The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-08-01

know, in addition to arranging po- litical contacts, and using radio and newspaper advertisements to spread Nazi ''kultur" among 2 the Latin American good neighbors.
 So important Is this drug propa- ganda network that until 2 3--c.-'t time ago the Na1s flew essential drugs into South America, smug- gled aspirin from the United States through pro-Nazi Latin- American armies and, thanks to the large stocks accumulated before war broke, have continued to carry on.
 For a long time the State De- partment and the Rockefeller committee have been trying to get United States firms to carry similar radio and newspaper propaganda, and now give credit
 to David Corc0ran for doing the most outstanding job along this line.
 GUNS TURNED AROUND
 It Is paradoxical that the com mercial instrument through which Corcoran works is firm that for a time had patent connections with the German drug trust.
 Corcoran's firm, the Sydney Ross Co.,, is a subsidiary of Sterl- ing Products, the biggest drug business in the U. s. A. It's enor- nous resources, once partially de- rived from its relationship with the German drug trust, now have been completely reversed and, through Sydney Ross, thrown into an econ- omic wah to the death in Latin- America. AS one Washington official expressed it: We have boarded the Bismarck and turned her guns around
 Dave Corcoran, the driving force behind the Latin-American Syd- ney Ross venture, got to 1t in a roundabout way, in fact via Asia. Originally he was preparing for a medical career, but girl di- verted him into Asiatic trade. When he was graduated from Princeton, he was entered at Ox- ford for medical studies, but he fell in love and wanted to get married. His father insisted he have professional educatoin first. A medical course would take several years, so Dave fished through college catalogues to find the professional education requir- ing the least time. He took a two-year course at the Harvard Business School.
 ROMANCE CHANGES CAREER
 At the end of the course, he married his girl and went to work for an Asiatic trading company.
 In the Far East, he became Tokyo manager of General Motors, saw the movement through Japan of the first military trucks for the conquest of Manchukuo, left General Motors to sell American pharmaceuticals for Sterling Prod ucts in China, the Philippines, Malaya and India.
 Later, Corcoran was lent to Washington as president of China Defense Supplies, Inc, of the Lend-Lease Corporation, and was the first of the crusaders to get supplies up tke Burma Road, to make up for the trucks he had sent into Manchuria ten years ago. About this time Sterling Products promised the Justice De- partment to compensate for its previous partnership with the Ger mans by trying to drive the Ger man drug business off the com- mercial map of atin-America. It seemed an impossible job.
 But Sterling fished Dave Cor cOran out of It's pocket and put him I'm charge of an economic drive against the key item in
 the German line - aspirin, which had been trademarked
 and advertised in Latin-Amer- lea for nearly 20 years and had
 practical monopoly. Corcoran had to begin from scratch with . new name.
 The Germans had stocks care-