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Show vt . .i .-'j-.'- ifr t Washington, D. C. TANK BUILDING PROGRAM There was a good reason why Lord Beaverbrook, dynamic minister min-ister of supply, listed tanks as the No. 1 objective of his visit to the U. S. He flew over largely to try to persuade our army chiefs to lend-lease lend-lease him the major share of our growing output. There is sharp division in the army over this. Armored unit commanders com-manders have been champing at the bit for the tanks now beginning to roll off assembly lines. They need the equipment not only to train their men and officers but to keep up morale which sags when modern mod-ern war machines are missing or simulated. Buck privates to generals have griped over being forced to "play at soldiering." This was one of the main causes for the strong sentiment senti-ment among citizen soldiers against extension of their year's service. They could raise no enthusiasm for continuing to train without equipment. equip-ment. On the other hand, the general staff believes that it is far more vital vi-tal to the immediate security of the U. S. to let our tanks and other armament help hold off the Nazis 3,000 miles from our shores. The strategists contend that a U. S. tank is performing infinitely more valuable service knocking out Nazis on the torrid deserts of North Afriia, or the bloody steppes of Russia, Rus-sia, than using up oil in a training camp in Texas. They favor sending send-ing most of our new tanks to Britain for the present, and Beaverbrook's mission is to clinch that argument. British Nerd. The British need for tanks, particularly par-ticularly for the latest type, 32-ton medium tanks, is extremely urgent. It was lack of these that caused the rout in Greece and prevents the British from taking the offensive in Libya and on the continent. Also, without medium tanks the British would be in desperate straits should Hitler make his feared overland move into Spain and Portugal, across the Strait of Gibraltar and down the Atlantic coast of French West Africa to Dakar. Thanks to the U. S the British are well supplied with light 12-ton tanks. So far they have received about 500, together with spare parts. These light tanks have given a good account of themselves. They are superior to similar German and Italian types. But mounting only SO-caliber guns and lightly armored, they are no match, as Greece and Libya have proved, for medium Axis tanks. STEEL SHOWDOWN The OPM and the steel industry finally have taken drastic steps to regulate supplies and increase capacity, ca-pacity, but it took all kinds of nagging nag-ging by the government to get them to do it. One of the most spectacular of these nagging sessions took place in the OPM board room recently and was attended by Eugene Grace of Bethlehem Steel; Tom Girdler of Republic; Ernest Weir of Weir-ton; Weir-ton; Irving Olds, new head of U. S. Steel, together with Ed Stettinius, the old head; Leon Henderson; I Knudsen; and representatives from the army, navy and maritime commission. com-mission. The steel manufacturers immediately immedi-ately put the government representatives represent-atives on the defensive with the question: ques-tion: "Well, what do you want us to do? Cut off all steel to the consumer?" con-sumer?" Price Administrator Henderson replied re-plied that such a curtailment would be disastrous, that steel to the consumer con-sumer could not be cut off right away. Other government representatives represent-atives hemmed and hawed. So did the ship-builders. The meeting got nowhere. Finally Admiral Emory Land, relative rel-ative of ex-Colonel Lindbergh, but no believer in his views, got up. Land, chairman of the maritime commission, is a close friend of Bethlehem's Eugene Grace. But looking at Grace and the other steel manufacturers, the admiral gave them a dressing down he might have given to his own sailors. "I've been listening to you for two hours," he said, "and I'm fed up with it. I don't know what the fault is, or whose fault it is. But I do know that the shipyards are four to six weeks behind because they i haven't got steel. And I also know that if you fellows want to, you can correct that shortage. "You've been talking about expanding ex-panding your plants. Now if you mean business, instead of talking about it expand." Next day the steel manufacturers announced their plan to build new factories and expand productioa CAPITAL CHAFF White House press secretary Steve Early kept it to himself, but privately pri-vately he was sore at the bungling of Churchill-Roosevelt press relations. rela-tions. If they had left it to him, the result would have been different. American editors resented the fact that first news of the meeting broke in London. A lot of other Americans Ameri-cans resented the idea that news a about their own President had to come via the British censor. Boose- ' velt himself, not the British, was to blame. |