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London Honored Brave Charwomen Cleaners of Blitz Nights Of- ficlally Recognized At Thea- tre Party They called. them "London's Pride" a4 they sat-in thelr simple finery to-recelve the plandits of a king, a prince, an admiral and a " eabinet minister for dalng thelr ¢ * Jobs while London-burned and the slit and smoke and dust of 1,000 fires sifted through every widdow: and covered every doorstep . Official, , Recognition For official recognition had ' eome at last to the Imdomitable eharwomen of. London, "foes of dirt and foes of Hitler," who were being honored in the same way a8 other heroes and heroines of bombing, wafdens, firemen, stretch- er bearers, first ald workers and _ policemen, had been Anke bg- fore them, P44 N They'were brought together In & West End theatre to see a show, a musical comedy hit of the sea- son--to give them a good time and tell them that people haven't for- gotten, as Home Secretary Herbert Morrison sald, that "In the thous- and and one deeds that have help- ed to save London, her charwomen have played a famous part." Easy To Work There were 1,700 of these women whose work each day 1s well under . way before the average man or woman {8 out of bed. Chosen by ballot, they represented-more than 80,000 colleagues in 'government offices and the 95 town halls in the London Civil Defence region. Théy were guests of honor at a show organized -by Admiral Sir Edward Evans (Evans of the = Broke), London Regional Commis- sioner. The King, with whom many 3 of them had a friendly word, was i H 5 King Haakon of Norway. Tho UE Prince was his son, Crown Prince Olay. } Tall and short, large--some very : Jarge--and small, béaming until their teeth, or lack of teeth, show- ed, they came for an afternoon of ' fun. For a few hours they put down _. their scrubbing brushes and their pails--exchanged their aprons and __smocks for their finest dresses and coats, 7 Her First Time } Miss Louisa Dean was there, she who had never been to London town before, although in all her 83 years she had lived only 16 miles from London Bridge. She . tame from Sutton, Surrey, where #he has cleaned council offices for 2 16 years. A little shy--but she Fi EL spoke up firmly when King Haakon v stopped to ask if shé was enjoying herself. 3 "Yes, thank. you, your Majesty, I'm having a lovely time," she pald, standing up proudly in her : neat blue hat and brown tweed coat. --~ , Mrs. Kent was there too, Florrie Kent who hadn't been to a theatre "since" her husband dled 46 years ago. With her. faded flowered hat perched high on her head, her fur: collared coat buttoned at the throat and "her cane in hand, she # gat in the front row of the stalls and thought the show a "scream." Misses Bombs = ~ Florrie 18-77 and was the oldest- '~¢har there. She met the Admiral and she met the King and had "the happiest afternoon in many a long sie art. Yorn 6t an official char now, really," she sald. "I went through / thé Blitz with the others, but I'm retired. I'm, getting on a bit for a full-time job. That's the trouble." Phe. and Admiral Evans had quite ; a chat. PA, ee "Nice to meet you, sir," she sald as she shook hands, "I hope every. thing in your. line of business is doing nicely." It was the Admiral assured her, and asked her how the cleaning business was doing. "Not 80 busy. now we haven't those bombs about," she replied. Yet, it was a proud day for Louisa Dean and Mrs, Kent and all * those other gallant women who never faltered in--their" jobs and _ often raised a chuckle from the early morning workers in thoso days of bombing as they polished the knobs of a door from which all the windows had been blasted or washed down the- doorsteps of a house whose roof was blown away. __ Stored Axis Supplies Taken Over By v. S.. - Secretary Morgenthau announ- eed that the United States Treas- 'ury had turned over to Vice- President Wallace an. Inventory of $200,000,000 worth of mater- fals useful in wartime which are held .in storage places for for- "eign owners, 2 Morgenthau said much of the + + material uncovered had been | Li ie either Ah h accident or 27 an t in many cases fhe foreign owner either could: " pot-communicate with the United ~~ Btates or had fallen" victim to is invasion, Ab, : "In still other justancts," he "the axis powers throug : sitully had "bought 8 own sé