EXTRA ig Ur ign 3rnl3 EXTRA VOL. LII No. 78A ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1942 Z-323 PRICE FiV CENTS 9 Mexico Seeks Pan-Ainerican Unit Accord Against Axis Colombia, Venezuela Join Bloc To Sever Relations With Warring Powers, At Conference Thursday Argentine Position SubjectOf Concern BUENOS AIRES, Jan. 13.-(I)- Acting President Ramon S. Cas- tillo said in a press conference to- night that he "fully supported" his foreign minister's declaration that Argentina is unable to agree on military alliances or other "mea- sures of prebelligerency" at the Rio de Janeiro Pan-American Confer- ence. He said Argentina would follow "its traditional international policies." ' RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 13.-(P- Mexico's foreign minister Ezequiel Padilla disclosed today that his na- tion, Colombia and Venezuela had formed a bloc which would seek a United Pan-American severance of relations with "the nations at war with the United States" at the Pan- American Conference opening Thurs- - ay. "There are three groups in this conference.: those Central American and Caribbean nations wishing an -outright declaration of war; an op- posite group desiring a declaration of a state of non-befligerency, and the group, including Mexico, which will support a break in relations-the step which we believe is favored by the United States," Padilla said. Relations Severed Nations in the Mexican bloc al- ready have, severed relations with the Axis powers. The Central Amer- ican and Caribbean countries have declared wa. Severance of diplomatic relations would mean the ousting of Ais dip- lomats and agents throughout the Latin American republics. "Our task is to conciliate the group wishing to declare war-but which is a not in a position to effectively carry on a war effort-with the group 'wishing non-belligerency, which would prove harmful to the United 'States," Padilla, said.' .s Padilla added that Mexio's posi-- tion was clear: support of the most feasible program to rid the Western Hemisphere of enemy agents. Enemy Submarine Sinks Armed Ship AN EAST COAST CANADIAN PORT, Jan. 13,-__P)-An enemy sub- marine brought the, war closer to American shores within the last two days by sinking without warning a large armed steamship 160 miles off .Nova Scotia. Two torpedoes finished Qff the liner, presumably British, and ac- counted for perhaps 90 lives. Ninety- one were known rescued after 20 chill hours in near zero weather on the bleak Atlantic. Among those saved were 66 Chinese, believed to have been crewmen. m Eemy submarines have been re- ported close to both shores of Amer- ica, but this sinking was the nearest attack yet to the eastern coast. Jap- REVISED UNIVERSITY CALENDAR Old Program Near Program First semester exam. period Jan. 31-Feb. 11 Jan. 28-Feb. 4 'N 0 Second semester registration Feb. 12-14 Beginning of second semesterFeb. 16 Spring vacation . . . . . . April 10-1 Final examinations . . . . June 6-16 9 Feb. 5-7 Feb. 9 Omitted May 20-27 May 30 Commencement Day . . . . June 20. Play Production Presents: 'George Washington Slept Here' To Begin Three-Day Run Today By GLORIA NISHON Today at 8 : O p.m. the curtain of the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre will rise on "George. Washington Slept Here," Play Production's third offer- ing of the current dramatic season. The play, which is under the direc- tion of Valentine B. Windt, Associate Professor of the Department of Sp ech and Director of Play Produc- 'ti , will be given toddy through Saturday each evening. Written in the typical George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy vein, the plot concerns the trials of own- ing a "place in the country." New- ton Fuller, played by William Alt- man, '42, buys and" remodels an old house in the country much to the delight of his daughter Madge, played by Mildred Janusch, '43, and the disgust of his wife Annabelle, Veitch Purdom, '42. To make matters worse they are beset by insect plagues and tree blights-not to mention the hordes of guests who descend upon them. Notable among these is "dear".Uncle Stanley, the rich relative who has to be given the white meat, the com- fortable chair, special food, and who can't stand a draft or any noise. The climax of the laugh comedy is reached when the vengeful Fullers tear their home to pieces to prevent the former owner from repossessing it in the improved state. The play is a revival of the pre- MILDRED JANUSCH sentation by the Michigan Repertory Players last summer. It replaces "Flight to the West" as Play Pro- duction's third bill because the melo- drama had lost significance with America's entry into the war. Tickets for the production are on sale from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. every day through Saturday. Artillery Fire Administers Jap_ Setback American Forces Shatter Enemy Concentrations, Cause Nippon Retreat WASHINGTON, Jan. 13. - (P) - Weary, outnumbered and fighting with their backs to the sea, the forces of General Douglas MacArthur have nevertheless administered a jarring setback to the Japanese invader. American artillery "definitely super-f ior" to that of the Japanese did the job. As reported today by the War De- partment. 