Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Spanish Nationalist (Insurgent) troops advanced all along the Catalan front today, according to tonight’s communiqué here. They captured Palamos, on the Mediterranean Coast, as well as Seo de Urgel, a highly important communications center just south of Andorra. The fall of Seo de Urgel is held to seal the fate of Puigcerda, on the French frontier. General Camilo Alonso Vega, commander of the Fourth Navarre Division, indicated to this writer today how his forces were mopping up the terrain surrounding Girona, which was captured yesterday. In the bright sunshine that countryside could be plainly seen from the bell tower of the stately old Gothic cathedral in Girona. To the east of Girona Nationalists who had started from San Sadurni, which had been captured last evening, were attacking La Bisbal. Palamos was encircled by troops who had moved up the coastal road from Santa Cristina de Arco.
General Francisco Franco informed French military authorities in Perpignan today that he had withdrawn Italian legionaries from the frontier sector. He said he had removed the Littorio Division, the only Italian unit operating near the border, to allay the anxiety of the French.
A French military mission visited the Insurgent side of the frontier today on Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s invitation to verify Insurgent denials that fortifications had been constructed facing France. These two gestures by Generalissimo Franco have followed the sending of a French mission of conciliation to Burgos.
President Manuel Azaña of the Spanish Government arrived in France today and an agreement was made that resulted in the opening of the Spanish frontier at Le Perthus. The Loyalist army and all men, women and children who care to take refuge in France will be allowed to cross. Cerbere also is being thrown open. Meanwhile the mystery of the whereabouts of members of the government, particularly Premier Juan Negrín, was solved by a trip the Premier made to Perpignan this evening, following which he returned to a little village near Junquera, where he is staying. As the head of the government, he intends to remain until the last and not place the seat of government on foreign soil. The government will move to Valencia unless plans are changed.
Premier Negrín with four of his Cabinet members entered France early the next morning, apparently on their way to Central Spain to continue the war, The Associated Press reported.
Four fires broke out in Coventry, believed to have been started by the Irish Republican Army. In Coventry, fires in four department stores began and were attributed to IRA incendiary devices, balloon bombs being suspected. The stores affected were Marks & Spencer, Owen & Owen Ltd, the packing department of Montague Burton Ltd, and Woolworths. In Bristol, guns were issued to police after the discovery of a note in a petrol storage depot reading “BEWARE. These tanks are the next to be blown up”. Watches were put on Avonmouth Docks and Bristol Airport.
Arrests were made and seven hand-grenades, gelignite, ammunition, and the S-Plan document itself were seized. The S-Plan is thought to have been found on a detained IRA volunteer. Threats were received that the following buildings would be blown up: Bow Street Police Station in London, and the offices of the South Wales Echo in Cardiff. A man claiming to be the “Chief of Staff of the IRA in Cardiff” demanded the release of volunteers held there.
While the police in Great Britain search for more terrorist bombs of a sort that shattered two tube stations here last week, London thinks it can hear the steady ticking of still more dangerous time fuses planted by leaders of the “axis” powers. Nobody knows just where the diplomatic bombs have been planted or when they will explode, but there is a fairly widespread belief that they will go off simultaneously in the Western Mediterranean and somewhere nearer Germany in the form of violent demands by the dictatorships upon the Western democracies. How then will Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain react? Will the British Government resist a “second Munich,” or will Mr. Chamberlain still be ready for a “peaceful redress of grievances,” for the sake of averting the horrors of a new war? There are signs this weekend pointing both ways, but in the light of all that happened last September indications of a willingness to accept a “second Munich” are too many to be ignored. If peace was worth so much last year, it is no less precious to the British now. It may become doubly precious in the next few weeks if the controversy over neutrality in the United States should shake the present confidence of the British that they could get all the American supplies they needed in time of war.
It is true that in the last few weeks a striking change has come over the public attitude of the British Government. Lord Chatfield, who is not only an outstanding naval officer but also one of the closest friends of Winston Churchill, will take over his new duties tomorrow as Minister for the Coordination of Defense. He flew all the way from India to lose no time and he is expected to put new energy into the effort to make Britain strong. The curve of British airplane production is rising steeply, although the monthly production rate is little more than half the German rate and it is not yet believed to be catching up appreciably with the rising output of the German factories.
Czech troops and Hungarian frontier guards have fought a twenty-four-hour battle near the frontier village of Gereny. The fighting still continues. The Hungarians are ensconced in Gereny while the Czech fire allegedly comes from a concealed position in the mountains. The Hungarian military commander of the district has protested against the “provocative Czech action.”
Another Hungaro-Czech border incident occurred yesterday near Ungvar at the Hungarian village of Radnac. As usual, both sides deny any responsibility and give elaborate details of how the other side opened fire with heavy machine-guns. Both claim that insurgents were supported by regular troops in an attempt to cross the border. Budapest and Prague both issued elaborate communiqués containing purported details. Pending a report from a commission of Hungarian and Czecho-Slovak officers, who immediately proceeded to the scene, any attempt to apportion blame would be pure guesswork.
A German expedition to the Antarctic completed its work. The Germans gave the explored area of approximately 600,000 km the name of New Swabia.
