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Show KAJ YAi DREW PEARSON Washington, D. C. RUBBER MIRAGE Unfortunate, inside fact regarding our grandiose plans to get rubber from the Amazon Valley is that we aren't going to (Jet any more than a driblet this year. About 4,000 tons have been produced, against an expectation of around 50,000 tons. Part of this failure is due to the jealous tug-of-war between Jesse Jones and the Board of Economic Warfare. Jones' Rubber Reserve at first delayed doing anything about Brazilian rubber. Later the BEW stepped in. This situation, bad as it may be, is insignificant compared with the handicaps of nature. For in the jungles jun-gles of the Amazon, nature has erected the most difficult barriers conceivable to protect her rubber. Here is the tragic, inside story of what has happened. First, the BEW, working in cooperation co-operation with Jesse Jones' Rubber Reserve, offered a higher wage to rubber workers, with the result that they flocked to the jungle. But this took men away from the lesser paid work of farming and wood-cutting, so that river steamers lacked wood fuel, and the jungle settlements lacked food. Starve in Jungles. The result was that a great many men actually died of starvation in the jungles. A few had been given shot-guns, but ammunition was so scanty that they were scarcely able to shoot monkeys. Later the people in the towns from which the rubber workers were recruited re-cruited heard that their friends and relatives starved to death. Now these towns won't send any more workers. One factor contributing to the tragic situation was that a ship bringing food, firearms and more equipment to the Amazon was sunk by a Nazi submarine. Also it takes a tremendous number num-ber of tin cups to collect rubber. A cup is tied to each tree, and catches the rubber as it slowly oozes from the trunk. However, the chief shipment of tin cups got held up on the dock in southern Brazil, missed the boat, then were further delayed by submarine sub-marine warfare, and now have missed the current rubber season. A lot of these handicaps, such as submarine warfare, are insurmountable. insurmount-able. But the net result is that although al-though we are spending many millions, mil-lions, we will get almost no rubber from Brazil this year. HITLER'S NEW ORDER " Here is an authentic account from Tli i -Vi orninrn m qti e r"i i rtraa r-f MrVat1 happened to Hollanders who were caught in the act of printing an anti-Nazi anti-Nazi publication in the Netherlands. One victim was forced to place his feet in a tub of water, which was brought slowly to the boiling point. Another patriot, who had been arrested in mid-winter, was compelled to undress and was placed upon a chair in the open courtyard of the prison, surrounded by warmly dressed Gestapo men, who questioned him as long as he could stand it. Whenever he fainted, they poured hot drinks down hi3 throat and rubbed his numb body until the interrogation in-terrogation could be continued. Still another Hollander had his fingernails torn out; and a very common method of torture was the use of dazzling light directed upon the eyes of the suspect. When the Nazis first took over they gave orders to their troops to deal gently with local populations. But with continued local resistance, the gloves are off. Men and women all over Europe are learning the true meaning of the "new order" now promised by Germany. . SENATOR DOXEY'S RAILROAD The subway train between the Capitol and the Senate office building build-ing is a great help to senators shuttling shut-tling back and forth to their offices, but Senator Wall Doxey of Mississippi Missis-sippi would be the first to admit that it can prove a political liability. Doxey seldom uses the little tramway, tram-way, preferring to walk. Nonetheless, Nonethe-less, Mississippi farmers call it "Doxey's Railroad," and according to friends, it had something to do with the Mississippian's primary defeat. de-feat. Here's the story: James Eastland, who defeated Doxey, made a practice of inquiring, inquir-ing, during speeches in farm communities, com-munities, if there was a railroad nearby. "Nope," someone would reply. "Nearest one's ten miles." "What a shame," sighed Eastland. East-land. "You know, Senator Doxey has a private railroad in Washington Washing-ton which he uses to ride back and forth to his office." CAPITAL CHAFF Marshal Rommel now has approximately approx-imately one division of U. S. tanks, previously captured from the British, Brit-ish, with which to combat the present pres-ent British advance. A sample of a new substitute fence, made at Rock Island arsenal, has been brought to Washington to try out around the White House and thus enable the present iron ienca to go for scrap iron. However, the White House staff has not been sat isfied that the non-iron fence would protect the President. |