UPROAR CAUSED

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 7

UPROAR CAUSED

ASTOUNDING ADMISSIONS SENATE MUNITIONS INQUIRY ENACTMENTS ENGINEERED USE MADE OF CONGRESSMEN SECRET GERMAN CONCERNS By Telegraph—Press Assn—Copyright. Rec. 7.50 p.m. Washington, Sept. 6. A boast by an official of the Electric Boat Company of New London that he placed two members on the powerful Houses of Representatives Rules Committee and engineered through Congress a £600,000 company claim caused an uproar to-day at the inquiry being made by the Senate Munition Investigation Committee. Mr. Sterling J. Joyner, the firm’s Washington representative, frankly took the credit in a letter written to Mr. Henry R. Carse, president of the Electric Boat Company, in December, • 1928, for the election to the Rules Committee of two members of the House of Representatives, Messrs. F. W. Fort, New Jersey, and Joseph Martin, Massachusetts, both of whom are Republicans. Mr. Fort is out of Congress, but Mr. Martin is still a member of the House and of the Rules Committee. In another letter dated March 11, 1929, Mr. Joyner said: “All our legislative efforts have borne fruit. The Cruiser Bill has been passed and the submarine appropriations have been passed, and as I sincerely promised you' on the day we lunched together at New York we did manage after overcoming a number of handicaps and jumping some hurdles to get a second Deficiency Bill through, and in doing so we succeeded in getting our claims through.” Details of an intensive- and world-wide submarine sales campaign, involving high ranking officers and Government officials, were traced before the investigation committee. Letters from officials of the United States-owned Electric Boat Company disclosed that the concern had agreements not only with Vickers, Ltd., England, but also with the leading shipbuilding concerns throughout the world. In rapid order the names of Russia, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Norway were spoken before the inquiring Senators as nations into which Electric Boat Corporation agreements extended. There were also documentary charges that German firms had established munitions concerns in Holland, Sweden, Switzerland and other small countries within easy distance of Germany for the purpose of secretly maintaining Germany’s position as a submarine power. It was also revealed that Herr Paul Koster, a former Dutch naval captain and now director of a German munitions concern, had written to the' vice-presi-dent of the Electric Boat Company, Mr. Lawrence Spear, asking him to use his good offices to aid him to obtain the American sub-machine-gun for use by “a certain organisation in Germany.” This occurred three months be'fbre the Nazi revolt.

It was submitted also that the former Assistant-Secretary for the Navy, Mr. Ernest Lee Johncke, while in President Hoover’s Cabinet promised the Electric Boat Company a submarine contract, although its bid was higher than the Navy Department’s.