Count Ciano and Joachim von Ribbentrop rode to the Berghof and met with Adolf Hitler, who confidently asserted that the war against Poland would be “a localized war.” Ciano meets with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler is pondering over his maps planning the war against Poland. Hitler believes that the war will be localized and there is not the slightest danger that Britain and France would fight. When Ciano protests that so little would be gained at such vast risk, Hitler says to him “You are a southerner, and you will never understand how much I, as a German, need to get my hands on the timber of the Polish forests.” Ciano notes: “He has decided to strike, and strike he will.”
The New York Times reports:
Whatever decision, if any, may have been made when Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, called on Chancellor Hitler at Berghof this afternoon as to the Axis powers’ next move must for the present remain undisclosed. The terse communiqué following the meeting merely said that Herr Hitler invited Count Ciano and his retinue to luncheon and after conversations to tea at Kehlstein Heuse.
Whether the conversations falled to go smoothly today or whether new factors entered the discussions cannot be determined, but, contrary to the announced schedule, it was learned that the conversations would continue tomorrow. The rumor that Count Stephen Cinky, the Hungarian Foreign Minister — who visited Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, at Castle Fuschi Tuesday — was at Salzburg today could not be confirmed. Budapest, however, reported that he was still “vacationing” and had not returned to Hungary after his meeting with Herr von Ribbentrop.
Neutral quarters here emphasized, however, that any speculation as to possible Hungarian defection from the Berlin orbit was wishful thinking. In the event of developments involving the Axis powers, it was pointed out, Hungary will necessarily be a participant, her geographical position leaving her no choice. Interest continues in Berlin, however, on possible Hungarian revisionist claims on Rumania and their possible effect on European affairs. Well-informed quarters branded as false reports of difficulties between Yugoslavia and the Axis powers. The Axis powers, it is stated, do not expect any more from the Belgrade government than rigid neutrality.
Count Ciano and Herr von Ribbentrop drove up to Obersalzburg together. The others who assisted Count Ciano during the discussions included Bernardo Attolico, Italian envoy to Germany, and Prince del Drage, Italian Foreign Office legal expert. The German delegation numbered among others Hans-Georg von Mackensen, Ambassador to Rome, and Dr. Friedrich Gaus, Foreign Office legal expert. The conversations lasted four hours and the presence of the legal experts led to the belief that some formal documents might be forthcoming.
The press, meanwhile, seems to have withdrawn the heavy pressure applied on Poland last week. Although comment still insists with unlessened emphasis that “either so or so Danzig is coming back to the Reich — and soon,” the atrocity stories for the most part have disappeared from the front pages and the general tenor of the press appears to be milder. The Angriff, the most militant of the Nazi organs, advises Britain to abandon her encirclement aspirations and intervention in Continental affairs in favor of a constructive plan for the resettlement of Europe, universal disarmament, cessation of the international trade war and the just distribution of colonial mandates. The present tension, it says, “might have been avoided had Britain indicated a true appreciation of the vital rights: of other nations.”
The Nazi admonition includes a warning to Britain not to tamper with the unity of the German people and its leadership. “We have become proud through humiliation, stubborn through the threat of force and powerful through the denial of our just rights, and capitulation is a word one will seek vainly in the lexicon of the Führer and National Socialism.”
Foreign crisis speeds the Croat accord. Yugoslavs show sympathy with the democracies, despite the need for trade with the Axis powers. From official and other sources in Paris it appears that German penetration of the Balkans, especially Yugoslavia, is proceeding methodically and relentlessly. It is suspected that the Germans are now even opening mail from Belgrade during transit through the Reich. And resentment of the Germans is rising.
Germans and Poles argue the Danzig case. The former bases claims on race and self-determination, the latter on fundamental economic need.
A wealthy German Jew, a Mrs. Loewenstein, committed suicide Thursday night in a spectacular fashion on the Franco-Italian border. Ordered to leave Italy, where she had lived for seventeen years in a sumptuous villa in the border town of Grimaldi, near the home of Professor Voronoff, Mrs. Loewenstein dressed herself as for a gala dinner and, wearing all her jewelry, drove in an elegant roadster to the steep. rocks forming the Franco-Italian frontier and there threw herself into the sea.
A crowd of Bratislava youths, for the second successive night, staged anti-Jewish demonstrations tonight, beating every one they encountered who resembled a Jew. Tonight the youths rushed through the streets and forced their way into a Jews’ club, where they smashed furniture and beat guests. Jews were driven into the streets from several cafes.