the war or had acquired ater for the express' pur. VOICE . PRESS SAVING FOR THE FUTURE It la a great tribute to the sta- blity of the.Canadian .people that even in the midst of war they 'continue to take thought for the future. © Mr. ) dent of the Canadlan Life Insur: . ance Officers" Association, stated the other' day that. Mfe ingurance in force at the end of 1941;reach: ed an all-time high of $7,600,000, , 000, and that new sales in 1941 were 10 peércent higher than in atlve pool, and out of their savings © $176,000,000 already has been in. vested in the Canadian war loans, Life insurance is a vital factor fn the economic strength of the nation as it ig in the economics.of the individual, Ly 4 --Ottawa Journal, wi STYLE IN INDUSTRY There may be some male sniff- ing over reports that a costume has been designed for - women workers in war industry that com- bines "allure" with utility. There should not be. That allure' will help win the war, . No woman does her best when she does not feel that she is look- ing her best. The consciousness of being smartly and attractively at. tired, even among factory mach- ines, will distinctly add to the ef- ficiency of the fair workers. : --\Windsor Star, - ARTI 2 "POINTED" RECEPTION In the Dutch East Indies- the In- habitants are setting up sharpen. ed stakes of bamboo in all the clearings .in the islands so that _ any parachute attackers will be impaled if they attempt a land- ing. The natives don't welcome , visitors of that kind and they want to make sure no person will be so dull that he won't see the point. i "Peterborough XExaminer. : --0-- | "THIS 18 LIVING" A psychologist has estimated that the average seventy-year life "consists of twenty-five years of work; twenty years of 'sleep, seven years of sports and walking, five years of shaving and dressing, seven years' pleasure, three years ot waiting, two years eating, one year telephoning, thirty hours an- nually looking in mirrors, and four hours annually 'wiping one's nose. --St. Catharines Standard. 0, MORE POWER TO THEM Sympathetic words, uttered by "Senator Soaper," Chicago néws columnist; "The kids who were whittling model planes only yes- terday, to the great confusion of the tidy houscholder, are now fly-- ing real ones for Uncle Sam, and all is forgiven." > Stratford Beacon'Herald. gi WON'T WORK Admiral Yamamoto wrote to a friend that he would dictate peace in the White House. The plan 1s not sound. White House steno- graphers do not understand &- word of Japanese. --Welland --0-- MODERN SEE-SAW - "Japs See-Sawing Down Malay. an Coasts" It's a long teeter- totter, however, that has iio bumps. --Windsor Star. Tribune. Russians Get Booty From German Army The Soviet Information Bureau, as if to refute Germany's claim of an orderly withdrawal to a winter line in Russia, issued an imposing list of material captur- ed -hetween Dee, 26 and 31 on the éentral front, : The list follows: Sixty tanks, 11 armored cars, 461 machine-guns, 809 automatic rifles, 2,211 ordinary rifles, 938 trucks, 249 motorcycles, 1,448 bi- cycles, 30 tractors, seven wireless stations, 226 carts, 40 -locomo- tives, 426 railway cars, one train. load of clothing, several railway carloads of equipment for signal . 64 carloads . of aviation bombs, mines and shells, nine, carloads of sheepskins, three carloads of per- sonal effects of officers and sol- diers, nine carloads of motorey- cles, one carload of bicycles, "Captured ammunition dumps, according to preliminary esti. mates," : said the Information Bureau, "contained 20,360 shells and 1,190 cases of shells and 12,- .910 mines, 6,198,000 cartridges." "Why They Run On every front where they have - been engaged in this war, the Italians have not merely been thrashed, but thrashed by greatly | Inferior numbers, The armies of 'Fascism run away, not because the Italians are not a brave rave, but because their heart is not in & gratuitous conflict foisted on of preventing their use in Allied war machine PC i SRN " : TSH _ them by a lunatic leadership, AS J - a Geotge W. Wane: presi 1940, Four gullion Canadian policyy" holders are united in this co-oper- - 287 field guns, 91 minéthirowers; | troop#, 14 carloads of provisions, | -- -- "In grim earnest, American troo west coast," Their job of training t ps man a mach ine gun behind sandbag bank "somewhere on the 0 protect our Pacific