French military authorities breathed a little easier here today following Premier Mussolini’s speech on Sunday at Carbonia. The Italian dictator did not throw down the gauntlet to France by officially sanctioning the propaganda campaign demanding Tunis and Corsica for Italy. However, so far as the guardians of France’s colonial empire here are concerned, Il Duce’s mild and peaceful talk will not change the situation much. It will mean furloughs for a few army officers and shore leave for the same sailors. The bombers and fighting planes lined up night and day at the airfield in Tunis, within pistol shot of the ruins of Carthage, waiting for the fourth Punic war, will return to bases in Algeria and France.
Senegalese and Spahi machine gunners manning a chain of fortifications along the Libyan frontier, which correspondents have dubbed the “Maginot line of the desert,” will be able to crawl out of scorching concrete pillboxes and relax against barrack walls in nearby oases until the next alarm. But the vigilance of colonial army chiefs and their superiors in Paris will not relax. Military preparations, which have gone on since 1926 and at increased tempo since 1935, will not slacken. Crises come and go and every time there is a new diplomatic incident between France and Italy the military machine must be oiled up and made ready to go into action instantly. The French general staff, taking the long view, does not get unduly excited about them. The long view as expounded by French military authorities is to regard North Africa not merely as a local defense problem in case of a European war, but as one of the main battlefields, if not the main battlefield, on which a European war would be fought.
Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet today warned Italy that the French have not the slightest idea of giving in to agitation for cession of French territory to Italy. “France never will consent to ceding one inch of its territory to Italy,” he told the Chamber of Deputies amid wild cheering. “Any attempt to make such a claim a reality could end only in armed conflict. When I speak of French territory, I Include Tunisia and all of our establishments on the east coast of Somaliland as well as Corsica, Nice, and Savoy.” Bonnet reviewed France’s foreign policy, the foundation of which he said depended upon the alliance with Great Britain. He pledged the aid of all French forces to Britain in case of unprovoked attack and added that France expects Britain to do the same for her.
At the same time the foreign minister made a bid for Reichsführer Hitler’s good will, presumably with an eye on Italian clamor for French territory. “There is not a single Frenchman who does not feel the peace of Europe will be really secure if France and Germany succeed in avoiding all antagonism and misunderstanding,” he said. Bonnet’s warning to Italy relieved French uneasiness lest Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s visit to Rome next month end in another “Munich accord” in which France would be summoned to surrender at least Djibouti and make vital concessions regarding Tunisia.
Herschel Grynszpan appeared before a magistrate in Paris and explained why he shot Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan said he did not intend to kill vom Rath but only wanted to shoot him as a protest against the Nazi treatment of Jews.
Hungarian terrorists seize the Slovak city of Slanic and surrounding villages. Four detachments of Slovak troops are dispatched. Hungary says the dispute was between city residents, and no force invaded. As a result of the incident Dr. Josef Tiso, prime minister of this autonomous province of Czecho-Slovakia, ordered the immediate withdrawal of Slovak members from the Hungarian-Slovak frontier commission until “full satisfaction” is given by the Hungarian government. The commission was set up to settle final details of the border outlined by German-Italian arbitration at Vienna on November 2 when Hungary received a huge slice of territory. The commission also was to arrange differences arising from movements of population resulting from the transfer of territory.
With icy eastern winds sweeping over the whole of Germany and the mercury registering the coldest December day in Berlin for eighty-three years, work on Germany’s gigantic western fortifications was suspended today and hundreds of thousands of workers sent on a Christmas holiday until January 4. Many workers will not return to work on the fortifications because, thanks to the mild weather prevailing until three days ago, the fortification belt has progressed so far that Germany’s military leaders say “any attacks would fail right from the start.”