That war in Europe is not a question of months but of weeks is the opinion of some of the highest placed members of the French Government, according to a statement by Representative Hamilton Fish of New York who arrived in Berlin today.
The Swedish cargo ship Gerania collided with the Dutch Heemskerk off Vlissingen, Netherlands and was beached to prevent her sinking.
The British-French military mission begins talks in Moscow. They will continue until August 19, but no agreement will be reached because of a dispute over Soviet troops being allowed in Poland.
The spy film “The Spy in Black” premiered in the United Kingdom. When it was released two months later in the United States it was titled “U-Boat 29.”
A four-point plan for non-cooperation in Palestine, designed to implement the Jewish protest against the British program, has been presented to the world conference of the Mizrachi organization in Geneva. The conference decided to submit the plan to the World Zionist Congress here next week. Rabbi Meyer Berlin, of Jerusalem, president of the organization, told the conference the plan was designed primarily to defeat the British moves. He admitted it would entail sacrifices by Jewish residents of Palestine but declared it offered the only means of effectively combating Britain’s present policy.
The plan proposes: First, the Jewish population will abstain from importing goods so as to reduce customs revenues. Second, it will make no further use of government postal services, and devise its own. Third, Jewish residents will refuse government subsidies or certificates in any form since these are based on the British proposals. Fourth, Jewish municipalities will refrain from submitting their budgets for the government’s approval, even at the cost of foregoing their rights to collect taxes.
The conference also decided to urge to the Zionist Congress the need for reuniting the Revisionists with the main group in order to present a common front against the British policy in Palestine.
By their enthusiastic applause, the delegates to the National Convention of the Young Democratic Clubs of America approved today a declaration by Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago that they should draft President Roosevelt as a candidate for a third term and not take “no” for an answer. Formal endorsement of the “draft Roosevelt” movement by a convention resolution was prevented by the association’s constitution, which forbids endorsement of any candidate before nomination.
Mayor Kelly declared that the President had lost the right to his own personal life and once had said that he had “enlisted for the duration.” The Mayor expressed the belief that it was the sentiment of the convention that the President should run again. “That, I believe, is the voice of Young Democrats that see only two ways, the way of Roosevelt or the way of reaction; it means going forward or going back. “There is the faith of Young Democrats that knows what President Roosevelt has done for you and knows why he must carry on whatever the sacrifice.
“There is Young Democracy’s great fight and greater victory in the coming campaign to know and be assured that it’s Roosevelt for four more years. “Mr. President, the Young Democracy awaits your answer.” The cheers that followed Mayor Kelly’s suggestion left no doubt of the sentiment of the convention. Although unable to endorse the President for re-election formally, resolutions presented by Barry Bingham strongly approved the policies of President Roosevelt, called for the nomination for President of a loyal supporter of those policies and declared that the Young Democrats would not support any but a liberal candidate.
The convention also commended the foreign policy of the Administration and condemned Democrats in Congress who had failed to support Roosevelt measures. Homer Mat Adams of Illinois, newly elected president of the association, declared that the Young Democrats stood solidly behind the liberal humanitarianism of President Roosevelt. Mr. Adams took a fling at Vice President Garner by recalling that three years ago at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, on the closing night of the 1936 national convention, the Vice President pledged loyalty to his chief. “We are not going to tread the conservative road,” Mr. Adams said. “It leads only to a dead end. We definitely prefer the Roosevelt road toward the promising horizon of an America of new opportunity for the common man. It is unfortunate that reactionaries are striking from within our own ranks. It is unfortunate that we see those who fervently swore their loyalty beneath the stars, as witnesses, turn and wait not even for the first cloudy night to strangle that vow.”
In urging the drafting of the President, Mayor Kelly said that supporters of his policies could not quit cold in the final stretch. “The idea of pensions instead of poorhouses, better homes instead of more prisons, more schools and vocational guidance instead of sweatshops and wage slavery, may be radical to those who have inherited big fortunes and believe only in the survival of the fittest,” he said. “But those ideas of social equality and opportunity are the only real foundations on which the democracy of tomorrow must be built.”
Representative Sam Rayburn, who as majority floor leader has piloted New Deal legislation through the House for three years, endorsed Vice President Garner today for the 1940 Democratic Presidential nomination. Mr. Rayburn announced his support of his fellow-Texan in a statement issued in response to an inquiry from The Fort Worth Star-Telegram as to his stand. “I am for that outstanding Texan and liberal Democrat, John Nance Garner, for the Presidential nomination in 1940. believing that if elected he will make the country a great President.” the statement said.