coastline is no longer just d a "war game," THE WAR - WEEK -- Commentary, on Current. Events Position of Russia and Germany After Seven Months of Fighting On Jan, 1, 1941, Hitler boasted . "Soldiers, the year 1941 will bring consummation the great. edt victory in our history," On Jan, 1, 1942, Hitler hoped "the year 1942 should and we pray 'God that it may -- bring the decision which will save our people." Zit In the fivst half of the twelve month period between these two speeches, the full force of Hit- ler's Blitzkrieg in England failed to destroy England or to damage the morale of the British people. In the second half of the year the unparalleled strength of the Nazi armies and air force failed utterly to conquer Russia. Hitler's Plan months ago Seven it scemed ~incrédible "that Hitler would at- tack Russia. It was thought by the Allies that the existing econ- omic pact between the two coun- tries 'would "develop into an-out- right military alliance. In retro- spect it would appear that Hitler considered Russia to be poten- tially hostile, Germany could not launch an all-out attack , upon England with the menace of the Red -army in her rear, There- fore, the Nazi plan was to clean up the Russians, in a few wecks, and then finish off England. Nazi Time-Table When the Nazi armies invaded Russia last June, the whole world bad 'the previous Nazi time-tables in mind. Hitler had conquered Poland in three weeks, Holland in four days, Belgium in two weeks, France in a month, He had Greece in ten days, and captured Crete by air in another ten days, With each conquest he had in- creased his supplies of food and materials for war, Advance in Russia The almost universal assump- tion Was that Hitler's conquest of Russia would proceed with the usual speed of the Nazi war mu- chine, For a short time that speed was maintained. One week after the invasion had begun the German High Command announc- ed that, in a sweeping advance, -the German army had inextricably trapped half a million Russians and had destroyed - vast numbeys "of Russian: tanks and planes, autumn months Gerthan successes continued, until in September the Supreme German Command an- nounced the -successful conclusion east of Kiev, of "the greatest battle of annihilation of this war and all history." They claimed that in this battle alone the Rus- .$ians liad lost 665,000 prisoners. Nazi Claims Hitler's armies had advanced along the whole of the 2,000 mile front and were hammering at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow and advancing into the Crimea. Hitler admitted that "we have been. mistaken about one thing. We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were," To the sweeping claims of 2,600,~ 000 Russian prisoners, the -cap- LIFE'S LIKE THAT By Fred Neher ~ ep gfe, P= oO "I 7 Ro -- = 2 17 7 "Ruth lets me listen to all the Joe Louis fights : Fink she doesn't mind them." 2 Cea They're so short crushed Yugoslavia in ten days, All through the summer and: ture or destruction of 18,000 ~tanks and 14,5600 airplanes, He an- nounced- that 'Russia is .already broken and will never rise again," Nazis Bog Down Then there appeared signs of the change that has assumed such tre- . mendous proportions: In places the Nazi drive began to bog down, Early in November Dr. Goebbels the German people must resign itself to a 'hard and relentless war," But only a few days later at "least 8,000,000 to-'10,000,000 men, and "from such a blow Jo army in the. world could recover, not _even the Russians," Russian Counter Offensive Then thg Russians reorganized their positions. With the aid of 'fresh troops from the East and the merciless cold of the Russian winter they began to push the Germans westward as far,.in some last August. The siege of Lenin- grad was raised, Moscow was no longer in danger and the Russian offensive in the Crimea appeared to promise the complete eviction of the Germans from "that strate- gic peninsula, ~ Generalissimo Hitler Late in December the signifi- cant and sensational -announce- ment was made that Hitler had removed Field-Marshal General von Brauchtisch who led the Ger- man armies into Russia, and that : Hitler himself had assumed the: personal commana of the entire German armed forces. The little corporal of World War 1 was now Generalissimo of World War 2. Seeking an explanation for this move, neutral observers