The new French executioner is 80 years old. Tradition allows him to pardon the first convict he sees, but the convict prefers death.
France will wage war against abortion. A higher birth rate is sought to rival population growth in fascist countries.
Joseph Goebbels sponsors a joke contest to prove that Nazis have a sense of humor.
Hitler continues the Reichsbank purge, and three more directors are dismissed.
Arab delegates refuse to sit in the same room as Jews in a conference held in London. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain opens the conference with groups meeting in separate chambers. The Chamberlain government is facing what is admitted to be one of its most difficult tasks this week, when it will attempt to reconcile the differences between the Jews and the Arabs at a conference on Palestine, opening here Tuesday. The meeting was originally described as a round table conference, but since the Arabs — not only from Palestine but from neighboring States as well — have absolutely refused to recognize the Jews or sit in the same room with them, the conference is expected to develop into a situation in which the two groups will meet separately and formulate demands while the British, acting half as umpires and half as mediators, will try to bring them together. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, as official head of the British delegation, will welcome both sides of the conference in two speeches on Tuesday. After those speeches and appropriate replies by the Arabs and the Jews Mr. Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, who is also a member of the British delegation, are expected to retire and leave the field to Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary for the Colonies, and Richard Austen Butler, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who will be the actual British umpires.
The struggle for dominance between President Roosevelt and Congress developing over the Relief Deficiency Appropriation Bill, the first major issue to come before this session, is expected to be accentuated this week as the debate over foreign policies continues and the nomination of Floyd H. Roberts to be a Federal judge in Virginia comes before the Senate for a vote on confirmation. Senators and Representatives who make the avoidance of war and of foreign alliances the basic tenet of their foreign policies are expected to continue their effort to draw from President Roosevelt a definite declaration that the sale of war planes to France and England does not involve this country in commitments which might lead to participation in war. These legislators are not content with Mr. Roosevelt’s general statement of foreign policy as given at his press conference last Friday and are still insistent upon further clarification of what went on at the conference between the President and members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee earlier last week.
In the continuing debate over foreign policies some observers see potentialities similar to the struggle which arose between President Wilson and the Senate over the peace treaty and the League of Nations following the World War. The assault upon Mr. Roosevelt’s statements and activities in foreign affairs resulting from purported developments at the President’s conference with members of the Senate committee is expected to be renewed when the Senate reconvenes tomorrow. Senators Johnson of California, Nye, Vandenberg, Clark of Missouri and others are understood to be determined, despite the President’s statement on Friday, to force a “showdown” in a drive to make certain that the country is not being “led down the road to war.”
The United States sells more arms to China than to Japan, according to Secretary Hull.
Communism within the American Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor, will be discussed during the second week of the meeting of the A. F. of L. Executive Council, which opens tomorrow. The Executive Council may challenge the Federation of Teachers “to clean house immediately” and expel allegedly Communist-dominated locals under threat of revoking the national organization’s charter and granting it to another group. Matthew Woll, chairman of the A. F. of L. Committee on Education, said today that the federation was prepared to help the teachers’ wage an effective fight against the Communists within its ranks who, he asserted, were a constant threat to the trade unions.
William Green, president of the A. F. of L., made public a resolution adopted by the Executive Council favoring appropriation of adequate funds for the Dies Committee Investigating Un-American Activities. The House voted Friday to continue the committee a year, but an appropriation for it has not yet been passed.
A Nazi newspaper asks First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to cease making political comments.
An estimated 69 percent of Americans do not favor a third term for President Franklin Roosevelt.
Father Coughlin criticizes the Roosevelt pro-French and British position in his weekly broadcast. Public support of a neutrality act which “cannot be nullified by instruments of law” and “scuttling” of the stabilization fund were urged today by the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin in his weekly radio address. He said that establishment of the stabilization fund and the Gold Act of 1934 were responsible for this country’s present foreign policy, which, he contended, was “devised for the benefit of internationalists and to the detriment of nationalists all over the world.” “Very definitely since 1934 this government has not been impartial in its dealings with the gold nations,” the priest charged. “Definitely, it has been partial toward the so-called democracies — England and France — democracies which, in the strict meaning of the word, are no more democratic than Germany, Italy, Russia, or China.”
Admiral William D. Leahy may stay on as Naval Chief of Operations past his retirement date.
Mervyn LeRoy produces the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”
The World’s Fair in New York will feature an “all gas” exhibition home.
Mexican workers march to demonstrate support of Cuba’s Colonel Batista, who is visiting President Cardenas.
Chinese estimates put the casualties in yesterday’s Japanese raid at Wanhsien, 150 miles down the Yangtze River from Chungking, at 1,000 and in the attack on Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichow Province, at 500. Crowded sections of both cities were said to have been bombed. The former commercial center of Wanhsien along the Yangtze was said to have been hit. Repeatedly bombed in recent months, Wanhsien is reported to be in ruins. Few districts have not been damaged by bombs or fires. Kweiyang’s dead and wounded are still being dug from the debris. Among the places hit were the Provincial Hospital and a number of publishing houses and newspaper offices. Thousands are said to be homeless.
Born:
Jane Bryant Quinn, newscaster/financial writer (“Everyone’s Money Book”), in Niagara Falls, New York.
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