Mr. Garner’s friends in Washington were obviously elated at Mr. Rayburn’s public stand, not only because he has been an ardent supporter of President Roosevelt’s policies, but because he is listed as an author of such important New Deal legislation as the Securities Act, the Stock Exchange Act and the Utilities Holding Company Law. With Mr. Rayburn’s announcement, they said the Vice President had the backing of the two Texas Senators, Sheppard and Connally, and of eleven other members of the state’s delegation in the national House.
They also said that Mr. Rayburn’s definition of Mr. Garner as an outstanding “liberal Democrat” was pleasing, in the light of President Roosevelt’s recent statement that the party must choose a liberal in 1940 or he would not actively support the candidate. Mr. Rayburn’s statement, too. was the first public pronouncement regarding 1940 from any of the “Big Four” of Congress — Speaker Bankhead, Mr. Rayburn, Vice President Garner, and Senate Majority Leader Barkley, who confer weekly with the President during the legislative sessions.
Although Mr. Garner’s friends have put him definitely in the Presidential race, he himself has said nothing. Speaker Bankhead and Senator Barkley both have been mentioned as possible nominees and Mr. Rayburn’s name has been brought into discussions of possible Vice Presidential candidates.
The popularity of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg has risen sharply during the last month as a 1940 Republican candidate among Republican voters whereas that of Thomas E. Dewey has remained virtually unchanged, according to a survey.
Apparently confident that developments abroad would not require his presence in Washington for at least two weeks, President Roosevelt left American shores yesterday on a vacation cruise in the North Atlantic. He had conferred earlier in the day with Secretary Hull by telephone from his Hyde Park home, and arranged to be kept advised on events in Europe and the Far East while at sea.
Accompanied by Miss Marguerite Le Hand, his confidential secretary, and William D. Hassett of the White House staff, the President. left Hyde Park soon after 10 AM and motored here to board the swift heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa that is to be the floating White House for the next ten days.
Mr. Roosevelt said yesterday he saw nothing in the European or Far Eastern situation at this time to indicate the necessity of calling Congress back to Washington in extra session, to consider revision of existing neutrality legislation, and there was nothing to suggest that he learned anything he had not already known from his telephone conversation with Secretary Hull.
Before bringing his Hyde Park stay to a close the President cleared his desk of the last fifteen bills that remained of the 300-odd sent to him from Washington since his arrival there last Tuesday. Most of these the President approved but there were few of any consequence.
The Southern Pacific said an as-yet undetermined number of persons were killed tonight when the streamliner City of San Francisco was derailed 200 miles east of Reno in Central Nevada. Sabotage is suspected in the “City of San Francisco” train crash which derails near Harney, Nevada, killing 24 and injuring 121 passengers and crew. The City of San Francisco was travelling westbound for Oakland but was running behind schedule by around half an hour. After leaving Carlin, Nevada, engineer Ed Hecox had increased the speed to 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) to make up time. At 9:33 p.m., Hecox and his train hit a patch of rail that had been deliberately moved out of alignment and camouflaged with brown paint and tumbleweed, derailing the train while it crossed the #4 bridge in the Humboldt River Gorge. Despite a manhunt, reward offers, and years of investigation by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), the case remains unsolved.
A member of the Dies Committee says their work will kill off Communism in the United States. Representative Thomas of New Jersey predicted today that current investigations of the House committee on un-American activities would “kill off the Communist party in this country.”
For eleven and a half hours yesterday the American Federation of Labor staged one of the largest and most colorful parades ever seen on Fifth Avenue in New York. Some 90,000 participants marched past the revieweing stand in front of the Public Library.
Hope for the safety of two New York fliers, attempting to fly from Canada to Ireland, vanished today as hours passed without word after their fuel supply was estimated to have been exhausted.
The submarine USS Squalus, with its twenty-six dead, was lifted from the bottom of the sea off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, today and towed more than a mile into shallower water.
Mrs. Elizabeth Greve Caldwell Carolin, socially prominent Brooklyn woman, was shot today by a rejected suitor an instant before a State trooper could fling himself forward in an attempt to save her.
Bringing the fast-flying Washington Senators squad to an abrupt halt with a barrage of sixteen hits, the Boston Red Sox won their sixth straight game today by giving the Senators a 9–5 trouncing. Bobby Doerr, with two doubles and a single, and Ted Williams, with two doubles, led the hitting attack, which saw the Sox nick starting pitcher Joe Krakauskas for ten hits and relief hurler Walter Masterson for six. The batting star for Washington was Jimmy Bloodworth, who slammed a home run with two men out and one on in the fourth. Emerson Dickman, who held the Senators to three hits in the last three and one-third innings, was credited with the victory.
