1908: Congress Takes Aim At Roosevelt

WASHINGTON: Presidential quarrels reached a climax of sensationalism today [Dec. 11], when just as the country was gasping with surprise over the threat of Mr. Roosevelt to have the critics of the Panama Canal transaction indicted for criminal libel, the House of Representatives took an extraordinary step. It passed a resolution to investigate the language used by the President in that section of his annual Message in which he proposed the shackling of Secret Service detectives. Members of both Houses feel that they were grossly insulted through an imputation cast upon their honesty. Never before has the President had so many quarrels nor have so many boomerangs which he has thrown come whistling back about his head. This is the first serious quarrel that any President has had with Congress since the days of Andrew Johnson.

1933: Fatal Weath on Both U.S. Coasts

NEW YORK: While the winter’s first substantial snowfall, accompanied by icy gales and sub-zero temperatures, today [Dec. 11] blanketed the northeastern seaboard, bringing death to more than 20 persons, the Pacific northwest experienced one of the worst floods in history. Seattle reported hundreds of families homeless in the state of Washington, with highway traffic at a standstill and property damage which is expected to run into millions. More than a score of deaths are attributed to snowfall in the northeast, while several others are blamed on the cold. Owishead, in the Adirondacks, always the coldest spot in New York state, reported 24 degrees below zero, a new record for December. Hundreds of unemployed, who have qualified for snow-shoveling jobs, were put to work in New York cleaning the streets.

1958: Iraqi Communists Forge Ahead

CAIRO: Militant Iraqi Communists surrounding Premier Abdel Karim Kassem have launched a sweeping purge of Iraqi Nationalists in a move that threatens to alter the future course of the oil-rich Arab state, according to travelers arriving here from Bagdad. They said the alleged coup announced last Monday [Dec. 8] was followed by widespread arrests in the army and in nationalist political circles. Among those said to be under arrest was ex-Premier Rashid Ali Kallany, who led the abortive war-time revolt against the Hashemites and the British. They said some 50 nationalist army officers were also under arrest. The travelers said the chiefs of police in every major city in Iraq had been arrested and replaced by Communists or fellow travelers. None of these reports has been confirmed from Bagdad and there has been a virtual news vacuum there.

1908: Roosevelt and the Panama Canal

NEW YORK: Mr. William Nelson Cromwell has issued a statement in which he supports the stand taken by President Roosevelt regarding the Panama Canal transaction. Mr. Cromwell denounces the articles published in the New York ”World” and the Indianapolis ”News” during the Presidential campaign, regarding alleged scandalous features of the Panama deal, and adds: ”I again denounce the statement, wherein published or by whomever made, that there was a syndicate formed by American citizens to purchase the Panama Canal and sell it to the United States, as absolutely and unqualifiedly false.” Furthermore, Mr. Cromwell’s statement says, ”Not a man in public life in America ever had the least pecuniary interest in the Panama Canal.”

1933: Terrorism Adds to Strikes

MADRID: A ”general revolutionary strike” throughout Spain, starting tomorrow [Dec. 11], has been declared by the Spanish federation of labor, a syndicalist organization. A manifesto summoning all workers to go on strike has already been distributed in the cities. The government, meanwhile, is taking every possible precaution, fearing that the strike may extend to other workers’ organizations, such as the Communists and the Socialists. So far, the disturbances of the last two days, engineered by the Anarchists and syndicalists, are estimated to have caused 100 deaths and 300 persons are injured. In Barcelona early this morning, Anarchists attempted to blow up towers carrying high power electric wires. Bombs were thrown, and motorists proceeding towards the city were held up by the insurgents and their cars utilized for attacks on the police. One public market, with its stalls and provisions, was also destroyed, but by daybreak the police had the situation under control.

1958: Reds Reject Brandt’s Plan

BERLIN: East Germany rejected today [Dec. 10] a suggestion by West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt to create an internationalized 110-mile-long land corridor across East Germany to Berlin. Mr. Brandt, whose Social Democrat party won in last Sunday’s West Berlin city elections, has been intending to present his suggestion at this weekend’s conference in Paris of the Big Three and the West German Foreign Ministers on the Berlin crisis. His notion of a corridor arrangement is intended as a counter-move to Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev’s recent threatened action against West Berlin. The core of Mr. Khrushchev’s threat is that the Soviet Union will turn over control of West Berlin’s air and land lifelines to the East German Communist regime five and a half months from now. Mr. Khrushchev wants Berlin declared a ”free city” after all occupying forces have been withdrawn.

