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Show Washington, D. C. MEDITERRANEAN KEY Key to the fateful battle of th . Mediterranean which is about to I burst in full fury is not the Suei , canal, but Britain's great naval base at Alexandria, 123 miles west ol the canal entrance. I The loss of Alexandria would de-J de-J prive the British of their key "bridgehead" in northern Africa and ensure Axis domination of the eastern Mediterranean. Actually, the Suez canal Itself has been of little value to the British for months. It went out of use as the so-called "life-line of the em-pire" em-pire" when the Axis air attack that j severely damaged the air carrier Illustrious Il-lustrious proved it was suicidal to I attempt to convoy shipping through : the long and narrow waterway. ! Since then the Mediterranean has I been a "no man's land" for all the belligerents. While 2,000 miles in j length, its narrow width at certain places has made it extremely has-j has-j ardous for both sides, and the Brit-! Brit-! Ish have been routing their shipping ! around the Cape of Good Hope for I some time. ! Loss of the Mediterranean would, 1 of course, be a serious blow to the 1 British; but it would by no means end the war or mean victory for the j Axis. With her fleet intact, Britain would still be able to carry the fight to Hitler and Mussolini. MACHINE TOOLS Chief reason behind the big curtailment cur-tailment in auto production was the release of urgently needed machine tools for defense. The machine tool bottleneck could be broken over-1 night if all the machine tools owned by the motor industry were turned ; to the making of planes, tanks and other armament. Defense experts estimate that there are around 1.500,000 machine tools in the U. S., of which more than half are in plants making motor mo-tor vehicles or parts for them, and in the allied metal fabricating industry. in-dustry. The list includes grinders, milling machines, lathes, boring machines, presses, gear cutters, drillers, and shapers, all vital in the production of defense equipment. New output of machine tools is now speeding at the rate of 14,000 a month. This is a spectacular achievement and a great tribute to the industry. But it is only a drop in the bucket compared to the 750,000 machine tools already possessed pos-sessed by the auto and metal fabricating fab-ricating industries, which army men say would increase defense production produc-tion to full flow Immediately if pooled and devoted entirely to this purpose. HIDDEN COLLEAGUE A stocky, gray-haired man, flanked by a group of sightseers, approached a Capitol policeman and asked directions to the office of Sen. Hiram Johnson of California. Tucked away in an obscure corner cor-ner of the north side of the Capitol where tourists never tread, Johnson's John-son's office is one of the hardest to find in the great structure. "I'll do my best to explain how to get there," said the policeman. "Are you a tourist?" "No," grinned the inquirer, "I'm the other senator from California, Senator Downey." FERRY SCHOOL Everybody is wondering how the swarms of fighting planes which U. S. factories will produce for' the British in the next 12 months will be delivered overseas. The answer, for the big ships, is that they will be flown across and in such great numbers that the British are setting up a special pilot training school for that purpose, in the United States. The school will give an intensive refresher and training course to volunteer vol-unteer pilots to qualify them for "ferrying" the big bombers across the Atlantic. The volunteers may be British, Canadian, or American. However, it is expected that the largest num. bers will be Americans. The British can use 250 of them. ... GOOD NEIGHBOR PILOTS Another "Good Neighbor" gesture will soon be made to our immediate neighbor to the south, Mexico. The state department will offer pilot-training pilot-training courses to a number of Mexican youths in the United States. Initiator of the idea was Vice President Henry Wallace. When he visited Mexico last year, one of the problems discussed was the shortage short-age of aviators in the Mexican army. Wallace was told that Mexico Mex-ico wanted to undertake a pilot-training pilot-training program similar to that in the United States, but lacked planes and instructors. ... MERRY-GO-ROUND Leading economists rate the industrial in-dustrial and financial surveys completed com-pleted by the O'Mahoney monopoly committee as the most valuable source material on the economy of the country ever compiled. Department of agriculture is recommending rec-ommending a new plant to hold soil in the gullies but they wish 4he Japanese would tell how to produce , the seed. Known as kudzu, it is one j of the plant secrets of Japan. It ( serves not only as a soil binder but lso as a feed, surpassing alfalfa. |