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Show Washington, D. C. CANAL DEFENSE PLAN UPSET It isn't going to be announced, but Nazi propaganda in South America Amer-ica has upset U. S. plans for an important im-portant new base defending the Panama Pan-ama canal. Plans had been care-' care-' fully laid for commercial development develop-ment of an island off the coast of Ecuador, to be followed by naval installations. But genial Jesse Jones innocently let the cat out of the bag, and the Germans did the rest. The island is known as Alber-marle, Alber-marle, in the Galapagos group, lying ly-ing southwest of Panama, a perfect location for watching Japanese maneuvers ma-neuvers near the Pacific entrance of the canal. To inspect it Roosevelt went fishing there three years ago, when the U. S. S. Houston took him on a Pacific cruise. Roosevelt had heard about the Galapagos since childhood. His great-uncle, Capt Amasa Delano, put in at the islands on his voyages to China. And his mother, as a young girl, stopped there on a voyage voy-age to China. The President personally was responsible re-sponsible for the strategy of forming form-ing an American trading company to develop Albermarle. He knew the sensitive Latins, knew that a direct proposal for building a U. S. naval base would arouse the old enemies of "Yankee imperialism," and that the only safe way was to set up a company for the development of fishing fish-ing and cattle, thus bring the navy in edgeways. Accordingly, the Pacific Development Develop-ment company was formed, incorporated incor-porated in Delaware, and financed with funds from the RFC. First it got a credit of $30,000, but later, when a credit of half a million was extended, RFCzar Jesse Jones innocently inno-cently announced it to the press. Jesse Jones' Joke. Apparently the naval stratagem was such a dark secret that even Jesse, a member of the cabinet, didn't know about it. So he announced an-nounced it as notliing but a commercial commer-cial development, because the island is-land was owned not by Ecuador but by a private individual.. And then he added a little jest of his own. "And if you can spell the man's name," said Jesse, "I'll give you the island. The name is pronounced 'heel.' " Up spoke a correspondent who knows Spanish well. "You spell it G-i-1," he said. "That's right," said Jones. "Go to the head of the class." "No," said the newsman. "I want the island." "I'll owe you the island," said Jones, and everybody laughed. But there was no laughter in the navy department; for German propaganda, prop-aganda, through short-wave radio and local newspapers,, stirred up the old fear of Yankee aggression, intimating in-timating that a U. S. naval base off the west coast of South America Amer-ica would make little puppets of the Good Neighbors for all time. The propaganda was successful, and the deal had to be cancelled. It may be that the Pacific Development Devel-opment company will still pursue its "livestock, fishing, and mining of sulphur," as provided in the concession, con-cession, but President Roosevelt's dream of a Panama defense base is sunk. MORE CRACKDOWNS You can put it down as a certainty that there will be other OPM crackdowns, crack-downs, in addition to the one on the Chicago "juke-box" firm, for "bootlegging" scarce raw materials. OPM Priorities Director Donald Nelson said nothing about it, but he has his gimlet eye fixed on a big steel plant, an auto manufacturer and others. Both have been secretly thumbing their noses at priority restrictions. re-strictions. m The auto maker was called on the carpet by Nelson and spent several uncomfortable hours trying to explain ex-plain the unauthorized purchase of a large quantity of strategic materials materi-als and the action of a parts subsidiary sub-sidiary selling such supplies. When the auto executive left OPM he was red-faced and obviously worried. wor-ried. The steel company is suspected of secretly filling orders for big customers cus-tomers n direct violation of defense requirements, particularly naval. An investigation is now under way. The company has a long history of battling bat-tling the government and the fur will fly if the suspicions are substantiated. sub-stantiated. Note: After Nelson's investigators finish with their aluminum inquiries, they will move into chemicals, where there have been numerous complaints com-plaints of wholesale disregard of priority pri-ority orders. MERRY-GO-ROUND Informed that defense officials want to use her famous legs to publicize pub-licize non-silk stockings as soon as she has recovered from her fractured frac-tured ankle, movie queen Marlene Dietrich sent back word that she stands ready, or will sit ii preferred, pre-ferred, for any patriotic purpose One subject that Speaker Sam Rayburn always is ready to talk about is his Texas ranch. "I ilke to be known as a rancher," he grins, "although I haven't got'mucb to show for it" |