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Show Washington, D. C. GETTING TOUGH WITH SWEDEI After too many months of Allie super-patience, the Swedes are i; for a tough crackdown. At long las1 the State department, the Foreig: Economic administration and, pel haps more important, the British have determined to pull together ii telling the Swedes they will have to fish or cut bait in sending vital wa materials to Germany especial!; ballbearings. : The question of ballbearings In volves the world-famous SKF ball .bearing company in Sweden, whic! operates a subsidiary company ij Philadelphia. The president of th. American company, William Batt, 1 ,vice-chairman of the War Produo tion board. Not many people realize it, bu despite the loss of 600 U. S. aviator in bombing the Nazi ballbearini plant at Schweinfurt last fall, to sa; pothing of the loss of countless othe lives, the Swedes have been nullify ing these American sacrifices b; Shipping great quantities of ball bearings to Germany. Hitherto secret, has been the fac that the Swedes have supplied Ger many with 70 per cent of certau vital airplane ballbearings. Am when you consider that one bombe: alone requires up to 3,000 ballbear ings, you realize that this is thi most important single commodity Germany is now getting from thi outside world. In fact, ballbearing! are 'so essential that, without them the Nazi airplane industry would bt paralyzed almost overnight. N( plane can be constructed withou several hundred to several thousani ballbearings. V. S. officials recently have unearthed information indicating indicat-ing that the Nazis deliberately planned, well before the war, to use Sweden as their source for ballbearings. A conversation reported re-ported to have taken place with Air Minister Goering has recently re-cently come to light, in which Goering explained that he was not anxious to build up the German Ger-man ballbearing industry too much, since It might be advantageous advan-tageous to have the industry in a neutral country where it could not be bombed. SEDITION TRIAL MONKETSHINES The most patient man in the work Is presiding over the "mass sedi tion" trial in the Federal Distric court here. He is painstaking square-shooting Chief Justice Ed ward C. Eicher, who is recognizee by the legal profession as absolutely fair and who has been leaning ove: backward to give the 30 indictet defendants their full day in court. However, the defendants are de manding more than that. So brazei are some of them in their tactics t( delay the trial, that they boastfull; refer to themselves as "monke; wrenches from heaven," because they say, there is always one amonj them capable of "pulling some thing" to cause another delay. Here is an example of what thi patient Justice Eicher has had t put up with. Whenever a defensi motion has been denied, Charles B Hudson of Omaha, Neb., publishei of a pro-Fascist news letter "America in Danger," has turnet and chanted to reporters: "Railroad! Railroad! Toot-toot toot!" Eicher has overlooked much of this by-play in order to ex- pedite the trial. However, he has almost worn out his gavel trying try-ing to keep Mrs. Lois de Lafayette Lafay-ette Washburn the nose-thumbing, Fascist-saluting Chicagoan who boasts descendency from the Revolutionary hero and some of her more demonstrative demonstra-tive cronies in line. At one point, Mrs. Washburn leaped up and screamed: "Lafayette, we are here to defend ourselves!" Ellis O. Jones, tall, lanky defend ant from Los Angeles, also had tc be gavelled down when he com plained about the food in the dis trict jail. "I've already lost ter pounds," protested Jones. "If thii keeps up, you'll have to get me ai undertaker." NOTE Eicher finally decided that these antics had continued long enough. Since he cited two defense lawyers for contempt, others are beginning to realize that Hitlerian horseplay of the type used by the Brown Shirts when they were tried after Hitler's unsuccessful Munich putsch will not get by forever in an American court. On the other hand, many of the defense attorneys, at-torneys, of excellent standing at the bar, are doing their best to preserve court decorum. , CAPITAL CHAFF C Friends have started a quie, boomlet for OPA Administratoi Chester Bowles for vice-president. I began by pushing him for the Gov ernorship of Connecticut, which hi declined. Bowles, incidentally, has made one of the most unpopulai jobs in Washington, the OPA reasonably popular. C. Mexican workers have nov I earned $12,000,000 in the Unitec ' States under the emergency gov em-r-ont program which brough them to tJ. S. farms and railroads |
