LIQUOR: Holiday?

"It is odd," harrumphed 58-year-old Major General (retired) Frank Rudolph Schwengel, president of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., "that the finely made beverage spirits produced by American distillers for the war effort should go into hair tonic, cosmetics and shoe polish, while substandard commercial alcohol from Cuba goes into the American stomach."

The General spoke with feeling. Last week, for the umpteenth time, the U.S. Government turned down a distilling-industry plan for a "holiday" from industrial alcohol production—and this time it was the General's own plan.

Major General Schwengel's plan, which had...