Imperial Valley press., 1942-07-12
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison

These first 10 days of July mark
a series of important anniversar-
les in the history of U. S. partici-
patton in the European war.
On July 4. l94l, the first cargo
OF American tanks. planes and mill
tar@ supplies unloaded at an Egyp-
tian port. This was approximately
three months after Presi e
Roosevelt's declaration that the Rec
Sea was not a combat zone ano
| that American ships could there
fore enter it without violating neu-
trality.
On July I, l941, an American
convoy unloaded the first u. 5.
troops i'm Iceland.
On July 10. 1871, it was first
announced that some 400
American technical experts
were being employed To build
base "for the British in
North Ireland.
All three of these events now
seem like ancient history. but TAX
en- together, their significance lies
in the fact that for an entire year,
| the United States has been pump
ing men and material into Europe
and the Near East. If it doesn't be-
gin to produce results soon, you II
be entitled to ask why.
DUCKS AFTERMATH
This is a follow-up on that ia
nous WPB cotton duck limitation
order, in which young lawyer in
serted a paragraph about the love
life of Donald Duck 1t got by some
| Is or more officials before it was
caught.
Right after this event, which got
a big laugh in Washington, some
body in the Army wrote memo
to WPB saying there should be
a limitation order on goose feath-
ers. The WPB man who got the
memo thought this was a good
Joke, but they weren't going to
make a sap of him on a gag like
that Donald Duck thing. He put
the memo in the waste basket.
A couple of weeks later, the
| Army called up, screaming.
Where was the goose feather
| Limitation order? The market
was bought out and Army pro-
curement officers were having
a terrible time finding enough
goose feathers to stuff the pill
lows for soldiers to lay their
weary heads on at night.
Shamefacedly the WPB wheels
began to grind out the order, re-
stricting civilian purchases of down
feathers under three inches long.
There's a tremendous surplus of
nearly 25 million cases OF evap-
grated milk on hand. and there's
kind of a problem about what to
do with it. How this stock came
to accumulate is interesting Orig
inallv. the British asked for lot
of dairy products for their civilians
Fvaporated milk takes only half
the cargo space of whole milk. SO
they ordered % million cases. Then
shipping space got tight. To save
still more space, the British shift
ed their order to powdered, dry
milk. which takes up only one
eighth the space of fresh milk. To
make the shift, the dairy industry
practically had to turn itself in
side out. and couldn't do it fast
enough to stop the production OF
this 25 million cases of evaporated
milk. 1t isn't exactly loss, but a
lot of it will go into the school
lunch program.
THE TAPES STILL RED
Navy curtails paperwork to cut
red tape" says a poster in the
lobby of the Navy building il
Washington. In smaller type below
there is the further explanation,
Secretary Knox called upon Navy
Department civilian employees to
take the lead in cutting out jobs
and procedure not necessary to
the war effort"
That's dandy, but when a busi-
ness man goes to the Navy De-
partment to see someone, he goes
through this procedure:
l. He goes To an outer re-
ceptiOnist who takes his name
and address and who he wants
to see and enters it on ticket
i'm duplicate TO which he Sims
his name.
2. The outer receptiOnist
calls the inner receptiOnist to
see if it's all right.
g. The man then goes to a
lobby telephone to call up the
inner receptiOnist to the man
he wants to see.
4. This inner receptiOnist
says she'll clear him right
away.
5. The man goes back to
the outer receptiOnist's desk.
6. The man waits.