NEW YORK: President Roosevelt is expected to take action today [Nov 23] to prevent the possible strike of telephone operators throughout the United States. It is anticipated he will order the armed forces to take over and operate switchboards at Ohio where 5,000 girls are on strike in spite of Government warning that they are impeding the war effort at a critical hour.

Some of Washington’s 2,500 operators left their switchboards in sympathy with Ohio workers late on Wednesday night. Officials of the Ohio telephone workers who are at present on strike have appealed to other operators throughout the nation to join them and the Telephone Traffic Union has voted unanimously to leave the switchboards in sympathy with the Ohio workers. The cease work order will affect more than 2,500 telephone girls.

[Meanwhile, as reported from London,] Nearly 4,000 planes have in less than 24 hours continued devastating attacks on Germany’s bomb battered synthetic oil centres. The last phase of this concentrated hammering was unleashed last night by some 1,500 planes which the British Bomber Command sent over the Reich to round off the devastation started earlier yesterday [Nov 21] by 2,350 American aircraft.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2019