The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-05-05

An Unsound Conclusion---Ihe
 Result of Lack of Facts.
 The Assistant Judge Advocate Gen. eral of the Army held that the Govern ment contract with the Power Company was invalid for two reasons: CD Be- cause the Warrior extension was con- structed under Section No. 124 of the National Defense Act of 1916, and CD because it was executed in November, 1917. All of the Government officers who know the facts have stated that all of the work was done and paid for under Acts of Congress passed i'll 1917, and that no part of the money appropriated by Section 124 of the National Defense Act was used.
 Among the officers so testifying are former Secretary of War Baker Gin 1919), Secretary of War Weeks and Colonel John w. Joyes, chief of the Mi trate Division during the war
 It was also shown by the War Depart ment records that the contract was ac- tually approved by the Board of Contract Review on November 8, 1918, and was executed about the same time; and that the contract was actually authorized by the Board of Directors of the Power Company on November 4, 1918.
 In each case, the Judge Advocate Gen. eral gave his opinion Without~sufflclent knowledge of the facts.
 Colonel Joyes, graduate of West Point. an officer of the Regular Army of many years experience, was the head, during the war, of the Nitrate Division. We have referred to Col. Joyes' testi- mony in previous articles, and in this se- ries we shall quote from it at length to bring to the attention of the public mat ters of importance relating to the Gorgas contract. He has made a statement to the Military Committee that should sat isfy any honest, fair-minded man.
 After stating that the contract for the location of the Nitrate Plant at Muscle Shoals was executed about December 4, 1917, Colonel Joyes said:
 sThe Alabama Power Company off, ficials came to my office Gin December, 1917) in Washington by invitation. We discussed the different ways in which we could arrange to put the Alabama Power Company in position to give us the power we had to have. The first proposition, as stated in their letter, was the Government financing, naturally, in the most obvious manner by loan or ad- vance of money, and we could not see any earthly way in which could do that.
 Although the principle recognized as being sound and proper, but we saw no kat yrhI Irh ma e a loan to the company at that, time or an advance .. because could not find any legal authority for it at all.
 'We looked over the situation pretty hard, and, of course, in peace times we would not have looked very hard, be- cause we know we could not think of it, but in times we looked to see if there was any way that we could possibly do it, and there not the slightest.
 "The War Finance Corporation had been established about that time and we did not know just how it going to function We thought possibly, from the name of it, it mig ht help out in a situation like that, and I sent an officer from my office to accompany some of the Alabama Power Company officials to the officer of the War Finance Corporation to if anything could be arranged there by the company or by us, but nothing came of it at all.
 "The Alabama Power) company had mortgages, bonded indebtedness, and it had lot of firm contracts for power, taking up good deal of it's production and it had contracts for secondary power also, and fhose rather annoying in the way they interfered with anything like communicating order to take away the power; not that it could not be taken, but what troubled us was that if we took the power by communicating, we were going to be interfering with 50 many of ind, L,t T.L,