At Shibe Park, the New York Yankees bombard the feeble Philadelphia A’s, 18–4 as Steve Sundra (6–0) coasts to the win. Babe Dahlgren has 4 hits, including a solo homer in the 6th and a grand slam an inning later. He drives in 6 runs. Joe Gordon adds his 18th homer of the year.
The St. Louis Browns clubbed four hurlers to beat the Detroit Tigers today, 17–3, and pull even in the series. Vernon Kennedy, Chet Laabs and Mark Christman, who went to St. Louis in the deal that gave Buck Newsom to Detroit, practically won the game themselves. Kennedy pitched the entire game, allowing eight hits, walking five men and fanning two. He scored four runs and batted in another. Laabs contributed two homers and two singles, accounting for four more runs. Kennedy, Laabs and Christman together produced half of the Browns’ sixteen hits. Freddy Hutchinson, observing his twentieth birthday, started on the hill for the Tigers, and was routed by an eight-run barrage in the third and was charged with the loss.
The Brooklyn Dodger varsity showed little respect for a member of its alumni association at Ebbets Field yesterday, as Brooklyn hammered Bill Posedel, an ex-Dodger, out of the box in a six-run third inning to carve out a 10–3 victory over the Boston Bees.
The pacesetting Cincinnati Reds, a bit wobbly of late, steadied today to stop the St. Louis Cardinals’ winning streak at ten straight games and give Bucky Walters his twentieth victory of the year. The score was 8–4.
People in Chungking are accustomed to air raids. Shelter tunnels are hewed out of rock and lanes cut to prevent the spread of fire. The air raids which have become such a feature of life in Chungking occur usually between 9 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Heavy cloud cover provides a happy respite some days.
London’s decision to hand over four accused Chinese terrorists aroused indignation in Chungking. The Chinese Ambassador to London, Quo Taichi, today joined the protests pouring into the British Foreign Office against the handing over of four prisoners in the British Concession in Tientsin to the Japanese.
The destruction of a Japanese office building in Shanghai by a bomb marked the second anniversary of the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities. A bomb hits the Japanese shipping office in China. Eleven Chinese, including two women, are seriously injured on the anniversary of the start of war.
The State Department in Washington received assurances that thirty-six Americans isolated in Kaifeng had not been molested, but American officials in China were without direct word of their plight. Americans are safe, Japan reports: there has been no attack on missionaries in Kaifeng. Direct word is still sought and Chinese church workers pray for the missing 36.
Indications mounted in Tokyo yesterday that Premier Hiranuma and other high officials would stand firm against militarists’ demands for a closer alliance with the Rome-Berlin Axis. The Japanese indicated that Britain’s envoy had suggested a resumption of discussions on the Tientsin situation.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 138.42 (+1.13).
Born:
Sushil Koirala, Nepalese politician, Prime Minister of Nepal (2014-2015), in Biratnagar, Morang (d. 2016).
Roy Romanow, Canadian politician (Premier of Saskatchewan 1991-2001), in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
S. [Shunmugam] Jayakumar, former Singaporean politician (5th Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, 2004–2009), in Singapore, Straits Settlements.
George Hamilton, American actor (“Love at First Bite”); in Memphis, Tennessee.
David Jacobs, American television writer; in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 2023).
Skip Caray, American sportscaster; in St. Louis, Missouri (d. 2008).
Pam Ryan-Kilborn, Australian hurdler (Olympics, 80m hurdles, bronze medal, 1964, silver medal, 1968), in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Charley Frazier, AFL and NFL wide receiver (AFL All-Star, 1966; Houston Oilers, Boston Patriots), in Houston, Texas (d. 2022).
Naval Construction:
The Japanese light aircraft carrier HIJMS Hosho is designated a training carrier.
The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Eagle begins her refitting work at Singapore.
The Royal Navy Tree-class minesweeping trawlers HMS Walnut (T 103) and HMS Rowan (T 119) are launched by Smith’s Dock Co., Ltd. (South Bank-on-Tees, U.K.).
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type VIIB U-boat U-49 is commissioned. Her first commander is Kapitänleutnant Kurt von Gossler.
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type IIC U-boat U-61 is commissioned. Her first commander is Oberleutnant zur See Jürgen Oesten.
[Ed: The Last Days before the end of the interwar peace. Before the World goes Mad.]
History Diaries 