AMERICA'S BIG DEFENCE HUSTLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 9, 11 January 1940, Page 8

AMERICA'S BIG DEFENCE HUSTLE

SPEND MILLIONS

Add Thousands To Personnel Of Services

PRICE OF NEUTRALITY

vuimoa l'ress Association.—Copyright.—Ree. 11.30 a.m.)

WASHINGTON, January 10

The Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives has approved President Roosevelt's recommendations for emergency defence and neutrality expenditure and has asked Congress to provide 267,200,000 dollars for the Army, the Navy, the coast guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing for the following increases in the personnel:-— Army, 16.969 to 277.000. National guard, 41,000 to 251,000. Navy. 29,000 to 145,000. Marine corps, 6000 to 25,000. Coast guard, 2000 to 10,866. The Navy receives 28,596,000 dollars to buy 5 I 3 aircraft to use on neutrality patrol work. The coast guard appropriation is chiefly to recommission inactive vessels. The neutrality patrol is now being extended 800 miles seaward. • Safeguards Against Espionage. Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in giving evidence in support of a 1,475,000-dollar anti-spy and antirsabotage fund, included in the above total, told the committee that the F. 8.1, had compiled extensive indices of all those engaged in activities possibly detrimental to internal security and could, in the event of war, identify individuals and groups immediately. He added that the bureau waa receiving 78,000 sabotage and espionage complaints annually. Plana had been made to protect 450 plants against foreign espionage, stated Mr. Hoover. He described the theft and recovery of plans of an air corps bomber at a west coast factory.