1908: President Attacks Congress

WASHINGTON: Congress has been buzzing all day [Dec. 9] like a nest of hornets. The trouble is a bitter criticism of the House and the Senate in the President’s Message. It was buried in a paragraph on the Secret Service. The members ignored the Message yesterday, as they were prepared to fill all Mr. Roosevelt’s recommendations, but when this reference was discovered most of the members went wild. The President criticized the act of Congress of last year, prohibiting the use of Secret Service men except in the detention of counterfeiters. Mr. Roosevelt said that only the criminal class could be benefited by this act. Perhaps members of Congress were afraid that they would be investigated, especially since Secret Service men in the land fraud cases had furnished evidence on which a Representative and a Senator had been convicted. Mr. Langley, a Representative from Kentucky, said: ”The Message means that Congress is composed of crooks and the judiciary is half corrupt, while the Executive is the Lord’s anointed.” The situation is acute. Members of the House have been conferring all day on what steps to take. Congress took action restricting the use of Secret Service men because it was alleged that the President authorized the employment of these officers to procure evidence for an army officer against his wife in a divorce case.

1933: Anarchists Revolt in Spain:

MADRID: Widespread revolt by anarchists and syndicalists, breaking out in Spain during the night, assumed alarming proportions today [Dec. 9]. As a result the government this morning proclaimed a ‘’state of alarm” throughout Spain. Civil guards and troops have been moved to the northeastern provinces, where the situation is most serious. Fighting with the rebels there has resulted in a large number of casualties. Incomplete dispatches so far indicate between 20 and 40 killed and several hundred wounded. Communications with Barcelona and Saragossa have been cut, but several clashes between troops and rebels have been reported, so that casualties are believed to exceed all estimates. The state of alarm precedes a state of war, or martial law. While it leaves the civil government in power, it suspends constitutional guarantees and the principle of inviolability of the home. It prohibits mass meetings and the formation of groups in the streets, provides for the establishment of censorship on press telegrams and for the expulsion of any foreigner participating in disorder. Public buildings and banks in towns within the revolt zone were guarded by troops. In most of these places, a revolutionary general strike has been declared by the syndicalist unions and pickets were patrolling the streets, ordering all shops and cafés to close. Hundreds of anarchist leaders have been arrested.

1958: Heated Election in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela: The ruling junta threatened today [Dec. 9] to suspend constitutional rights if further disorders follow yesterday’s [Dec. 8] rioting against the election of Romulo Betancourt as President. The junta, headed by Edgard Sanabria, reiterated its promise to turn the government over to the man ”definitely elected.” Mr. Betancourt was the apparent winner in unofficial returns. Leaders of Mr. Betancourt’s Accion Democratica party claimed 60 of 127 seats in Congress and 20 of 42 Senators on the basis of unofficial returns. The Communists apparently elected two Senators and five or six Deputies, the remainder of the seats going to UNR and COPEI candidates. Five thousand club-wielding supporters of Rear Adm. Wolfgang Larrazabal virtually took over the broad Avenida Urdaneta last night protesting Mr. Betancourt’s apparent election. The crowds swarmed in front of the Presidential palace in a demonstration for Adm. Larrazabal, former president of the ruling government junta. Members of the emergency student brigades blocked off a long stretch of the avenue in front of the palace. Demonstrators raced up and down in motorcycles, cars and trucks bearing huge portraits of Adm. Larrazabal and the yellow flags of the Union Republicana democratic party. Scores of troops with rifles and submachine guns who had guarded the palace disappeared.

1908: Land of Religious Freedom

PARIS: America’s official attitude as regards religion was one of the principal themes of Professor Van Dyke’s lecture at the Sorbonne yesterday [Dec. 8]. The freedom of religious thought and the independence of all religious sects and denominations in America constituted, he said, one of the salient evidences of the American spirit of fair play. Mr. Van Dyke emphasized the assertion that there is no party, church, or ecclesiastical sect or organization in America that desires an alliance between church and State, or even an agreement of any sort. But independence, he continued, does not mean literal separation of Church and State. There are men of many different religious sects in the Government of the United States. President Roosevelt himself is a member of one of the smallest religious denominations in the country, the Dutch Reformed Church.