believed that the German reverses in Rus- .sia--which Berlin discounted as a . Btrategic withdrawal to winter holding positions--were so seri- ous that Hitler had lost faith in his Army Command, and that a serious. rift had developed be- "tween German Army Leaders and "Nazi Party chieftans on a ques. tion of strategy. ; Nazi Retreat . We do not know how long the present remarkable German re- treat in Russia will continue, It appears to be Hitler's plan to hold - > a8 much Russian terrain as he can until the coming of summer; there is very little spring-time in Russia, Then, the German propa- gandists say, the Nazis will un- dertake 'a great offensive to crush the Russians and reach the oil fields of the Caucasus, - Even though "Germany's mili- tary operations have entered -an extremely serious and indeéd a critical phase," the Nazi war ma: chine is atill a mighty force and should not be underestimated. On the other hand, though Russia may have been gravely weakened, #he is still very. much in the war. PRE ATR Chinese Give Aid The Australian radio"said that a Chinese labor corps has been formed in Singapore, attached to the Australian Imperial Force, to release all troops for front line 'rduties, a FRE = The broadcast said the Chinese were working three eight-hour shifts, . Joh issued his revealing warning that Hitler was still boasting that the Soviet had suffered -casualtics of places, as the lines they occupied 2+ / . --an important one if Napoleon's ->by all three ~the..Christian- dfeam-which- gives Re ------_-- "Why does our army need re. | . Inforcement when it has not yet done any fighting 1": g Now there's a real 'question--q question that was welcomed by the Director General of Medical Serv- ices wiien, fh behalf of the ques- I posed it to him the other day. ~The reason, belleve it or not, is traceable to our bad habit in civil fan lite of not calling in a doctor untill most of the damage is done. You see, I anr speaking from ex- perience, In civilian life if you have a stomach-ache you balance your discomfort against the $2.00 or $3.00 a physiclan's call would cost, If the ache disappears you forget all about it--itf it persists you call in the doctor much later than you should have, Y But in the Army--that's differ- ent! Medical attention 1s free and when you "fall in.on sick parade" you miss a drill or so. Small won- der, then, that medical officers have a chance to find out incipient troubles before they have a chance to develop into possible dangerous illnesses, Of course, there Is an- other thing the "M.0." finds out at the same time--he finds out it you are "swinging the lead," in. which event -- this, too, comes from experience--you are apt to get "2 No, 's and full duty." You may be inclined to question, as 1 did, the "stomach-aches." The answer to that question {is that what seems like an ordinary stom- ache may be.an ulcer which caught early enough in "eivillan life is capable of control by speclal dietary arrangements such, as for Instance, . a glass of milk and a Dbiscult be- tween breakfast and lunch, and a ~oup of tea and some_toast between lunch and dinner, with possibly the frigerator before turning in. You couldn't-dd it in my day and it 18 no more possible in the in- dividual citizen's army of this generation to arrange to call off an attack or the movement of big guns or the transfer of troops from one place to another while you have a glass of milk or biscuit, - Hence, therefore, men whose condition re- quires such treatment must be found jobs at the base or, if there is no room there, must return to civilian life where they will be per- fectly capable of carrying on. : The stomach is only one phase tloner and readers of this column, . addition of-a-slight-raid-on-the re | A Weekly Column About This and That in The. le dictum {hat oe y marches on 'its stomach" 'was ect. But the Ariny, even though if is highly me. chanized, oone the Jess still mar. ches 'on its feet. It marches with precision and this precision is nec. Just to please a drill Instructor, It 1s because you must have Abso- 'lute control of a unit on the/move, © You undoubtedly: know. of 'several es where "flat feet" do mot in« terfere in the slightest with the workaday activities of locomotive engineers, even postmen and men in a dozen other vocations. The reason {8 that within the limita- tions of thelr jobs they can choose their own time, go from here to there and largely control the length of time they can take to do it. Put one of those men in the Army where he must be prepared to move with his unit at a moment's 'notice, to stay with that unit come what may and the disability which was not a disability in civillan life poses another problem for the medical officer, - : : Pas Until "I pestered army doctors for the answer to the question, "Why do you need reinforcements when there is no fighting?' 