National Affairs: Patriotic Offer

In the cloak rooms of the Capitol Congressmen goggled last week over a tidbit of information that came out of their hearings on National Defense. Last May when the War Department was short $3,300,000 to purchase machinery to make smokeless powder for the Army, rich, patriotic Financier Bernard Mannes Baruch made an offer to Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson to put up the money from his own pocket. Financed instead by a Congressional appropriation recommended by the President, the machinery is now nearly complete. An obstacle to this generosity: such gifts to the U. S. require an act of acceptance by Congress.