The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-12-19

As a matter of fact, it was a part of the old Cliveden clique Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoarde = who started the idea of helping General Franco. Sir Samuel Hoare is now British ann bassador to Spain, and it was he who sold the ideae to American Ambassador Weddell, long famous for his ability to follow rather than lead.
 Lord Halifax and Hoare ap- parently thought it would be smart politics to get the United States to lend a hundred million dollars to Spain, in which case Britain might win a few months of Span ish neutrality and certainly could not lose-since only American would be invested.
 So Ambassador Weddell had sev- eral talks with General Franco and later sold the idea to some friends in the State Department, notably Assistant Secretary Breck- inridge Long and James Dunn. Jimmy Dunn. adviser on political relations, today has become one of the most important figures in the State Department, For he is Cordell Hull's chief croquet partner. Tn fact, it is on Jimmy Dunn's lawn that many of the croquet matches take place.
 So Jimmy Dunn sold the idea
 of the Spanish credit to his
 croquet partner, and for time it looked as if MT. Hull would put it across. It was at this
 point that Under Secretary of State Sumner WeIles stepped in- to the picture. He cOmmuni-
 cated direct to the President
 who at that time was away on
 his Caribbean cruise.
 Roosevelt agreed with Welles that to throw a hundred million dollars into the lap of Fascist Spain would be extremely unwise. However, a compromise finally was worked out, largely for the purpose of saving MT. Hulls feel ings, since he had already gone rather far out on the limb in favor of the Spanish credits.
 Therefore the Red Cross will send certain amount of food and medical supplies to Spain. How much this will be remains to be seen, but the croquet clique will see that it is enough to keep
 Franco in power despite the ris- ing tide of discOntent among the
 Spanish people.
 NOTE To send these ship ments to Spain, Roosevelt will have to dip rather deeply into the emergency fund voted him by Congress, and for which he does not have to give any ac- counting.
 JESSE JONES' GEOGRAPHY
 Jesse Jones was holding press conference on the new loans to Latin America. When he got through explaining about the 60 million dollar credit to Argentina, one of the newsmen asked: Have you got any credits for Central American countries, MT. Secretary.
 Jones paused. "Well,' he said, I'm not so sure of my geography, but we're lending seven and a half million to Uruguay"
 NOTE Uruguay is not in Central America and Jesse's geography was pretty weak, but everybody who deals with him ad- mits he has shrewd sense of in .cstment values. It might look as if Jones were throwing the money around loosely, but the Cubans, who have been put off for fully three months, will tell a different story.
 SAFE CHRISTMAS TREES
 A Christmas tree can be seri- ous fire hazard, but it needn't be. You can fireproof yours by follow ing these simple directions from Martin Leatherman, crack chem ist of the Department of Agri- culture:
 1. At a drugstore buy a quan-
 tity of ammonium sulphate
 equal to one-fourth the weight
 of the tree. That is, if the tree weighs l2 pounds, you need
 3 pounds of the chemical, which
 Is cheap and readily obtainable.
 2. Put the chemical in glass