1 was inclined to chuckle with glee at the patriotic volunteer who put one over the Medical Board- and got into the Army despite a defect that 4 he knew existed, I have changed AER my tune now that I look at it from : the point of view of the taxpayer who pays that man his $1.30 a day. ' I have no doubt that nothing but patriotism underlies the desire to outwit a Medical Board, but when finally the defect so skilfully covy- ered up becomes apparent the mis- "taken patriot. has cost his fellow 'taxpayers hundreds of dollars and is himself unable to fulfil the high duty of fighting for his- country, "He Is another of the reasons why the individual citizen's army needs reinforcements' while there is no fighting. ; : A few paragraphs back I quoted the old phrase for a man who re. - = ports- sick -when -there is nothing wrong = with him--"swinging the lead"--perhaps some student of military slang can enlighten us as to the meaning of this one. Off hand, 'it looks as though its origin . would come from the Senior Service but what the connection between a . man in the chains plumbing the depths of the ocean has to do wtih reporting sick, I don't know -- do you? Leaders Broadcast Christmas Messages Greatest and most moving thing. in the Christmas broadcasts of His Majesty the King and Prime Minister -_ Churchill. and President Roosevelt was not in any art. of oratory, It was in "the deep, reverent note struck of/humility and trust in God. Sajd the King: "If* skies before us are still dark and threatening, there are stars to guide us on our way. Never did heroism - shine more brightly than it doesi.now, nor fortitude, nor sacrifices, nor sympathy, nor neighborly kind- ness. eh : "And with them the brightest : of all stars is our faith in God. These stars we will follow with His help until light shall shine and darkness shall collapse." Said President Roosevelt: "Against enemies who 'preach the principles of hate anfl prac- tise them we set our faith in hu- man love and in God's care for us and all' men everywhere." Said Mr. Churchill: ~----4With God's help-yve shall win | "to security for our children." Confidently, we 'can contrast these words with the torrents of hate and pompous pride that come from the lips of our ene emies, . An English writer once spoke bf "the solemn beauty of strength to our. patient. power.' It is that dream, pitted against paganism and barb = ploys nearly 1, Churchill Calls =~ ° For Total War. "In this strange, terrible world war, there is a place for every one, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt. Service in p a thousand forms is open. There ¢ __is no room now. for the dilettante, -- for the weakling, for the shirker or the sluggard, The mine; the 'factory, the dockyard, the salt, sea- wave, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, .the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher -- from the highest to the humhlest, the tasks are all of equal honor, All have their part ] to play. The enemies ranged ge |= = against us have asked for total N : «war, Let us make sure that they . . get it." ; 'Fortune In Toys For Medical Man Alfred Gilbert, who graduated with the degree of M.D. from. Yale in 1909, made a fortune-- but not_gut of pills, potions and medical advice, relates The To- ronto 'Telegram, t Crossing 'a railrpad bridge. in New York State one day he was SOE BA inspired with the idea of making "re structural toys for children, and Boos borrowed $12,000 to get the busi- bic » ness started, His factory, which. ~~ = builds & modernized form of: the old-time building blocks, now. ems... 00 men and wo- . men, f: --ln RL A light-weight tank carries rism, that 'is |- . about four tons of armour plate. 'a our stay today, + er So YON) Tre LAST SUMMER 18 'REG'LAR FELLERS--The Perfect Host ~~, PLACE TO lata THIS IB A HECK OF A : By GENE BYRNES|