in our generation, to live in a period of emergency of which none can see the end,” said Eden. “If throughout that testing time, however long or short it be, we hold fast to our faith, cradle it in stone, and set steel to defend it, we can yet hand on our inheritance of freedom intact to the generations that are to come.” The British diplomat avoided mentioning Adolf Hitler of Germany and Benito Mussolini of Italy by name, but his references to them were unmistakable. The modern democratic state, he asserted, must be based upon racial and religious toleration.” Eden admitted England had “many checkered pages in our long history,” and set the revolutionary war as one of the worst.”
The Dies Committee hears testimony indicating that NLRB chief economist David Saposs is a communist. Saposs will eventually be forced to resign. He appears to have had some early connection with the Communist Party but to have diverged some time ago. Saposs over his career in a number of positions will be a critic of the communists in the American labor movement.
The State of California uses the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison, Marin County, instead of execution by hanging for the second time in a week: Wesley Eudy and Fred Barnes are executed for their roles in a Folsom Prison escape attempt resulting in the murder of the warden and a guard.
The 1939 NFL draft was held. Ki Aldrich was selected first overall by the Chicago Cardinals.
The Eighth Pan-American Conference begins in Lima, Peru. President General Oscar R. Benavides of Peru appealed for closer bonds among American nations this evening in his speech opening the eighth Pan-American conference in the Peruvian chamber of deputies. Speaking to delegates of twenty-one nations of the new world, Benavides urged “the preservation of the system of international pacts that has gone so far ahead in recent years.” The western world wants to be “strong in order to be respected,” he asserted, but added that “there is not and there cannot be continental imperialism, neither in economic, nor in spiritual, nor in political spheres of the Americas.”
Press censorship at the conference in Lima is strict, and delegates find that their offices are searched and correspondence opened.
China claims victory after a three-hour battle at Yungsui, 30 miles north of Nanchang. In the south, Tsungfa is again the scene of fighting, and Japanese warships shell the coast.
Japan tells Ambassadors from the United States and Britain that the Nine-Powers Treaty is invalid, and that China, Japan, and Manchukuo will look out for their interests, engaging in foreign trade when appropriate. Actual denunciation of the nine-power treaty, already pronounced obsolete by the Japanese press, will be made by new Chinese governments, it was understood today in Tokyo. These regimes have been established under Japanese protection in the wake of the Japanese army’s conquests. This denunciation, it is felt, probably will be the final step in welding Japan, her puppet state of Manchukuo, and the Japanese occupied areas of China into a solid political and economic unit. This would put into effect Japan’s new policy of “Asia for the Asiatics.” The nine-power treaty was signed by China and Japan and seven western powers — the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. It pledges the signatories, among other things, “to use their influence for the purpose of effectually establishing and maintaining the principle of equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations throughout the territory of China.”
This principle — that of the “Open-Door” for trade in China — now has vanished, in the view of Tokyo. A full statement of the Japanese view was given yesterday, it is reported in authoritative quarters, by Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita to the American and British ambassadors, Joseph C. Grew and Sir Robert Leslie Craigie. Arita’s expositions were said to have contained such phrases “henceforth, you will be permitted,” and “you will not be permitted” in connection with the privileges western nations may enjoy in conducting commerce in China.
Two survivors today told how they struggled for seven hours to stay afloat in shark-infested waters before rescuers reached them after a Japanese airliner was forced down at sea near Formosa yesterday. Ten others sank with the plane. The survivors said they heard one of the victims shout “banzai” for the emperor as the current swept him away.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 147.39 (-0.24).
Born:
Deacon Jones, NFL defensive end (Pro Football Hall of Fame, inducted 1980; Pro Bowl, 1964-1970, 1972; Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins), in Eatonville, Florida (d. 2013).
Naval Construction:
The Marine Nationale (French Navy) Minerve-class submarine Céres is launched by Ch. Worms (Rouen, France). She is never completed.
The Royal Navy Linnet-class minelayer HMS Ringdove (M 77) is commissioned. Her first commanding officer is Lieutenant Cyril Robert Pilgrim, RN.
The Вое́нно-морско́й флот СССР (ВМФ) (Soviet Navy) “L” (Leninec)-class (2nd group, Type XI) submarine L-12 is commissioned.
The Вое́нно-морско́й флот СССР (ВМФ) (Soviet Navy) “L” (Leninec)-class (3rd group, Type XIII) submarine L-16 is commissioned.
The Вое́нно-морско́й флот СССР (ВМФ) (Soviet Navy) Project 7-class (Gnevny-class) destroyer Grozny (Грозный, “Formidable”) is commissioned.
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