ENEMY RUSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1942, Page 3

ENEMY RUSE

9 STORIES OF AXIS INTERNAL UNREST BELIEF OF COLONEL KNOX. NEW PROPAGANDA EFFORT. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) WASHINGTON, January 14. Colonel Knox, Secretary of the Navy, said he suspected that stories of internal unrest in Germany were spurious and deliberately spread to hoodwink America and diminish the urgency of the war effort. Colonel Knox pointed out that almost every story of unrest in Germany originated in Nazi-controlled territory. “I don’t think there is a German rout in Russia but merely a withdrawal, hasty perhaps, but that does not mean that the Germans are licked,” he said. “They still have the greatest military machine in the world. The Russians have put a crimp into it, but we must not think it is falling apart.” Mr Wendell Willkie, in a broadcast today, said that isolationism as a factor in American foreign policy had been destroyed forever at Pearl Harbour. “Never again can we place our trust in a Chinese Wall of national aloofness,” he said. “We must realise now and forever that we cannot seal ourselves hermetically against the rest of the world.

“Democracy cannot be saved by the armies of Russia, but the democracies themselves. Those who fear Communism the most should be the most anxious to see fighting forces of the democracies on every front in the world. In order to survive the democracies must bear the brunt of winning this war.”

Mr D. Nelson, the newly-appointed chairman of the War Production Board, today addressed a letter to the Army, Navy, and the Office of Production Management. He said his job was to shake up the entire defence effort and any changes in organisation which had to be made would be made. “We have just one job to do,” he said, ::to make enough war material to smash Hitler . . . and to do it in the shortest possible time.” President Roosevelt said that the new War Production Board took over the functions of the Supply Priorities Allocation Board, the members of which xvould transfer to it. Mr Henry A. Wallace, as chairman of the Economic efence Board, will also be a member.

Mr Wallace announced that measures had been taken "to maintain an adequate flow of oil and gasoline to the American and Allied forces in the various theatres of war. His statement followed a meeting of the new Foreign Petroleum Policy Committee. The major/oil companies, he said, were co-operating in working out a supply programme.

A conference of committees from the Senate and House of Representatives has agreed on legislation to vest control of the national civilian defence programme in Mr La Guardia, and to vote 100,000,000 dollars for it,