Under Wraps

For the third time since Pearl Harbor, reporters last week were not permitted to tell the U.S. where the President was nor what he was doing. The President had wrapped himself in wartime secrecy. At each press conference he still greeted the reporters with the remark that he had no news today--but now he meant it. He had made no report to the nation on the state of the war since his message to Congress on Jan. 5, would not speak to the U.S. again until Feb. 23. But he worked. The President:

>Sent word to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that Congress had unanimously approved a $500,000,000 loan to China. Mr. Roosevelt congratulated the Gissimo on "the gallant resistance of the Chinese armies".

>Daily consulted with staff chiefs of the United Nations' new G.H.Q. in Washington. To implement G.H.Q. strategy, the U.S. Navy's Vice Admiral Herbert F. Leary was placed in command of the combined naval forces in the Australian-New Zealand sector of the ABDA area. Name of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was changed to "U.S. Naval Forces, Southwest Pacific," and command of it was given to Rear Admiral W. A. Glassford Jr. Both Glassford and Leary will serve under Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of all United Nations naval forces in the ABDA area.

>This week signed the most whopping appropriations bill of all time in any nation: a $26,495,265,474 appropriation bill to pay for the addition of 25,000 planes to the Navy's sky force and to enlarge the Two-Ocean Navy.

>By executive order restored to Army courts the power (revoked in peacetime) to impose death sentences in court-martial proceedings.

> Met A.F. of L. President William Green, C.I.O. President Philip Murray to close for the duration the schism between the two labor organizations. With a smile and shake of the hand the labor leaders agreed, went to work at once on a joint labor-policy statement on priorities, rationing and wages, to serve as wartime standards for all unions.

> Created a War Shipping Administration (WSA) to control the operation, purchase, charter, requisition and use of all ocean vessels under the flag or control of the U.S. (except fighting ships and those engaged in coastwise, intercoastal and inland transportation). Purpose: to set up a shipping pool to serve military and economic strategy, i.e., to bring in rubber instead of tapioca. The new WSAdministrator: leathery, salty Rear Admiral Emory S. ("Jerry") Land, 63, head of the Maritime Commission.

> Made no comment on the savage public reaction to the First Lady's well-meaning hurly-burly in the Office of Civilian Defense.

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