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Show j U. S. Acts to Encourage South American Market Endeavor to Prevent Nazi Trade Foothold; Famous Men Mingle in Washington; Railroaders Neglect Annuities. fa-, i ...X a j By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. The other day rumors began to spread around the capital that the United States had declared a war that nobody knew anything about a war marked "private "pri-vate and confidential," the kind that nobody must talk about. So everybody talked about it. At cocktail parties, In the Press club, in the corridors of the solemn buildings build-ings with the "closed doors." You have heard of them the closed doors behind which all the real things happen that are not supposed to. Finally, since this was a highly private and confidential matter it soon got into the papers, labeled "economic war." Immediately the idea was roundly denied, disparaged, dispar-aged, and generally abused. So I started out to try to locate It. There was smoke. Where was the fire? Since economic warfare is dollar warfare, I went to see the man who has a whole arsenal full of dollars which could be used as ammunition In such a battle, namely, Jesse Jones, federal loan administrator and secretary of commerce. I found him in his office. The tall, good-natured, hard-working Texas multi-millionaire was friendly, friend-ly, helpful, sympathetic, as he always al-ways is. But what he did not say about economic warfare would have filled a volume. Visits Leading Economist. So I went to another man who if such a war is going on right now is sitting on the board of strategy. I must not mention his name, but he knows the terrain perfectly. He has been all over the ground which, I might mention here is South America. Amer-ica. He has served as a government govern-ment representative and as a business busi-ness representative, and in other capacities which I cannot catalogue without identifying him. "Economic warfare," he said, "is impossible, without war." What he did not say was that undeclared un-declared economic warfare is impossible im-possible without wartime conditions, and right now, we seem to have enough of those to make possible some early skirmishes. This is the situation as it was "un-revealed" to me (officially) by a certain official. In the first place, experts here are convinced that even if he takes Africa, Hitler cannot feed and clothe Germany and its acquired domain without a strong trade foothold in South America. As one German economist recently recent-ly put it to a former American representative rep-resentative in Berlin: "South America is a natural complement com-plement for the expansion of industrialized indus-trialized Germany in the field of foreign for-eign trade." Africa has raw materials but it will take a long time to exploit them. The Nazis cannot wait. Hence, South America becomes the goal of their triple threat: economic, political and military. Now what are we going to do about it? Three Methods Open. There are three methods which the United States can use to keep the totalitarian businessmen, the totalitarian totali-tarian trade methods, the totalitarian totalitari-an politics out of the Western world. We can deal with South America by means of: 1. Voluntary co-operation. 2. Enticement. 3. Pressure. Number 1 is not warfare. Nor is it the old-fashioned "dollar-diplomacy" which exploited South and Central Cen-tral American countries for the good of the few and made us hated as the Colossus of the North. It is, however, "dollars PLUS diplomacy." diploma-cy." This method is already at work. It consists of loans to South America; Ameri-ca; cultural activities and good will propaganda, genuine co-operation in finding complementary outlets which will encourage a north-and-south flow of goods. When we come to number 2, we must be very careful. This method will never be mentioned in any official statement. We have to fight fire with fire, or to be more Uteral, fight marks with dollars. In plain unvarnished language, a large part of method 2 is "graft." You slip a few well-chosen "gifts" into the right palms. It is not nice but after all we are talking about war-time conditions and it is far nic- er to shoot a man with a silver or a golden bullet than with a steel-jacketed one. Method number 3 is also unpleasant, unpleas-ant, but still it is far this side of "shooting" in the literal sense. It is, to give one example, refusing to buy from a country unless you can buy on certain terms one of which would be that that country would not sell to any other country whose methods you did not care for. This in a very small nut-shell is economic warfare, and if it were not still marked "private and confidential" confi-dential" I'd tell you that it has already al-ready started. Famous Men Mingle in Capital "A pony will be a dollar, sir." The voice that spoke was soft, ingratiating, in-gratiating, with a foreign accent. He seemed a little surprised at the price. So was I. For the "pony" he was getting for a dollar was an oversize thimbleful of brandy. In a moment a group of men came in, one's face familiar. The gentleman who had purchased the pony rose beaming. "Well, how are you general?" he said. For just a second there was a blank look on the general's face. He put out his hand and said with all the warmth of a good politician: "Well, well, well, how are you, Mr. Jones, and how's the missus?" Jones beamed again, mumbled and sat down satisfied. He had been greeted by one of the great. Not, however, by a high officer of the army as the title he used might indicate, but a former cabinet member. mem-ber. Just then a headwaiter answered the phone at the dining room entrance. en-trance. "Yes," he said, in a voice quite audible, "table sixteen for Mr. Rockefeller." A group of ladies tried not to look impressed and were so loudly silent that I could not help noticing them. One was a little bit more human than the others. She wore a perfect red hat and a little less condescending con-descending air. "But couldn't this defense program pro-gram have been much better prepared pre-pared for?" asked a beautiful child of 20. The Red Hat smiled. "Oh, perhaps," she answered, "but things are going rather well. Of course so many of my husband's hus-band's friends come down here to talk to him about priorities." The others were obviously too polite to ask what kind of socialistic thing a priority was or whether it meant more taxes. And after all their husbands were only millionaires. million-aires. Mrs. Red Hat was obviously the wife of a dollar-a-year man. I left this colorful corner of the emergency scene. "If Uncle Sam pays a dollar a year for a man," I mused, "the friend of the general ought not to object to paying a dollar dol-lar for a pony." Railway Employees Neglect Annuity Benefits Have you "been working on the railroad" and forgotten all about it? Strange as it may seem 300,000 railroad employees who were employed em-ployed before 1937 have failed to file statements which would entitle them to full annuity service when they retire. The railroad retirement board in Washington has been sending out notices and writing letters, urging everyone to spread the word and still a long list of names remain without the check mark against them that shows they have sent in their statements. Congress authorized the board to determine in advance of a railroad employee's retirement the amount creditable to his annuity. The machinery ma-chinery to do this was created and already nearly a million cards have been filed. In this day and age when so many people are anxious to collect money that is not coming to them it seems a shame that people who have earned an honest credit are not taking tak-ing advantage of it. Just to help matters along, I shall be glad to forward any letter sent to me in Washington, to the proper persons. So if you were working on the railroad before 1937 drop me a line. PAGES ATTEND SCHOOL There are many schools of many kinds in the capital. In the many schools there are many books which have many pages. But there is one school which consists entirely of pages. But not the kind in books. These are the pages whom you see darting about the floor of the house and senate, carrying message, whispering whis-pering to congressmen, bringing a forgotten pair of glasses or finding an important document. The school in which these boys are trained was founded in 1930. |