24 hours of continuous fighting had shattered and dispersed columns of enemy tanks, and arm- ored units. It had scattered enemy infantry concentrations and inflicted heavy losses upon them. It had silenced eleven artillery batteries-probably forty or more guns. And it had forced Japanese artil- lery units to withdraw a consider- able distance. MacArthur's losses were described as "relatively slight." Enemy air ac- tivity was limited to dive bombing intendedsto increase the effect of Japanese cannonading. There were no enemy air attacks on Corregidor or other fixed fortifications. Thus the day and night-long bat- tle left MacArthur in a somewhat improved position, still patently the master of Batan Peninsula, the rug- ged tongue of land between Manila Bay and the South China Sea, which he chose for a last desperate stand. Nevertheless, his was still a de- laying battle, aimed primarily at keeping busy on the island of Luzon enemy troops, planes and mechanized equipment which otherwise would be thrown into the battle for Singapore and the Dutch East Indies" In the absence of any reports that the American and Filipino fighters advanced as the Japs withdrew, it was assumed that they were holding fast to carefully selected defense po- sitions-probably selected months ago by the crafty strategist MacAr- thur-which had already proved their military value. Defense Survey Will Close Today; Questionnaires Due Students who have failed to fill out or to return questionnaires for the campus defense survey sponsored by the Committee of 1942, are re- aues~ted to do so immediiatelyas the Exam Period Cut To 7 Days; School Will Close May27 The University of Michigan landed on the band- wagon of war-speeded education with a resounding thump today as a precedent-breaking Deans' Confer- ence approved the first of a series of drastic changes in University policy which called for: (1) shortening of final examination periods, (2) omission of Spring Vacation, andF (3) moving of Commencement to May 30. m Opening the development of a program which is expected to include a three semester year, administra-S tive officials announced today that all schools and col- leges of the University will cooperate in the elimination of slack from their schedules. Jan. 28 has been set as the new opening date of firstt semester final examinations, and they will close on Feb. 4. Only the Law School will be excepted, their examination period beginning Jan. 24. The Law School must work in 15-week semesters to comply with legal requirements for bar examina-t tions. The exams in this school will begin Saturday,B Jan. 24 and will end' Feb. 2. Individual colleges and schools are revising theirc own examination arrangements. Three two-hour final examinations will be given each day in the Literary, Engineering and Education Schools. Dean Wells I. Bennett of the School of Archi-t tecture and Design said that many courses in his school will have no finals because of laboratory work. In other cases the examinations will be shortened or givenG before the end of the school year. Announcements in the graduate schools will be, made shortly while it is expected that the examinationsc in the School of Forestry and Conservation will still bet three hours. All final arrangements will be printed in The Daily. With the shortening of the examination period, the1 second semester will start Feb. 9, and student registra-j tion and classification is scheduled to take place Feb.. 5-7. Omission of Spring Vacation and the moving of second semester finals to the week of May 20-27 will enable the University to hold Commencement May 30, and thus graduate some 2,000 students more than three weeks early. ,,, The Medical School is reported to be arranging a plan for opening its Summer Session June 7 and on' that date begin a three-year course system. The Dental School will follow the same scheme, cooperating in its arrangements with the Medical School. Under their plans freshmen will be encouraged to take summer work, but the regular beginning of their new program will wait until fall. All present students not graduating are expected to stay for a full-length Summer Session. Unverified and often wild rumors