High Explosives

Having insulted most of Latin America and slapped the face of Britain's George V, the Senate Committee investigating the Munitions Industry hurriedly rang down its curtain amid great diplomatic confusion last September (TIME, Oct. 1). Well knowing that the U. S. munitions business was small fry compared to the foreign business, the Senators headed by North Dakota's Nye were not ready, however, to abandon such a popular subject. Last week, therefore, they rang their curtain up again and set out on a new tack. Their purpose was to avoid international complications and confine their efforts to getting something on U. S. munitions makers. Ranged before them for examination were Vice Chairman Irenee du Pont of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., nonchalantly blowing smoke rings at his inquisitors; President Samuel M. Stone of Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co.; Sales Manager Herbert F. Beebe of Winchester Repeating Arms Co.; President Charles K. Davis of Remington Arms Co.

Chairman Nye, as usual, proved a heavy-handed cross-examiner and got little information without aid from the Committee's investigator, Stephen Raushenbush. Little more effective was plump Senator Bennett Champ Clark, who got everybody's dander up by expressing extraneous personal opinions, by taking the attitude that all the witnesses were trying to put something over on the Committee. Best of the Senatorial inquisitors was Michigan's Senator Vandenberg. Yet with all the dramatic material offered by a munitions inquiry, the best dirt the Committee could do was:

P: As early as 1908 munitions makers were supposedly anticipating the War. No clairvoyance did this imply since in 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Hertzegovina and Europe was already enjoying the series of war scares which continued intermittently until 1914. Evidence of the arms makers' inside knowledge was an affidavit, presented by the Colt Company in 1926 during hearings on a tax case, which said: "From 1908 our sales to foreign governments steadily increased. . . . Indications were that Europe at that time was preparing for war."

P: Munitions makers, Senator Nye announced, had met with Secretary of Commerce Hoover and conspired to block or render impotent the 1925 attempt of the League of Nations to draft a covenant restricting the international traffic in arms. The arms makers retorted that at the request of the State Department, Secretary

Hoover had summoned them for advice about the terms of the treaty affecting sporting arms and industrial explosives. They met with Mr. Hoover, gave him their advice and retired. Said Irenee du Pont:

"Mr. Hoover is now a private citizen and available. Why doesn't the Committee call him here for questioning?"

P: Du Font's Major K. K. V. Casey admitted that in 1925 40 tons of TNT shipped by du Pont to China left the U. S. in double containers, the outer marked "Explosives" according to U. S. Law. At sea, however, the outer containers were removed and the shipment eventually reached a war lord in Manchuria. "We had one put over on us," said Mr. Casey.

P:The British Imperial Chemical Industries sold 35,000,000 cartridges to Paraguay for use in the Chaco. A German firm sold 10,000,000 rounds of ammunition. Winchester Repeating Arms sold 2,500,000 cartridges to Bolivia. Remington sold 100,000 rounds to Paraguay, 20,000,000 to Bolivia. Said Remington's President Davis: "We had to be neutral. We couldn't discriminate against either government."

P: Best of the interchanges took place between Senator Bennett Champ Clark and smoke-ring-blowing Irenee du Pont:

Clark: I don't agree it was ever necessary for us to get in [the War] except to protect the munitions makers' profits.

Du Pont: Do you mean that President Wilson was dragged into the War at the instance of the munitions makers?

Clark: Don't you think the deaths from Chinese disorders were an awful price to pay to keep America prepared?

Du Pont: I don't think it is nefarious to sell ammunition. The disorder is the nefarious thing.

Clark: Let me just as gently and tactfully as I can disabuse your mind of the impression that you are running this investigation. We propose to examine into whatever we please and call those witnesses we desire to appear as we were instructed by the Senate to do.

Du Pont (puffing hard on an empty pipe) : I beg your pardon.

P: Du Pont de Nemours was charged with having betrayed U. S. military secrets to foreign nations by having entered into an agreement for an exchange of patents with Nobel, Ltd. of London. Evidence was an intracompany memorandum objecting to the exchange: "If it could be shown that the du Pont Company had a working agreement with a foreign powder manufacturer, the conclusion could be drawn that the du Pont Company was acting in bad faith with our own government. Congress would have an opportunity to brand us as traitors."

Du Pont officials countered with the assertion that the patents transferred were no longer military secrets. Said Dr. Fin Sparre, du Font's research director: "For 10-c- anyone can get [from the Patent Office] copies of patents involved in our foreign transactions."

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