War Efforts

How could the nation collect its strength and its anger, and strike its enemies? This was a question from Portland, Ore. to Portland, Me.; from Minneapolis to Miami. There were a thousand answers, a thousand doubts. But of the temper of the nation toward the way the war was going there was scarcely a single doubt. Cartoonists saw it clearly (see cuts) as the war effort continued bumping and humping along:

> In Manhattan, Welder Adolph Jantz's torch sizzled against the upturned steel belly of the Navy transport Lafayette (nee Normandie), spat molten metal through a porthole, set a pile of rope ablaze. ". . . Just one of those little affairs," explained an official investigator, after firemen doused the ship's second fire, 32 days after the one that downed her.

> In the shadow of Wall Street's skyscrapers, an automatic anti-aircraft gun accidently went off, spouted into the afternoon haze (seven shells into the East River, one into a 37th-floor cornice near Wall Street). One of New York's 270,000 air-raid wardens grabbed his arm band, helmet, flashlight, started herding stenographers to safety. Blushing over the first shelling of the nation's metropolis, the Army said: "Further investigation is being carried out."

> At Valparaiso, Ind., Junk Dealer Frank Schumak turned down two offers for his wrecked jalopies and other scrap, defied WPB to "send the Army." Donald Nel son's WPB promptly sent two military policemen and a U.S. marshal, seized 200,000 lb. of metal. With an equal amount of pig iron, Schumak's scrap will make four medium tanks.

> The State Department Building was getting 1,150 new flexible steel Venetian blinds, weight 25 lb. each. The War Department already had new ones of aluminum. Still to be hung (to stop bomb-shattered glass) are another 750,000 lb. (30,000 metal shades) in other Government buildings. No one yet had figured out how many tanks Washington's special-prerogative window blinds would make.

> In Washington, OEM still didn't know what had happened to the 11,835,139 lb. of aluminum pots & pans collected seven months ago from patriotic U.S. housewives. To 29 smelters went frantic queries.

> The Department of Agriculture revealed that it had published 42 new pamphlets. Sample subjects: Raspberry Fruitworms, Victory Gardens, Navajo Weavings, Japanese Beetles.

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