which have swept'the campus for days were thus brought to an end1 Nelson Made Generalissimo Of Production By Roosevelt Capital Action Anticipates Wide Demand For End To 'Debating Society' Methods Of Old Board osition Is Superior To Wallace, Cabinet WASHINGTON, Jan. 13. - (P) - President Roosevelt created a one- nan control over America's vast war production effort tonight with all. power concentrated in "Donald U" Nelson, as a sort of genegalisslo of . supply. The surprise announcement was given out at the White House about two hours before Wendell L.' Willkie, r Republican Presidential nominee in 1940, was to go on the air with a de- wand th one-man control be setup to end "debating #scety"' methods. An advance text of the Willke speech had been distributed in Wash- ington early in the day, and Willkie himself had conferred at the White House thisforenoon. In actually delivering his epeech tonight, Willkie deleted the demand for the$ one-man set-up in view o Mr. Roosevelt's action. New Board Under the President's plan, still in- complete, a new war production board will be established, and Nelson made its chairman. Nelson. has been serving as Executive Director of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board. Members of SPAB, compris- ing some of the highest officials of the government, will serve on the new board-under Nelson. The big bluff pipe-smoking Nelson' who came into the defense program as its purchasing agent some months ago and has stepped constantly into more responsible positions, will have the power of final decision on all questions of procurement and pro- duction. He will be the big boss, the war- time czar, empowered to tell Ameri-n nutywa t o n oe. can inusr whtt o nd toex- Pect its ready compliance. His only superior officer is President Roose- velt himself.. Washington Immedi- ately concluded that Nelson's posi- tion here would be roughly equiva- lent to that of Lord Beaverbrook, ther British Minister of Supply. Unifies Control The new move, too, meets a demand that has been raised almost con- stantly since the rearmament effort began in 1940, that. there be a tari- fied control of production. Since America became a belliger- ent, the same demand has increased in intensity. Tonight for instance, not only Willkie, but Chairman Con- nally (Dem.-Tex.) of the Senate For- eign Relations Committee urged such a reorganization. Asserting that "we need decisions not discussions, we need planes, not predictions, we needtanks, not talki" Willkie said in his prepared text that the President should "disregard the political headache" and appoint a single individual to head up the pro- duction effort "with ability to decide and authority to act." Connally said the Office of Pro- duction Management was in "a state of confusion and overlapping" and needed one big, double-fisted, hard- boiled man to run it--.qrnehntiuwht Modern Caravan Follows Route: Color Film Of India's Wonders Will Be Shown By Thaw Today Lawrence Thaw, world traveller and exploiver long famous for his out- standing travelogues of Africa, will bring his new color picture on India to an Oratorical audience at :8:15' p.m. today in Hill Auditorium. Tickets will be sold from 10 a.m. until 8:15 p.m. today in the auditor- ium box office. Undaunted by the prospects of war, the Thaw family sailed from New York with the aim of following the ancient silk route that runs from In- dia to Paris, via Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, the Balkans and Austria. For this trip they assembled 15 tons of equipment and a fleet of five vehicles. As flagship they designed for themselves a land yacht, a roomy 40 foot trailer, completely air-con- ditioned, costing $80,000. After many discouraging incidents, they followed the ancient trade route and finally in November crossed through Khyber Pass into India. Dis- 13layed on their gorgeous color films, photographed by Hollywood camera- men, are the unbelievable sights they saw-the gardens of Shalimar, the white marble Taj Mahal, funeral ghats on the banks of the Ganges, the Juggernaut at Puri, the ruins of the world's largest city on the island of Ceylon. University Council Will MeetMonday Members of the University Senate have been invited to a special meet- ing of the University Council, at 4:15 p.m., Monday, Jan. 19 in the Rack- ham Amphitheatre, it was announced at 11:15 a.m. today. The meeting will be held to dis- cuss matters relating to adjustment to war conditions. This session pro- posed at the University Council meet- ing yesterday, will be open to all members of the University Senate. The Council is a smaller representa- tive body of the University. 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