DEFENCE ORDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23966, 16 May 1941, Page 9

DEFENCE ORDERS

PRODUCTION PRIORITY MR. KNUDSEN'S POWERS 3,000,000 MORE WORKERS (Reed. 0.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, May 14 Mr. William S. Knudsen announced that he was determined to resign the directorship of the Office of Production Management if his hands were tied in the matter of priorities.

Reports by the Washington correspondent of the Associated Press state that Mr. Knudsen took the stand that he could not continue with the Office of Production Management if someone else was to have authority to say what orders should be placed before others. To avert such a development the Administration threw its full weight behind a move to reverse the House of Representatives' decision on priorities

and leave them in Mr. Knudsen's hands. The Senate Military Affairs Committee, says a later message, unanimously approved a bill giving the Office of Production Management broadened mandatory authority to designate which defence materials or equipment should be produced first.

Transfers of Gold President Roosevelt lias asked Congress to increase Labour Department and Security Agency appropriations by 159,000,000 dollars for the training of 3,000,000 additional skilled defence workers.

A Federal Reserve bulletin reports that the inward movement of foreign gold in recent months has now become limited to small amounts, which have been mined abroad. The extraordinary gold movement of recent years has ended until the disposition of the great gold holdings of the European Continent is finally determined.

21 FLYING FORTRESSES MASS FLIGHT TO HAWAII (Reed. 12.10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, May 15 Twenty-one long-range Flying Fortresses to-day made a mass flight from San Francisco to Hawaii/ These aeroplanes will patrol the Pacific over a radius of 1000 miles from Pearl Harbour, which, described at America's Gibraltar, is now prepared to meet any possible attack.

FAMOUS BUILDINGS MORE BOMB DAMAGE ST. JAMES' PALACE SUFFERS LONDON, May 15 Jn addition to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, famous London buildings damaged in recent air raids were. Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. James' Palace, St. Clement Danes Church, Queen's Hall and the Old Bailey criminal court. At St. James' Palace the part of the building from which spectators watched the proclamation of Kings was demolished by a bomb. The rest of the Palace is intact.

Queen's Hall was severely damaged, and thousands of pounds worth of musical instruments belonging to the London Philharmonic Orchestra were destroyed. The orchestra recently gave a concert with borrowed instruments, One end of the Old Bailey building has been shattered bv a high-explosive bomb. The figure of Justice on the dome is still standing. St. Clement Danes has been bombed many times. Struck by incendiary bombs the building has now been burned out, and it is feared that the old bells which used to ring out "Oranges and Lemons" have been cracked by the intense heat.

WESTMINSTER SCHOOL HISTORIC PARTS DESTROYED (Herd. iAO p:m.) LONDON, May 14 Damage by bombs to Westminster School includes the destruction of the 200-year-old dormitory where the King's Scholars slept, and where the historic Latin play took place every December, says a British official wireless message. Serious damage was done to the great schoolroom where the annual ceremony of tossing the pancake took place, while the panelling in the Big Hall, with the memorial containing the names of old Westminster boys, has been destroyed. FOOD FOR BRITAIN PROVISIONING BY AIR (Recdl. 9.15 p.m.) NEW YORK, May 15 Dr. Kenneth Farroll, a food chemist, declared that the British people could be kept from starvation by sending dehydrated foods by air. even if not a single ship was able to reach England.

WORLD CHANGES NEW STATUS OF WOMEN (Reed. 0.15 P.m.) NEW YORK, May 15 "Whatever the war's outcome, the world as we know it has gone forever." said the Australian Prime Minister, Mr. E. G Menzies, at a press conference. "There .will never again be in our lifetime extreme riches and poverty. Taxation has already eliminated the great incomes." Mr. Menzies said he thought the war would probably have an enormous effect on the status of women after the war. because women were fighting to a greater extent than anyone conceived possible,