“You not only have won a battle but a war,” Dr. Robert Ley, chief of the Labor Front, declared today at Pirmasens, a few miles from the French frontier. He was speaking at a Christmas celebration for the fortification workers. All German radio stations broadcast his speech. “Your labors preserved the peace. for Germany and the whole world,” he said. “If the leaders of imperial Germany before the war had been as responsible as our Führer, Germany I would have won the world war.” Proclaiming the workers “our apostles and the bearers of the faith,” Ley told them that out of their achievements grew the German faith. “Hitler’s faith has moved a whole nation,” he declared. “It is my firm conviction that the faith of the Fuehrer will renew the whole world.”
Ley declared that Germany “demands her rights” though he did not explain except to make a vague statement about Germany demanding equality with England, France, and Russia. “Luck approaches every nation,” he said, “but most nations are too cowardly to seize it. Hitler holds luck in his grip and will not release it until Germany obtains her rights.” Major General von Speich, inspector for the western fortifications, speaking at the same celebration, declared that “never again will the Palatinate and the Saar district be the glacis (means of approach) in the battle for the Rhine. All attacks are doomed to fail from the start.”
Though it was called a Christmas celebration, no reference was made to the religious side.
Romania negotiates with France and Britain for 150,000 visas to relocate Jews to colonies.
Nazi leaders in the free city of Danzig announce that all Jews must leave by April 1, 1939. All property will be confiscated. The maximum they will be allowed to take along will be $20 per person. They will be put aboard ships and when out at sea they will be permitted to go where they like “or wherever they can find a new home.” The April date was fixed because new elections will be held at that time, and Adolf Hitler is expected to visit Danzig. It was reported that Danzig has about 6,000 Jews, including 2,000 Polish Jews. The latter will be sent back to Poland.
Espionage documents are found by rebel authorities in the luggage of a British Vice Consul in Irún, Spain, who is soon cleared of blame. This included maps and plans purported to be of the coming Nationalist general offensive. A British porter with access to the luggage soon commits suicide.
In the Mandate of Palestine, British troops captured 15 Arabs today in a round-up south of the Hebron area after a Royal Air Force pilot discovered the band riding behind a rocky ambush near the winding road to Yatta. The pilot radioed for reinforcements after sighting the Arab band, then dove toward it with machine guns firing. The Arabs retreated after a vain attempt to fight the British troops, who seized rifles, pistols, grenades, and thousands of rounds of ammunition besides the prisoners.
Hope for a Christmas truce in the Spanish civil war faded today as rebel dispatches told of continued military preparations for a drive which was said to depend “only on the weather.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau announces continuing credit to China against its gold reserves, a rebuff to the Japanese. This announcement came shortly after a statement by Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita of Japan in Tokyo today that the 25-million-dollar loan granted to China by the American import-export bank last week is a dangerous political gesture. In making the announcement this afternoon, Morganthau again dragged out the defense of the administration that the neutrality act is not being violated because a state of war has not been declared between Japan and China. The act prohibits the United States from assisting a nation at war by provisions of arms, credits, or other means that could be interpreted as aiding the campaign. Morganthau was asked whether this latest action did not violate the spirit of the neutrality act. “Why? Who is at war?” the secretary promptly remarked. The secretary was reminded that this extension of credit coming on top of the 25-million-dollar loan would only serve to increase Japanese wrath. Morganthau replied this government was merely extending credit to a friendly nation. Japan’s Foreign Minister Arito terms the loan a “regrettable act” and “dangerous.”
U.S. Attorney General Homer S. Cummings took advantage of a memorial service in the Supreme Court of the United States today to shake an admonitory finger at justices who have found New Deal laws unconstitutional. For this he was rebuked by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. The occasion for the attorney general’s remarks was the presentation of bar association tributes to the memory of the late Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. It was Mr. Cummings last public appearance as a member of President Roosevelt’s cabinet, which he will leave on January 1, and he made it the occasion for a farewell defense of the ill-fated scheme to pack the Supreme Court. The attorney general praised the dissenting opinions of Justice Cardozo in such a manner as to justify the legislative enactments and legal contentions of the Roosevelt administration. His disparagement of certain unfavorable majority opinions on such an occasion obviously was resented by the chief justice.
