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Show KA I A ttl ptEvPtARSON WASHINGTON. Little knovn fact regarding Britain's attempt to aid Greece was that this time, the British Brit-ish were not caught entirely napping. nap-ping. Several weeks before the Italian advance, they had smuggled one division of Australian troops into Greece, and they are now reported to be holding the passes in the rugged rug-ged mountains of Macedonia. However, the total Australian force is not much more than 20,000 men, a mere drop In the bucket compared with Italy's 200,000 troops now advancing from Albania. Biggest help the British can give the Greeks, of course, is at sea. There have been no major engagements engage-ments between the British and Italian Ital-ian flecta chiefly because the Italians Ital-ians have kept pretty well out of sight. But now, with the necessity of sending a constant stream of supplier sup-plier to a large army, the Italians are sure to run into some major engagements with the Eritish. Unquestionably, If the Greeks should fall, it would be Jugoslavia's turn next With the support of the Jugoslav army, the Greeks would have a real chance, for the Serbs are among the best fighters in Europe. Eu-rope. However, the Balkans seem to be following the same policy of the Dutch and Belgians; that is, letting Hitler pick them off one by one. LABOR TRUCES Defense Commissioner Sidney Hillman's crack labor advisory board is making use of an old adage, ad-age, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" to overcome over-come one of the most serious obstacles ob-stacles to preparedness work stoppage. stop-page. Quietly, the board has adopted the rule of getting employers and workers together on a mutual agreement agree-ment for the settlement of disputes before activity is begun on a defense de-fense project. This new system ensures labor the protection of its rights, and at the same time safeguards the employer em-ployer from loss through strikes or jurisdictional squabbles between rival ri-val unions. Illustrative of the plan is the agreement arranged between the contractors building the new six-ways six-ways shipyard at Orange, Texas, for the Consolidated Steel corporation corpora-tion of Los Angeles, and the unions. It was negotiated by Charles Mac-Gowen, Mac-Gowen, able vice president of the A. F of T, hnilprmalcprs and a member of the labor advisory board. Before a spade was put to ground, MacGowen secured from Harry Morton, contractor representative, an agreement guaranteeing payment of prevailing wages, time-and-a-half for overtime, double time for Sunday Sun-day and holiday work, and no lockouts. lock-outs. In exchange, Morton secured from labor a no-strike guarantee and arbitration of jurisdictional differences. dif-ferences. U. S. BLANKETS Cable dispatches have made no reference to it, but one factor credited cred-ited by military authorities with helping to maintain the morale of bomb-battered Londoners has been several hundred thousand American blankets. They have been a life-saver life-saver for the harried men, women and children crowded into dank, subterranean shelters. Some time ago the British Red Cross cabled a frantic appeal for blankets for use in air-raid shelters. The American Red Cross decided to buy the durable and warm blankets used by the U. S. army, which average av-erage around $6 apiece in mass wholesale lots, but immediately ran into serious tangles. One was the fact that the government govern-ment was heavily in the market for blankets for the army and navy, and if the Red Cross also entered the market, prices would certainly skyrocket So the Red Cross turned to the , defense commission's business busi-ness aces, who immediately called a conference of leading merchandisers merchandis-ers from Macy's, Sears Roebuck, Filene's, Montgomery Ward and others. . By long distance telephone these experts immediately made a flash survey of U. S. mills, which revealed re-vealed the discouraging fact that the mills didn't have 200,000 army-specification blankets on hand, even at $6 per blanket But there were ample am-ple "seconds" available, blankets rejected by government inspectors. These could be bought at around $2 each. And that was done. The British got blankets without delay and at a saving of $800,000. Simultaneously Simultaneous-ly American mills cleared their shelves and the domestic market was undisturbed. CAPITAL CHAFF To keep step with the new civilian army, the war department has added add-ed a civilian adviser to its press section. He is Harold Jacobs, veteran vet-eran newsman, borrowed from the wage-hour division. Dies Committeeman Joe Starnes of Alabama has come to the defense of Rep. John Coffee of Washington, who is being accused by his Republican Repub-lican opponent of opposing the Dies investigation. Starnes sent Coffee a letter commending his support of the committee. |