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Show Washington, D. C. DONOVAN HAS GLOOMY REPORT Col. "Wild Bill" Donovan, semiofficial semi-official observer who has been touring tour-ing the Near East, brought a de- cidedly gloomy report back to Washington. Donovan told Secretary of the Navy Knox and Secretary of War Stimson, the two Republican members mem-bers of the cabinet who were largely large-ly responsible for sending him, that British chances were anything but rosy in the Balkans. The Greeks, he found, were riding the crest of the wave but were successful more because of their superhuman bravery and the weaknesses of the Italians than because of their real military strength. Against a strong, well-equipped foe, such a-s the Germans, Ger-mans, it would be a different story. The Turkish army, Donovan also reported, is poorly equipped when it comes to modern weapons of war and is worried over Russia. In North Africa he found that General Gen-eral Weygand was not disposed to act independently of Vichy, and the French in general seemed despondent, despond-ent, floundering in their policy and completely lacking in leadership. DEFENSE PRICE POLICEMAN With the OPM rushing production and the 11-man mediation board handling labor problems, Roosevelt wants a third unit to ride herd on prices. Head of the new agency will be Leon Henderson, New Deal veteran whose experience as a hard-boiled price policeman dates to NRA days. Also, as price controller of the old defense commission, Henderson knows the defense picture thoroughly, thorough-ly, already has several big scalps to his credit. It was his forceful crack-downing that tumbled the soaring prices of lumber and scrap; also put a lid on second-hand machinery ma-chinery price flurries. Roosevelt said nothing about it publicly; but privately he did a lot of talking about the new price control con-trol unit before he departed on his vacation cruise. The gradual upward up-ward price trend, as a result of the expanding priority list, has worried him considerably, and the last thing he wants is a high-cost-of-living problem. WIDOW FOR CONGRESS A very beautiful widow, plus a tragic airplane accident near Atlanta, Atlan-ta, Ga., is causing political trouble in Maryland which may have repercussions reper-cussions in the axis capitals of Berlin, Ber-lin, Tokyo and Rome. The situation results from the death of young Congressman William Wil-liam Byron, Democrat, in the recent Atlanta airplane crash, which means an early by-election to fill his Maryland Mary-land seat in the house of representatives. represen-tatives. Mrs. Byron aspires to take the road of many another congressional widow and go to congress. However, How-ever, this section of Maryland is normally Republican, and Mrs. Byron, By-ron, beautiful as she is, would have a hard time defeating a forthright Republican. Therefore, Democratic leaders are doing their best to persuade her to bow out of the congressional race in favor of the much stronger Preston Pres-ton Lane, Democratic National Committeeman Com-mitteeman from Maryland. They know that the first election contest occurring after passage of the lease-lend lease-lend bill will be watched throughout the world as a sign of Roosevelt's popular strength and whether the country is with him on foreign policy. pol-icy. The fact that Maryland, a rela- tively conservative state, doesn't care for women in high political places, would cut no ice in the propaganda prop-aganda factories of Rome, Tokyo and Berlin. ALUMINUM SHORTAGE The housewife's pots and pans aren't the only items hit by the shortage in aluminum a shortage which certain defense officials denied de-nied for months, but finally admitted admit-ted when the OPM put the metal on the priority list. The deficiency is creating some other serious industrial indus-trial problems. Here is one illustration: illus-tration: A big bus manufacturer working on an order for some 40-passenger vehicles suddenly found himself unable un-able to get the sheet aluminum he needed. He complained to the OPM and was advised to use steel as a substitute. But this, he found, would so increase the weight of his buses as to bar them from the roads of several states. Therefore he must either reduce the size of his buses or prevail on the states to raise their highway load limits to permit heavier vehicles. MERRY-GO-ROUND The house's leading aviation en- ' tliusiast, World war flyer Mel Maas of Minnesota, likes to have aeronautical aero-nautical atmosphere around him while he works. In his office are 27 model planes of various types and a score of flying pictures. When Senators Tom Connally and Morris Sheppard of Texas get together to-gether to gossip about old times they talk about their joint school! days at Texas university. Sheppard was a Kappa Alpha and Connally still wears his Phi Delta Theta pin |