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Show I MERR00-RQUD i Washington, D. C PRESIDENT'S HEALTH ! When congressional leaders called at the White House for the first legislative leg-islative conference following the President's return from South Carolina, Caro-lina, he looked fit as a fiddle. How-ever, How-ever, Senate Majority Leader Alben ; Barkley popped the question that has had the capital worried because of those wild rumors about the Commander-in-Chiefs health. "How do you feel?" asked the Kentuckian. "Great," replied Roosevelt. He 1 added that he had got in 12 hours of i sleep a night and plenty of sun- ! shine. I He was brown as a berry and j buoyant as ever. However, congres-j congres-j sional leaders noted that his face ; was a little thinner. Admiral Ross I T. Mclntire, the President's physi- cian, accepts responsibility for this, j Roosevelt has knocked off 10 pounds I under Mclntire's orders. He is still i five pounds overweight according to his physician's standards, but Mc-! Mc-! Intire figures that this can be cor-' cor-' rected by proper dieting. NAZI CHANNEL DEFENSES Of all the variegated defenses Hitler Hit-ler has conceived to block the Second Sec-ond Front from rocket-guns to flame on the Channel the one which the Allies are worried most about Is the plain, relatively old-fashioned machine-gun nest. The Nazis have developed a new type of machine-gun nest, tried it out at Cassino, and it was one reason for our failure to advance. This pillbox is of very heavy concrete, quite small, extends only a foot or so above the ground and is extremely difficult diffi-cult to see from the air. The pillbox usually houses two machine ma-chine guns, hitched together so that one man can fire both. One Nazi Is in each pillbox so that if. he Is hit only one man is lost. . But it takes almost a direct bomb hit to knock him out, so air pounding of them from overhead is not too effective. These pillboxes, buried in the mountains at Cassino, were terrifically effective, and more of them are reported lying in wait behind the shore along the coast of western Europe. DISCHARGE BUTTONS With more than a million men now honorably discharged from the army for wounds, health or age, the question of honorable discharge but- tons becomes more and more important. im-portant. It took the army some time to design-a discharge button, but now that it is designed, men and officers have a hard time getting it unbroken. The buttons are made of plastic and when mailed to veterans, usually arrive ar-rive in broken pieces. One discharged air force captain got his discharge button all right in an envelope from Maj. Jesse C. Hicks, assistant quartermaster, Hill Field, Ogden, Utah. But there was no packing around it and it was in i several pieces. When he wrote back j for a new button. Major Hicks re-I re-I plied: "There are no provisions for re-' re-' placing broken buttons. Therefore, we are unable to comply with your request." j Note Some of the boys think that with all the gold we have buried at Fort Knox, we could spare some for those discharged. STATE DEPARTMENT HARANGUE j Dignified, delightful British Ambassador Am-bassador Lord Halifax called on Undersecretary Un-dersecretary of State Stettinius some time ago on a secret matter. While they were closeted together, Assistant Assist-ant Secretary of State Adolf Berle. diminutive and precocious, joined them. I Soon, high-pitched scolding voices ' came from Stettinius' office. Callers Call-ers in his anteroom could not help , overhearing the harangue as it re- verberated even through the heavy j mahogany doors of the state depart-I depart-I ment. Finally, Lord Halifax was ushered out. Later Stettinius came out, followed fol-lowed by Berle, who looked a bit agitated. "Was I too tough with him?" asked Berle. "No," said Stettinius, "you were just right." 'I felt," said Berle, u;ih the air of a parent who has just delivered de-livered a good spankinir, "that it simply had to be done." What it was all about was not divulged, di-vulged, but Berle has been carrying on long discussions and arguments with the British regarding the future fu-ture air routes of the world. JEEP INVESTIGATION Government bureaucrats were taken tak-en for a sleigh ride behind closed doors when they attempted to justify justi-fy budget requests for "investigating" "investigat-ing" jeeps, during hearings on the supplemental national defense bill. Engineering experts of the department depart-ment of agriculture sprang the jeep scheme, claiming that they needed 15.000 to determine the value of the jeep for farm work "as a substitute for tractor power." It was noted that the current tractor shortage might get worse after the war. |