Plans & Progress

Last week King George VI sent his thanks for offers of help in the war to the peoples of the Falkland Islands and the Seychelles; to Grenada and the Windward Islands; to the "Council and Chiefs of the Gold Coast, Ashanti and the Northern Territory and to all members of the community"; and to "all sections of European, Asiatic and African communities of His Majesty's subjects in Nyasaland."

Their support was chiefly moral. But more concrete help was on its way to Great Britain from her farflung Empire. Australia, which already had five divisions under arms, organized a sixth division of 20,000 men, named Major General Sir Thomas A. Blarney to command it.

P:Four hundred New Zealanders went to Britain to join the R. A. F.

P:More than a fourth of Palestine's Jewish population, 120,000 men and women, enrolled for local defense and service in the British Army.

P:A jarring note came from India, where Mohandas K. Gandhi, 70 this week, demanded that Britain make the independence of India one of her war aims.

P: From Bermuda an undisclosed number of young men took ship for Canada to en list.

P:Canada was speeding war preparations. Two overseas army divisions of 32,000 were being organized, with highly mechanized equipment. Canada planned to put her shipyards to work building submarine chasers and minesweepers. Vancouver's Flying Seven, only organization of licensed women pilots in Canada, offered its services. So did Honorary Air Marshal William A. Bishop, who in World War I was officially accredited with 72 enemy planes. Hero Bishop was accepted, named tempo rary Commodore in the R. C. A. F.

P:Because Quebec's Premier Maurice Duplessis considered the Federal War Mea sures Act an infringement of Quebec's autonomy, last week he ordered a provincial election for this montjjp-Promptly the Federal Government's Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe declared this an "unprovoked challenge." Most of Quebec's 3,500,000 French-Canadians bitterly opposed conscription in World War I, but the Government, having promised that there would be no conscription this time, thought it had a good chance of ousting the Isolationist Duplessis Government, of bringing Canada greater unity than ever before.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.