Berlin-Washington Axis

The Army Ordnance Department wanted a theme song; so did the Treasury Department. Both asked Composer Irving Berlin to write them one. Mr. Berlin obliged, and the songs--Arms for the Love of America and Any Bonds Today?--were launched last week on Arsenal Day (June 10). At the War College in Washington, Singer Barry Wood baritoned:

Arms for the love of America,

They speak in a foreign land

With weapons in every hand.

Whatever they try

We've got to reply

In language that they understand.

Arms for the love of America

And for the love of every mother's son

Who's depending on the work that must be done

By the man behind the man behind the gun.

Arms for the Love of America, in bouncing 6/8 march time, sounds a bit like Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning, which ageless, wizened Composer Berlin wrote during World War I. Any Bonds Today? is a conventional dance tune whose sentiment is Buy a share of freedom. Neither song is likely to set isolationist feet a-tapping. For some reason, Mr. Berlin's popular and patriotic God Bless America has been ticketed as an interventionist song, and shouted down at America First rallies.

From the new songs, as from God Bless America, Composer Berlin will not make a penny. He has assigned full rights to the Government departments, and ASCAP has cleared the songs for free radio performance.

Big Barry Wood not only let loose the Berlin songs in Washington but recorded them for Victor last week, sang one of them on the CBS-Lucky Strike Your Hit Parade. He has been vocalist and master of ceremonies on that program for a year and a half, has helped in the steady rise of its Crossley ratings, until the "hits" it presented turned out to be non-ASCAP songs like Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair.

Born Lou Rapaport in New Haven, 32-year-old Barry Wood is, like Rudy Vallee and Lanny Ross, one of Yale University's gifts to popular music. He took his Ph.B. in 1930, was a crack relay swimmer and water poloist. Recently Barry Wood was named nation's "Sweater Boy"--by two knitting works, in a belated effort to right the unbalance created by Hollywood's sweater girls.

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