The Nationalists reached Tossa de Mar. They are now only 50 kilometers from the border to France, and will close the border once they arrive. German planes are still bombing refugees from the air. Insurgent planes dropped bombs upon the 100,000 refugees crowded into Figueras, the temporary capital of government Spain in five hours of steady raids today. First estimates were that 150 were killed and 200 wounded, but the exact toll probably never will be known. Relief officials reaching the French frontier tonight estimated the casualty total as at least 500. Girona, twenty-two miles south of here, was bombed sixteen times today, but no estimate of casualties was given. Houses were destroyed throughout Figueras, which normally has a population of 14,000. Tonight, a general civil evacuation of the town appeared to be under way, but strict control by Spanish Government authorities prevented a panicky rush to the French border. The first raid occurred shortly after noon and was followed by two others at one-hour intervals. From 3 o’clock until 5 o’clock the planes came back so often that the people lost count.
The fall of Girona seemed foreshadowed today when Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Nationalists captured Santa Coloma de Farnes, only ten miles southwest of the capital of Gerona Province, and San Feliu de Guixols, on the coast just below Palamos. The forces operating in this sector also occupied Llagostera and Caldas de Malavella before proceeding up a secondary read from San Feliu to take Casse de la Selva, a village only six miles southeast of Girona. While the Moroccan army corps under General Juan Yague and the mixed Spanish and Italian legionary forces were driving steadily northward in the zone east of the Sierra de San Gregorio General Garcia Valine’s Maestrazgo army corps today moved eastward from Vich toward this mountain range to capture Arbuda and several other villages. The Aragon army corps, led by General José Moscardo, followed by its occupation of Berga yesterday by mopping up today in the difficult mountainous territory enclosed within the triangle formed by Vich, Berga, and Ripoll. The villages of Sagas and Santa Maria de Marles were occupied this afternoon in preparation for a determined drive on Ripoll, the only important town north of Vich on the main highway to Puigcerda, on the French border. Early this evening the troops marching northward from Santa Coloma de Farnes reported they had reached the River Ter, where they joined forces with a division coming eastward from Vich along the banks of the stream, which flows just beyond Girona’s northern gate.
Executions are expected as Spanish Republican officers are captured.
Two IRA bombs exploded in the London Underground – one at Tottenham Court Road station and one at Leicester Square station. They were timed suitcase bombs stored in the left-luggage rooms overnight. There were no fatalities, although two people were seriously injured and severe damage was done to the facilities. This attack generated a good deal of panic and alarm amongst the British population.
The Commissioner of Police tonight sanctioned the arming of 100 picked detectives when they were sent out in camouflaged high-speed automobiles on a new search for terrorists whose time fuse bombs early this morning had rocked the Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square subway stations, injuring seven. Tonight, after raiding a house in North London, the police charged a man with being in unauthorized possession of explosives. Raids in other quarters resulted in the discovery of a list of names of all Scotland Yard officers engaged in investigating subversive activities. and a number of hand grenades and fresh supplies of ammunition to add to the already large stock now in the police’s possession. It was discovered tonight that a considerable quantity of explosives was missing from certain factories, and the police fear that this morning’s outrages may have been a signal for a “national demonstration.” Thus far the only clues from the shattered luggage stores in the two subway stations are parts of an alarm clock and a suitcase that is believed to have held a bomb. The public has shown no great alarm over the bombings, and the subways tonight were freely used, although all 114 stations were heavily guarded.
Scotland Yard detectives rushed to Slough, fifteen miles from London, where an airplane parts factory caught fire early today after several explosions. Regular explosions at ten-minute intervals in various buildings were so strong they awoke townspeople. Scotland Yard and Home Office experts were attempting to connect the fire and explosions with a wave of violence attributed to Irish Republican Army terrorists, suspected of bombing two London subway stations yesterday.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shuns a one-party system in Britain.
Twelve dictators will reportedly rule Britain in war; each is responsible for a self-contained region. The government is said to order 1.2 million baby gas masks.
General Marie Gustave Gamelin, Chief of the French Army General Staff, who has already passed the legal retirement age of 65, will retire soon. It is expected that he will be succeeded by General Alphonse Georges, who has been his second in command. General Georges recently accompanied Premier Edouard Daladier on his tour of Tunisia. When King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Foreign Minister Louis Barthou of France were assassinated at Marseille in October, 1934, General Georges was severely wounded.
France cancels executions today when the executioner does not show for work; the executioner had died in a subway station.
An estimated 83 percent of Americans and 85 percent of Britons are against France and Britain returning colonies to Germany.
A bomb thrown into a Budapest synagogue kills one Jewish worshipper and injures many others.
The Soviet government cuts direct ties with Hungary because of Hungary’s relationship with Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The Vatican claims subtle church persecution in Germany.
Joseph Goebbels ends the careers of five “Aryan” actors who made witticisms at the Reich’s expense.
Nazis call President Franklin Roosevelt a dictator.
