WAR PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1941, Page 6

WAR PRODUCTION

SAID TO BE LAGGING

IN U.S.A. DEMANDS FOR INQUIRY. CONGRESSIONAL ACTION PREDICTED. ■ (Received Tljis Day, 12.3 p.m.) WASHINGTON, August 22. Congressional sources predict that President Roosevelt’s request for additional Lend and Lease appropriations will evoke r. searching inquiry into the defence programme, says a United Press corre.soondent. Both the Senate and the House of Representations Appropriations Committees will sift charges that production is lagging and that United States Army morale has suffered because’ equipment needed for active military training has been diverted to Britain and elsewhere. Senator Byrd has begun a move to centralise Defence agencies under a single director, because of “the miserable failure of production due to lack cf co-ordination." Isolationists threaten to write into the Lend and Lease appropriations an amendment excluding the Soviet from benefits. SOVIET ORDERS PLACED ON HUGE SCALE. WASHINGTON, August 22. It is authoritatively stated that Russia has placed 1.000 000,000, dollars worth of war orders in the United States. Of this 10 per cent will have been delivered within a few weeks. America is able to meet all the Russian requests for aviation petrol with immediate deliveries. Some fighter planes have already been delivered and others are en route.