1933: St Bernadette Elevated

ROME: Pope Pius XI today [Dec. 8] officiated before a throng in the Basilica of St. Peter’s at the canonization of Bernadette Soubirous, the shepherdess of Lourdes. Rarely has the Catholic Church elevated to sainthood one whose works lie such a short time in the past, for the subject of today’s canonization died in 1879. Among those who attended the ceremony was Mgr. Le Maitre, now archbishop of Carthage, whose miraculous cure at the shrine of Lourdes was one of the factors in substantiating the elevation of the peasant girl to sainthood. His cure was pictured on one of the banners carried in the papal procession, and only the rules of the religious order to which she belonged prevented the attendance of Sister Maria di San Fedele, who testified to the cure by the powers of the shrine. The Pope decreed that the name day of St. Bernadette should be April 10.

1958: Protests Against Nuclear Bases

LONDON: A series of non-violent demonstrations last weekend against construction of nuclear rocket bases in Britain produced a round of questions in the House of Commons today [Dec. 8] and a firm declaration from the government front bench that it will not be deterred from building up the ”deterrent.” Pressed by liberal leader Jo Grimond to suspend work on sites for United States-made medium-range guided missiles, Air Secretary George Ward replied: ”These are a valuable part of the Western deterrent and we shall certainly continue to build these sites undeterred by any demonstrations of the kind we saw over the weekend.” On Saturday [Dec. 6] and again yesterday [Dec. 7], demonstrators for an organization called the ”Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War” surmounted barbed-wire fencing at a Royal Air Force station in Norfolk County.

1908: Simon Almost There

PORT-AU-PRINCE: At 6.30 o’clock last night [Dec. 6] General Simon was proclaimed Chief Executive, with power to name ministers and appoint officers to military posts. The revolutionists are celebrating with fireworks, dances and music. One of General Simon’s advisers has said that before twelve days he will be generally acclaimed President. Expert politicians are landing in Hayti from all directions, and General Simon should lose no time in asserting the authority he claims. Posters were displayed yesterday morning on the city buildings, advising the population to cry, ”Long live President Simon! Down with the actual Congress!” If the populace obeys this advice Hayti will remain under brutal military rule, and backed by bayonets, General Simon will be ruler of the so-called democratic country for seven years. The officers of three Haytian warships have agreed to recognize the fall of General Nord Alexis and to place themselves under General Simon’s orders.

1933: Hitler Commences Demands:

PARIS: Franco-German relations have again come to the fore with the sudden departure for London Wednesday [Dec. 6] of Lord Tyrell, the British ambassador in Paris, which was connected by the French press with the equality right demands which Chancellor Hitler submitted Tuesday to the British ambassador in Berlin. According to reports current in Paris Hitler’s latest demands include the immediate return of the Saar without the plebiscite to be held under the League of Nations in 1935, and the granting to Germany a conscript army of 300,000 men - three times the number authorized under the Versailles treaty. British acceptance in whole or part of these demands was considered by the London cabinet Wednesday. If the demands accredited to Hitler prove accurate, their rejection by the French seems certain.

1958: Russia-Iran Pact in Danger

MOSCOW: The Soviet government’s official newspaper underlined again today [Dec. 7] the toughening foreign-policy line here. In an article by A. Yermolayev, ”Izvestia” warned Iran that it faced a ”great threat” if it signed a military pact with the United States. Writer Yermolayev said a United States-Iranian military treaty would be an ”aggressive compact” against the Soviet Union, and would be ”incompatible” with a 1927 Russian-Iranian treaty. In that pact, Russia and Iran (then known as Persia) agreed not to enter into alliances ”directed against the safety of the other territory” of each other. The treaty gave Russia the right to send the Red Army into Iran to eliminate any ”danger” there to the Soviet Union arising out of any pact the Middle East country might sign.

1908: General Simon Set for Presidency

NEW YORK: Despatches from Port-au-Prince say that a revolutionary army of 8,000 men marched into the capital at eight o’clock this morning [Dec. 5], with General Simon at its head. The committee of public safety met General Simon at the outskirts, conveyed the welcome of the people and offered him a crown of palms. General Simon, with an escort, made his way to the cathedral where the archbishop conducted a ”Te Deum.” The bells of the city rang and drums and trumpets sounded a salute that, previously, had only been used to welcome the President. After leaving the church General Simon made a tour of Port-au-Prince. He was cheered by the people wherever he went. It was thought that he would go to the palace, but instead he established his headquarters in a private house in the Champ de Mars. His position undoubtedly is very strong, and there is great likelihood of his proclaiming himself President.

