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Show at Buffalo, taken over by the manufacturers, man-ufacturers, overhauled and made ready to ship by the quickest possible pos-sible means to the other side. These are being sold to the Allied governments not by our government but by the plane manufacturers, man-ufacturers, for cash, so the transaction trans-action does not violate the neutrality neu-trality law. American manufacturers have been working for some time on an order from the Swedish government govern-ment for 200 fighting planes. The Allied purchasing agency experts to arrange with Sweden to take those off that nation's hands. A. Thousand Planes a Day . . . The War department has taken seriously Henry Ford's proposal to build a thousand planes a day, and has sent one of the newest model mo-del pursuit planes to Dearborn so that the Ford engineers can figure fig-ure out how they can do the trick. William Knudsen, head of the advisory commission in charge of manufacturing military supplies, has set Army and Navy men to work, along with expert construction construc-tion engineers, to try to reduce the number of types of planes required re-quired from fourteen to a very much smaller number, to simplify and speed up construction. The new planes which the government gov-ernment will get in exchange for MNGT0N The United States is going ahead to help the Allies against Germany "by every means short of war," in dead earnest. Whether Hitler,' if Germany wins the war against England and France, will consider that our efforts have been "short of war" is a question which is giving official Washington Washing-ton little concern. If Germany wins, we'll eventually have to Oght the Nazis anyway, is the feeling feel-ing here. Authority was found in an old law for the government to "trade in" military airplanes to the makers, mak-ers, against contracts for new and more up-to-date planes. So somewhere some-where around 300 of our best fighting planes, the kind that the Allies need most, have been flown to the Curtiss-Wright plant the ones traded in at Buffalo will have armored protection for the Pilot, and leak-proof gasoline tanks, two improvements that both the Army and Navy have been asking for. The ones turned in are "surplus" only because such a large number of Army and Navy pilots have been taken off active service to become instructors instruc-tors at the greatly enlarged flying fly-ing school at Pensacola. Next to planes, the Allied forces need small-calibre field artillery. The French have made unexpectedly unexpec-tedly good use of their famous "75's" against German tanks, according ac-cording to reports reaching here. The United States Army has on hand several thousands of those effective cannons, made during the World War from French specifications, spe-cifications, which we never got across the ocean. The term "75" signifies the diameter of the bore, 75 millimeters, or substantially three inches. Ammunition Plentiful ... Our Army also has a very large supply of shells and ammunition for these field guns. The proposal to turn all these in to the makers, the Bethlehem Steel company, as a credit against future purchases of new and larger guns, has been submitted by the President to Congress. Con-gress. It would be a profitable deal, as the stock of 75's on hand cost only about. $200,000,000 and the . credit- to the government would be $400,000,000. But the Bethlehem Steel company could send them to the Allies for whatever what-ever they could get. The advisory commission system is working out better than most observers expected it would, so far. The assurances given by the President to its members of a free hand in their respective fields have taken so seriously that Mr. Stettinius, in charge of assembling raw materials, has resigned his $110,000 a year job as chairman of the U. S. Steel corporation to give his whole time to the nation's defense needs, and Mr. Knudsen has taken an indefinite leave of absence without pay from the presidency "of General Motors, and another official has taken over his job at Detroit. Serious consideration is being given in Congress and other government gov-ernment circles to the proposal to enact a compulsory conscription law, similar to the selective draft under which the army of four million mil-lion men was enlisted during the last World War. The new law would be operative in peace as well as in war, and would require of "every American from 18 years old upward a year of military training. Considerable support for this plan has come from both Republicans Re-publicans and Democrats in both Houses. A. F. of Jj. Victory . . . The action of the House in voting vot-ing drastic amendments to the National Labor Relations act is regarded re-garded as being a victory for the Federation of Labor over the C. I. O., but it is at base a war measure. meas-ure. It could not have gained the support it received but for the feeling that in the preparations for national defense every possible legal cause of friction between employers and workers must be removed. While there is no real anticipation anticipa-tion of an early attack upon the United States by Germany, if that nation is victorious in Europe,, the feeling is almost unanimous that sooner or later we shall have to fight Nazi-Fascism, both on our own territory and in Latin-American countries. The first stages of that war will be against the "fifth column," the anti-democracy forces which are known to be boring from within with-in from Canada to Cape Horn. Two first-rate American cruisers have been sent on an undisclosed mission to visit South American countries, presumably to carry reassurances re-assurances that we intend to stand by the Monroe Doctrine and help the nations to the south of us protect pro-tect themselves against domination domina-tion by European powers. |