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Show Editor's Note: While Winchell is on vacation. Jack Lait is serving as guest columnist. t E-valuating 'Morale': We have been looking into army and navy "E" awards. . . . Even if all the thousands of them were meritorious which is an absurd hypothesis this system adds up to a $100,000,000 scandal. Based on a theory that such hooey boosted the workers' morale, it cost probably 50,000,000 man hours in war-plants, 25,000 lost days for officers, diversion diver-sion of transportation facilities and waste of gas, plus some of the highest-powered hangovers ever experienced experi-enced by men in uniform. Army-navy urged these plants to throw celebrations. Some turned into week-long drunks, with whiskey and champagne suppers, imported entertainers and party girls, arriving arriv-ing in private cars and chartered planes. All this was legally deductible deducti-ble for income tax purposes, chargeable against production costs and . valid accounting in contract renegotiation. Officers were assigned, often traveling hundreds and thousands oi miles, taking several weeks on a job, all on government pay and travel and subsistence expenses. One public relations officer was always al-ways sent on ahead, to whip up the show. Higher ones came on later, to make stuffy speeches, ride in parades and souse up with the happy hap-py executives and their ladies. There was usually a shutdown. All hands were guests at shows and blowouts, in hotels, country clubs, local theatres taken over. Besides, there were more exclusive to-dos for officers and corporation officials, "guardian angels" and other politicians, politi-cians, with costly souvenirs handed out everything charged as legitimate legiti-mate expense. PROs were briefed by higher officers of-ficers to encourage as much hoopla as the plants could swing. Some of them did practically no other work. The signal corps, with only about a half-dozen HQ posts in the country, " traveled its advance agents countless miles. Often the plants paid these men's expenses and those of higher officers, although al-though the army did, too, doubling the cost to the taxpayer. It was one of the sweetest rackets rack-ets of the conflict to exterminate the enemy by good old Yankee; horse-sense and can-do. A triumph of E-bombs! The Hollywood gin rummy swindle was turned up by a cub reporter (Los Angles Examiner) on his first assignment. The paper pa-per had a tip that Michael Mac-Dougall, Mac-Dougall, the sleuth who specializes special-izes in such things, was in town. . . . Baker Conrad was sent on this thin tip. ... He ran into some members of a club he thought might be Involved. They were talking out loud spilling names and all on the story the youngster wasn't even sure was cooking. ... He got an earful and ran to a phone. . . . The first newsbreak said only that three sharpers had taken Hollywood big boys no names mentioned. . . . An hour fter the edition hit the street, three heavy winners had engaged en-gaged a high-priced lawyer to "protect their interests." The prisoner in the dark Gestapo dungeon in Berlin was tall, gaunt Rudolf Diels, founder of the Gestapo in the first turbulent days' of the Nazi regime. Diels had said "no" to Adolf when the fuehrer ordered him to liquidate an old pal who had outlived his usefulness to the swastika-gang. Now, Rudolf sat in his cell, awaiting the hangman by order or-der of Hitler, who did not like people peo-ple who dared to say "no." Standing before Diels was medal-dripping Hermann Goering. "I order you to divorce my sister," growled Goering. "Get out of her life. We cannot have a man in our family hung!" Diels, a cool character, shrugged bis shoulders, told Goering where to go. Circumstances too long and ln-, ln-, volved to relate here saved Diels from the hangman. Today, sitting in a villa in Nuernberg, he supplies sup-plies the prosecution with valuable information against the major war criminals. Among his frequent visitors vis-itors was Capt. Harry N. Sperber, chief German interpreter at the trials. "Strange," mused Diels to Harry, a sardonic smile on his sallow, sabre-slashed face. "It looks as if after all dear Hermann will have a man in the family hungl . . . Himself!" Him-self!" "Dark of the Moon" has gone home, to the Smoky mountains, where it was written, about its own ' people, by Howard Richardson and William Barney. ... It was staged at the Community theatre, in Asheville, N. C. . . . That is 15 miles from where the authors found the ballad ol Barbara Allen, theme of their pla. . . . Viscount Las-cellcs, Las-cellcs, nephevv of King George VI of England, lhas a play he wrote making the Broadway ofl"lc rounds. I |