1933: A Model of Diplomacy

ROME: Russian participation in any ”doubtful combination” in the international field was dismissed from the realm of potentialities today [Dec. 5] by Maxim Litvinov, Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, at the close of the two-day visit to Premier Mussolini. ”For some time,” he said, ”official meetings of statesmen outside international conferences have ordinarily had as their objective modification of existing relations between their countries, establishment of new relations or liquidation of current difficulties. Sometimes they were even searching new and often dangerous formulas, or arrangements at the expense of a third country. In the case of my meeting with the head of the Italian government, all intentions of this sort should be considered as excluded. Anything which constitutes a guarantee of peace is sure to receive the approval and support of Russia, but my country rejects flatly all doubtful combinations .”

1958: East Zone Detains U.S. Pilot

BERLIN: The East German Communists announced tonight [Dec. 5] they are holding a United States Army pilot who bailed out over East German territory on Wednesday night [Dec. 3] when his small single-engined courier plane ran out of gas. The United States, which refuses to recognize the East German regime, is expected to demand that the Soviet Union obtain his release from East German custody. The Soviet Union’s recent policy, however, has been to inform the United States that it must deal directly with the East German government. Tonight’s announcement by the East Germans indicated that they have been holding the pilot - without disclosing the fact - for almost 48 hours. During the greater part of this interval United States helicopters scoured the border regions between East and West Germany in search for him. The East Germans confirmed the earlier identification of the missing pilot as 1st Lt. Richard Makin, of Washington.

1908: Patriotic Burst in Italy

ROME: The popular excitement against Austria-Hungary, which found in the recent incidents in Vienna a pretext for its outward expression, had died away somewhat since Sunday [Nov. 29]. Protests, however, continue in the press, and people in thousands joined the Dante Aligheri Society, which has for its object the defense of Italian interests and Italian national feeling abroad. In the universities, in the colleges, in the schools, on the bourses and even in the Municipal Council of Rome, collections are made for this society. The manifestations in the streets had ceased when the discussion on the Balkan policy of the Government began on Tuesday [Dec. 1] in the Chamber of Deputies. There were at the beginning some noisy demonstrations against Signor Tittoni, Minister of Foreign Affairs, but the remainder of the discussion was marked by great dignity and gravity. One of the speakers scored a success which will have a great political importance.

1933: Awaiting Repeal Proclamation

NEW YORK: In a maze of confusion the nation was waiting impatiently for the President’s proclamation tomorrow afternoon [Dec. 5] which will sound around the death-knell of prohibition and permit the first honest drink in nearly 14 years. Confronted with new regulations, the problem of adequate supply and when it may be obtained and whether customers can drink standing or sitting and a score of other questions, authorities and dispensers alike were somewhat curbed by uncertainty over obtaining liquor in time as well as a shortage due principally to withholding import quota permits until after repeal has been proclaimed. As a result, thousands will be disappointed when they are confronted with prices for hard liquor, only slightly below the figure of the bootleg era. Owing to uncertainty as to the exact hour of the repeal proclamation, due to Utah’s action which will come some time in the afternoon, many hotels have cancelled tomorrow’s celebration.

1958: Severe Blow for Fanfani

ROME: The Chamber of Deputies tonight [Dec. 4] defeated, 314-263, the six-month-old government of Premier Amintore Fanfani on a tax issue. Mr. Fanfani later asked the Chamber for a vote of confidence, which will be taken next week. Tonight’s defeat was the second in two weeks. The first defeat also was on a fuel-tax question. The government was defeated then by 266 to 247. Twenty-six of Mr. Fanfani’s official supporters voted against him under the secrecy of the ballot in the worst breakdown of discipline the Premier’s ranks have suffered. The Parliament voted to do away with the four-cent-a-gallon special tax on gasoline which has been in effect since the Suez Canal crisis two years ago. Mr. Fanfani had begged that the tax be kept in effect at least until the middle of 1960, and his Finance Minister, Luigi Prati, argued that the extra funds were needed to improve Italy’s dangerously narrow and curving highways. Behind the defeat was the much bigger problem, however, of dissatisfaction in the government coalition.