Some Senators challenge President Roosevelt over his alleged statement that France is America’s front-line defense. Roosevelt denies making the statement. President Roosevelt today denounced as “a deliberate lie” reports that he had placed America’s defense frontier on the Rhine or in France. Any one attributing the statement to him, he said, was a “boob,” and, denying that there had been any blanket pledge of secrecy, he said the fact that members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee who attended a recent White House conference had been pledged to secrecy on some reports on the situation abroad which were, revealed to them, had been subjected to Interpretations that were “100 percent bunk.” Taking cognizance of severe attacks on himself and his policies In the German and Italian press, Mr. Roosevelt vehemently asserted that he contemplated no change in the nation’s traditional foreign policy. Agitators in Congress and among American newspaper owners were deliberately trying to mislead the public, he said, by appealing to ignorance of the facts, to prejudice and to fear. Making no attempt to conceal his displeasure over published reports concerning his recent conferences with Senate and House groups on the Administration’s foreign and defense policies, the President asserted that guesses had been dressed up as statements of fact, He held members of the Senate and House and some newspaper owners responsible for what he termed this deliberate misrepresentation.
“The foreign policy has not changed and it is not going to change,” Mr. Roosevelt told the press conference. “We are against any entangling alliances, obviously,” was the first of four points which he emphasized, even to the extent of the unusual course at a press conference of permitting direct quotation and directing his stenographer, Henry Kannee, to prepare copies of his statement. “We are in favor of the maintenance of world trade for everybody -all nations-including ourselves,” he said. “We are in complete sympathy with any and every effort made to reduce or limit armaments. “As a nation — as American people — we are sympathetic with the peaceful maintenance of political, economic and social independence of all nations in the world.” Congressional reaction to the President’s statement was mixed. Senator Logan, one of the military affairs group, said he recalled that something was said about “a first line,” but that he could not recall the exact circumstances. “I left the White House with the definite impression that the President favors the democracies over totalitarian States and that our interests lie with the democracies,” Senator Logan said. Senator Nye, another one of the conferees, said that the group had been bound to secrecy by the President. Senator Pittman issued a statement saying the President’s remarks should “remove any fears that our President is going down the road toward war.”
The U.S. House of Representatives votes to extend the inquiry into the Dies Committee for one year. Riding roughshod over a handful of members who had waged a vigorous word battle, the House voted by 344 to 35 today to continue the Dies Committee to Investigate un-American Activities for another year. The debate was bitter from the outset when an hour’s extension of it was denied to opponents and when opening of the resolution to amendment from the floor was rejected, 320 to 27. A Rules Committee amendment reducing the Dies committee tenure from two years to one year was unanimously accepted. A report to Congress on January 3, 1940, was directed. No Republican vote was cast against the resolution. Voting for it were 187 Democrats, 155 Republicans and two Progressives; against it, thirty-four Democrats and one American Labor party member. The resolution did not provide for funds, but the Accounts Committee, which has been asked for $150,000 by Representative Dies to finance the inquiry, was understood to favor an appropriation of $100,000. A resolution granting this sum is expected to be presented to the House early next week.
Former President Herbert Hoover calls President Franklin Roosevelt’s hydroelectric energy program wasteful.
The Attorney General creates a civil rights unit to protect individual liberties.
New York’s two-day long strike of building service employees ends after Mayor LaGuardia negotiates a settlement. 100,000 people were idled by the strike.
Half of the San Quentin prisoners eat bread only in protest of prison meals. More fruit is requested.
The Collins Block fire in Syracuse, New York, killed eight firefighters, the greatest loss of life in the Syracuse Fire Department’s history. The eight firemen fell into the cellar of the building and were trapped under rubble. Fellow firefighters worked for six hours to rescue them until a further collapse eliminated all possibility of their survival.
Officials admit giving out “hush” money in the conspiracy trial of the mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut.
Recently pardoned labor leader Tom Mooney asks for a divorce from his wife, who spent 22 years trying to free him. His wife refuses.
The United Textile Workers of America will leave the CIO and rejoin the AFL.
The musical film “Honolulu” starring Eleanor Powell and Robert Young was released.
Heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling arrives in the United States. He denies he was punished by Germany for criticizing Joseph Goebbels.
The first group of Canadian volunteers from the Spanish Civil War returns to Halifax. There is a great controversy over whether they should have even been allowed back in the country. By fighting in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion the volunteers broke Canadian law prohibiting enlistment in foreign armies. Of the 1,148 men who went overseas to fight against fascism, 721 will finally return home.
Greeted by a great crowd upon his arrival this morning aboard a special train, Colonel Fulgencio Batista, head of the Cuban Army, lost no time in assuring American newspaper men that in any showdown between European totalitarianism and democracy of the Western Hemisphere his country would be on the side of the United States. Interviewed in the Cuban Embassy a few hours after his tumultuous reception, described as the greatest since Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh’s goodwill visit, Colonel Batista asserted that there was no room in the Western Hemisphere for any European political ideology and expressed the hope for the strengthening of the Washington-Havana-Mexico City axis. Speaking to correspondents of the United States press, he said that in his opinion world politics were a cause of anxiety to men in all countries and that each day brought nearer the possibility of imminent danger.
Chungking police pay Chinese residents two cents for each rat killed. Cats and terriers are not enough to control the rat population.
The Japanese military seizes control of 15 industries.
General Douglas MacArthur asks the U.S. War Department to lend more ordnance and equipment for the training of the Philippine Army. The request was declined.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 143.55 (-0.79).
Born:
Michael Cimino, American director (“The Deer Hunter”), in New York, New York (d. 2016).
Vladimir Yevgenyevich Preobrazhensky, Russian cosmonaut (Soyuz 24 backup crew), in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (d. 1993, automobile accident).
Naval Construction:
The Royal Navy Dido-class light cruiser HMS Naiad (93) is launched by Hawthorn Leslie & Co. (Hebburn-on-Tyne, U.K.).
History Diaries 