BLASTS AT THREE U.S. FACTORIES. All within the same half-hour. Judging from the New York Herald Tribune’s account, none of the three plants had any obvious relationship to America’s preparedness program – neither the United Railway Signal Company in Woodbridge, N.J., nor the American Cyanamid and Chemical Corporation plant in Edinburgh, Pa., had any government contracts, and the Trojan Powder Company in Allentown, Pa., only had one. But explosions took place at all three plants Tuesday, thirty-three minutes apart. Sixteen people were killed. Plant owners deny sabotage caused the explosions -- but as the New York Times points out, signal torpedoes produced at United Railway Signal didn’t have enough explosive power to cause a blast on that scale. And finally, reports John G. Norris in the Washington Post, this development comes shortly after a suspicious fire in Atlanta’s Municipal Auditorium, which destroyed a million dollars worth of Army equipment.
I haven’t paid much attention to these types of reports in the past, but this is pretty startling stuff. The Post says Army and Navy officials are taking this pretty seriously and are "considering plans for redoubling the protective measures taken at defense installations." G-men are investigating, too. That’s probably more seriously than the Chicago Tribune takes this news -- while other papers front-paged it, the Tribune’s account was tucked away on page 14. I guess the isolationist editors considered the front-page cartoon denouncing "intervention talk" by "war propaganda machines" to be more important than what may prove to be an actual attack on U.S. soil by a foreign enemy.
NAZIS AT WORK -- IN OUR DEFENSE PLANTS. It just happens there’s an article in the new Current History and Forum detailing the extent to which Nazi agents have infiltrated America’s most critical industries, hiding behind the century-old tradition of "diplomatic immunity." Read it -- it’ll curl your hair. Writers Albert Grzesinski and Charles E. Hewitt, Jr. contend that German consulates in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and elsewhere have been reduced by Hitler’s diplomats to hideouts for "Nazi propagandists, spies and troublemakers." The State Department, the pair say, has been seriously derelict in keeping up with these abuses of diplomacy, and doesn’t possess a list of Germans, their families, and their servants who are protected by immunity. So our own diplomats haven’t been able to keep up with the coordination of Germany’s diplomatic corps with the German-American Bund. Nor is State suitably aware of the connection of this unholy alliance to sabotage --
"The Bund in America is part of a better mass machine of spies, saboteurs and cash contributors than the Nazis have had in any country in Europe. The Bund’s membership list has never been surrendered despite government subpoenas and energetic F.B.I. investigation. The Bund claims it has no roster and financial records. This is literally true; both are kept at [German] consulates. Every one of the Bund’s 40,000 members is, by regulation, an American citizen who nevertheless renews an oath of loyalty to Hitler and the greater German Reich each year on April 20, the Fuehrer’s birthday."
That established, Grzesinski and Hewitt pass along this shocker -- "License plates were checked at the Bund camp in Andover, New Jersey, this summer. When their Nazi drills were over, five members were found to be returning to jobs at Picatinny Arsenal -- largest in the nation; twelve to positions in the National Guard; three to the Hercules Powder plant in Kenvil; and three to jobs as engineers in New Jersey’s biggest power plant. Two months later New Jersey rocked beneath one of the greatest explosions in America’s industrial history when the Kenvil plant went up. Fifty-two died there. Within the same week a blast at the Picatinny Arsenal killed two more. The F.B.I. is still investigating."
The Kenvil explosion was two months ago, and is described to this day in the press as "mysterious." How long can we afford to wait for the mystery to be cleared up? Shouldn’t we at least bar Bund members from working in defense-related industries?The survival of our country will depend on the state of our military preparedness for the foreseeable future. Nothing, but nothing, must come before that.
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, R.I.P. Prime Minister Churchill gave perhaps his finest speech yet when he paid tribute Tuesday to the late Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s death last week from cancer, coming only a few weeks after his resignation from the cabinet, prompted this poignant saalute from his former political opponent, artfully summing up the nobility of Chamberlain’s failure in office --
"It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart – the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamor. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned."
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