“This is not a fitting occasion for a critique,” said Mr. Hughes in his response. Cummings imputed to Justice Cardozo a philosophy scarcely consistent with the doctrine that we have a “government of laws, not of men.” “To Judge Cardozo the law was meant to serve and not to rule the institutions which it sheltered,” he said. Cummings was especially sharp in his allusion to the Supreme court’s condemnation of abuses of power by the New Deal administrative agencies, such as the National Labor Relations board, the Securities and Exchange commission and the department of agriculture in its administration of the packers’ and stockyards act.
He referred specifically to the case of J. Edward Jones against the SEC, in which the Supreme court condemned the commission’s arbitrary star chamber procedure and warned that “our institutions must be kept free from the appropriation of unauthorized power.” Otherwise, the court said, “we shall in the end, while avoiding the fatal consequences of a supreme autocracy, become submerged by a multitude of minor invasions of personal rights, less destructive but no less violative. of constitutional guarantees.” Cummings said that Justice Cardozo “differed with the majority of this court in the securities and exchange commission case perhaps less because of his analysis of the statute than for fear that it would become the sport of clever knaves.”
The federal government has no intention of surrendering Alphonse Capone, now in Alcatraz Federal Prison. This was made plain yesterday by District Attorney William J. Campbell, who described the onetime gang leader as a “dangerous man” suffering from paresis, and acting irrational a week out of every month. Capone was sentenced to ten years in federal prison. He started serving his term on May 4, 1932. With the maximum time off for good behavior he would be eligible for release January 19. He still has a year to serve in jail on an additional charge of contempt and owes a $50,000 fine. Campbell indicated there is no possibility Capone would be sent to the Cook County jail for the additional year.
“A conference will be held in Washington this week or next to decide on a program,” said the district attorney. “I understand from officials of the department of justice that three plans are being considered. One would require Capone to serve out his full time in Alcatraz. Under the second he would be placed in the Los Angeles detention jail for a year’s treatment. The third contemplates holding him in the government hospital for criminals at Springfield, Missouri.” Attending the conference will be representatives of the Capone family, including his attorney, and government officials. It has already been pointed out that there is no legal compulsion to grant the gangster time off for good behavior and that the attorney general can hold him for the full ten years if he so desires. It was stressed, however, that the withholding of early release from the federal prison system was based on the former gang chief’s physical and mental condition. Campbell said a cure for Capone might require a year or even two years more. (Paresis is a syphilitic affliction and Capone is believed to have been suffering from It for years, his condition progressively growing worse.)
The AFL and CIO join in demanding that Oregon be cut off from Social Security funding because of its new anti-labor law, affecting unemployment insurance for workers involved in labor disputes.
Eighty-two bodies are recovered from the wreckage of a passenger train near Barbecena, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The train, pulling wooden coaches, collided with a freight train, derailed, and burned. It was carrying Boy Scouts as well as laborers.
Declaring that the $25,000,000 credit to China by the United States Export-Import bank can only serve to prolong the suffering of the Chinese people, Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita expressed regret today that the United States, “which up to now has shown discretion in understanding the Far Eastern problem,” has decided to help Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Arita said that although the credit may be for the purpose of promoting trade, it cannot but lead to prolongation of hostilities and cause inconvenience to third powers and suffering to the Chinese people. “The American credit is inopportune, to say the least, and regrettable,” Arita declared. “If, as American newspapers state, it is a political gesture against Japan I think there could be nothing more dangerous. The Japanese people may regard the credit as intended for economic pressure by a powerful economic unit and this will undoubtedly have a bad effect. Personally, I do not wish to regard the loan as a political gesture against Japanese activities.”
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 150.38 (+0.02).
Born:
Jay Arnette, NBA shooting guard and point guard (Cincinnati Royals), in Austin, Texas.
Died:
Stephen Warfield Gambrill, 65, American politician (Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland).
Naval Construction:
The U.S. Navy Benson-class destroyers USS Madison (DD-425) and USS Lansdale (DD-426) are laid down by the Boston Navy Yard (Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.).
History Diaries 