Quid Pro Quo

At his desk in Washington last week Executive Secretary Joseph Green of the State Department's National Munitions Control Board signed a license for the shipment to Germany of 2,000,000 cu. ft. of helium for Nazi dirigibles (TIME, Jan. 17). For making the first break in the U. S. Government's virtual monopoly of the world supply, the Board forestalled anti-Nazi criticism by explaining: 1) that U. S. stores are adequate for several hundred years; 2) that the U. S. could not morally prevent the distribution of a gas with important laboratory and medical uses (notably in oxygen tents); 3) that for the 17,900,000 cu. ft. Germany will receive in 1938 there will be a formal quid pro quo--two naval observers will ride on each German Zeppelin using the gas, thus get valuable training in lighter-than-air navigation which the U. S., with all its big dirigibles wrecked or grounded, no longer provides.

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