The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-03-18

NV mons OL the ar
 ~ force is com-
 Rasom mander in Ha-
 'waii, that Major- General James E. Chaney of the air force Is Army commander in England, that Lieutenant General Frank Andrews of the air force commands in Panama, and SO on. Reason for all this belittlingP Shhh! It's the Navy.
 Admiral Chester w. Nimitz is over General Emmons; Rear Ad- miral F. II. Sadler, commandant of the 18th naval district, is over An- drews: Admiral Harold R. Stark is to be over General Chaney, Accord ing to these aviation enthusiasts who are straining at their wheel blocks, the Navy is still running the war.
 TABLES TURNED
 Douglas Q. MacKeachie, the Bos- ton chain store executive who has been director of purchases in the War Production Board but now be- comes 6 civilian purchasing director for the ArIny's new Service of Sup- ply, had only one previous contact with the sos commander, Major General Brehon B. Somervell, be- fore going to work forg him. That was about Q construction detail of "the worlds largest office building" now being built for the Army across the Potomac from Washington. .
 General Somervell, previously chief of Army construction, had held out for aluminium window. frames. MacKeachie said the Army would have to be satisfied with steel. There was quite a fuss, but MacKeachie won. Now he goes to work for the man he had the argument with.
 Not all congressHnen are prodi- gates with Uncle Sam's money, and 9 lot of them have little pet econ ony projects they like to dig up and promote. Representative Robert F. Jones of Lima, O., who has been after government publicity expendi- lures for some time, put his finger on a new potential economy by pro- posing that retired federal judges voluntarily surrender their pensions for duration of the war. There are 46 federal judges now drawing pen- sions from ex-Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who gets $2000O a year, down to % district judges who get $l0,000. Total cost of this is $533, 800,
 A draftee who had been reelassI- fled from 4-F to 1-B got so mad about 1t the other day that he made Q long distance call for Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey. There must be some mistake" the draftee complained to Mrs. Hershey who had answered the phone, "be- cause I have only one eye" What the draftee didn't know was that in a polo accident IA years ago, Hershey himself lost an eye and 1t hasn't impaired his military service in the slightest. Today, in fact, he's a brigadier r-general.
 Treasury actuaries are generally conceded to be prety good. As statis- clans, their estimates and predic- tions have to be good or else. Con- sequently, Secretary of the TreaS- ury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.'s fore- cast for the House Ways and Means Committee on the probable reduc- ton in federal gasoline taxes gives an indication of the amount auto- mobile traffic may fall of this year. Federal gas taxes of a cent and a half gallon collected at the refinery last year yielded $342 million. The estimate for this year, If the rate is unchanged, is $242 million. That's @ 30 per cent drop.
 RUBBER RUCKUS
 Just a few days before Price Ad- ministrator Leon Henderson told a Senate committee 1t might be neces- sary to requisition tires off civilian automobiles, Secretary of the Inter for Harold Ickes's national parks travel magazine came out with big blurb telling people that in war times a trip to one of the national parks provided a just dandy vaca- ton.
 Kickbacks on Henderson's dire tire predictions were only two. Some people got the idea that govern ment requisitioning of rubber on civilian automobiles was imminent, so they immediately made plans to burn up the road before the govern ment should seize. The other un- favorable reaction came from some rubber interests, who thought Hen- derson's estimates entirely too opti- rnistic.
 Some rubber people got excited after the Henderson statement when they heard that the Army and Navy Munitions Board was recom- mending a censorship to prohibit mention of rubber shortages. When the smoke blew away, 1t was reveal ed that all the services were trying to do was to stop publication of crackpot statements such as an- nouncementS of large imports of rubber from Brazil, and how the rabbit bush or the milkweed or the poinsetta could yield enough rubber to relieve the shortage.