EDB Swings into Action

A reshuffled Economic Defense Board, now to be named the Board of Economic Warfare, got ready for action just in time. With a new personnel of 750, last week it began waging silent warfare throughout the world. Its jobs: 1) to keep supplies, whether the democracies need them or not, away from the Axis; 2) to assure maximum supplies to the shortage-ridden U.S., her allies and her southern neighbors, distributing them where they will do the most good.

At EDB's request, SPAB last week approved the allocation of 218,000 metric tons of scarce U.S. tinplate to 19 Latin American countries* enough to stock their canners for this season. By this week's end, similar allocation approvals were expected on iron & steel, tanning materials, soda ash, farm equipment, anhydrous ammonia, rayon, cork, borax and acetone; eventually on 101 products.

To blueprint a world economic balance sheet on which all future allocations will be based, SPAB is compiling U.S. Army, Navy and military Lend-Lease requirements; OPA the U.S. domestic requirements; EDB, the requirements of the rest of the world. If, as subordinates suggest, EDB gets control of Lend-Lease and RFC foreign lending powers (especially of the Export-Import Bank), it will be the distribution center for all U.S.-controlled materials throughout the world.

To accomplish this huge task, Executive Director Milo Perkins split EDB into four autonomous geographical divisions:

> British Empire, headed by smart, dark-haired William Stone, drafted from the Washington executive directorship of the Foreign Policy Association.

> Far Eastern, headed by tall, grey Charles B. Rayner, for ten years Standard Oil manager in Java, The Netherlands East Indies and Thailand, later a Texas oil man.

> American Hemisphere, directed by soft-voiced Rhodes Scholar Carl B. Spaeth, Nelson Rockefeller's Latin American commercial aide. To bureaucratic Washington's surprise, Nelson Rockefeller not only willingly released Carl Spaeth, but told him to take along his capable 100-man economic staff. Said he to Milo Perkins: "You've got the authority and I've got the people. . . . Let's get together."

> European and African, headed by Hector Lazo, executive director of the Cooperative Food Distributors of America. Open warfare adds to EDB's responsibilities. It corresponds to Britain's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which directs bombing operations on the European continent. EDB experts must be able to tell Major General Brereton's Far Eastern squadrons which Japanese factories are most worth a load of bombs.

*Biggest allocatees: Argentina, 77,500 tons, Brazil, 64,000, Uruguay, 17,000, Mexico, 15,000, Cuba, 13,500, Chile, 12,000.

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