The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-10-16


 In the stratoliner he is taking ten friends, thereby using up ex- tremely valuable cargo space.
 The Army did its best to block use of the stratoliner. It knew tons of equipment allocated to China, were piled up, waiting for means of transportation. It also knew that T. V. Soong, long had battled to get more weapons for China.
 So the Army opposed use of the stratoliner. However, when T. V. Soong insisted, the matter was referred to the White House which sided with the Chinese Foreign Minister and ruled that he should have the big passenger plane.
 Only other high ranking mem- Der of the diplomat circle to angle for stratoliner was Madame Martins, Conga-dancing wife of the Brazilian ambassador. Madame Martins was going back to Brazil, wanted to fly in stratoliner in- stead of an ordinary passenger plane. The Army opposed, argued thaht stratoliners were needed to fly men to Africa, India, Aus tralia.
 However, vivaciOus Madame
 Martins spoke to high placed
 friends in the State Department
 and they gave her the strat0-
 liner-until younger State De-
 partment officials sided with the
 Army so vigorously that the Or-
 der was Overruled. In the end,
 Madame Martins flew in an Or-
 dinary passenger plane.
 NOTE: Foreign Minister Soong, long a resident of Washington, now will remain peramently in China, where he constantly gets in the hair of his brother-in- law, Generalissimo Chiang Kali shek.
 STEEL SHORTAGE PROBE
 The long-smouldering row over whether the nation should build quick new sponge iron mills s.~l also develop its isolated and Far Western iron deposits will flare into the open in Congress next week.
 On one side of the row are Far Western and Southern Congress men, plus Secretary Ickes, plus Republic Steel. On the other side are most of the big steel com- panies and their friends in the War Production Board who are sus- pected of not wanting the iron and steel industry to shift away from big blast furnace production in the Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland areas.
 The row has many other rami- fications, one of them being whether the $1-a-year men rep resent themselves or the govern ment. Another is why we have desperate steel shortage when millions of tons of iron ore lie untouched in the Far West, where 1t could be developed by the cheap, quick sponge iron process. The question is not entirely geographi- cal, however, for sponge iron plants can be built anywhere.
 The row 'is expected to break when the Boykin Committee, in vestigating steel shortages, will summon officials of the Republic Steel Co., which wants to build a sponge iron plant ;and two WIPE officials who have opposed the project.
 The two opposing officials are w. A. Hauck of WIPES Steel F'a- cilities Unit, and s. O. Hobart of the Blast Furnace Unit. They oppose sponge iron as an ''unsOund innovation"
 SPONGE vS. BLAST FURNACES
 However, the Boykin Committee wants to examine them closely as to whether they are not chiefly opposed to breaking the hold of certain big steel companies, which don't want competition from tow grade ores, developed by Q cheaper process throughout the country.
 Also the Committee may want to probe into the fact that Hauck was formerly an accountant with Bethlehem Steel, while Hobart