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By last week the reserve had noticeably thawed. The State Department, and the rest of Washington as well, observed that the Rockefeller Committee had not licked the Germans at a game they have been playing for a generation, nor made themselves at home in half a continent in twelve months. But it had accomplished a good deal, seemed on the way to accomplish more. Approved by Budget Director Harold Dewey Smith was an $8,000,000 appropriation to carry the Committee through fiscal 1942.
A for Effort. The U.S. controls some 30,000 route miles of airlines in South America. The Axis controls 20,000. Ready for Presidential announcement was the allocation of $8,000,000 of the President's emergency-defense money to establish an aviation bank which will buy out the Axis-controlled lines. This project was the brain child of a Rockefellerman, Yaleman and sportsman, William Barclay Harding, who got official attention by writing terse memorandums daily for months plugging his scheme. The aviation bank will be under Harding's boss, Cottonman Will Clayton, with most of the dickering in the hands of Sportsman Harding.
Also due for early announcement was creation of a specific priorities division for Latin America. For months Chairman Rockefeller has been after the President, harping on the need of letting Latin America have some of the materials and products it needs from the U.S. He has already sent a few planes south, has a promise of at least 30 more transport ships for Latin-American airlines.
Propagandawise the Rockefeller Committee has managed to eliminate a great deal of bad propaganda by publicizing the eight-year-old Roosevelt Good Neighbor policy. Head of the Committee's Communications Division is Don Francisco of Lord & Thomas (advertising agency), who made a whirlwind tour of Latin America to find out why the U.S. usually put its wrong foot forward. Working under Francisco is Yaleman John Hay ("Jock"') Whitney (motionpicture division) who has persuaded Hollywood producers to cut their films to rid them of sequences offensive to Latin Americans. Jock Whitney and Hollywood do not yet know about all the things that offend Latin Americans, but they hope to learn. They have also dispatched Hollywood glamor boys and girls south, to create Latin-American appreciation for North American faces and bodies just as the State Department is sending authors like Thornton Wilder to display the North American mind.
The radio committee under Merlin ("Deacon") Aylesworth has persuaded broadcasting companies to double their broadcasts to Latin America, helps to subsidize a short-wave sending station in Boston under the direction of onetime United Pressman Hobart C. Montee. Francis A. Jamieson's press division sends both spot news and boiler plate via the regular press services. It is distributing 100,000 booklets containing Spanish-and-Portuguese-translated excerpts from President Roosevelt's speeches. Title: Why America Arms.