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Show ffSj GENERAL HUGH s- JOHNSON i. Uniwrt Fdiuit J? WNU Senkm GULF STREAM ATTACK WASHINGTON This column it as crazy as at least nine out of ten of the world shaking schemes that come in my mail daily. But one out of a thousand does have a little merit. For example, once a gent wrote me that ordinary chicken wire could stop a tank. I thought that was goofy, but my college mate. General Wesson, now chief of ordnance, ord-nance, wrote me that the letter presented a real idea. Well, this is my brainstorm. So many people pull them on me, I ough to be entitled to at least one. Ever since I was a kid I have been told that the Gulf Stream is a sort of hot water radiator system that is held away from most of our eastern coast by a cold wall of Arctic Arc-tic water. It is out there just the same, from 40 to 200 miles to seaward. sea-ward. You can actually see it and know it from the encircling warmth when you enter it. It veers across the Atlantic ocean and is partly responsible for the mild, warm climate of the south coast of England and also of Spain, France, Ireland and Scotland. If it could be deflected up our own and the Canadian coasts it might give them the climate of the Riviera and put most of Mr. Hitler's conquests on ice. The Gulf Stream itself is not very great, but it carries a lot of tropical water with it at least on the surface. sur-face. It goes through a narrow passage pas-sage between the Bahamas and Florida. Could any kind of engineering engi-neering works there divert its flow? Exactly what makes the Gulf Stream act the way it does is not quite certain the rotation of the earth the configuration of the ocean floor prevailing winds and a lot of other unknown quantities are in the equation. The engineering of hydrodynamics, hydrodynam-ics, water in motion, is largely empirical, em-pirical, which means that it is governed gov-erned by no predictable mathematical mathemati-cal formula. The way water flows through a faucet or what happfens when you stick a dyke out into an ocean current has to be determined by experiment. No hydraulic engineer engi-neer is wise enough to say with absolute ab-solute assurance either that the Gulf Stream could, or could not, be diverted di-verted in along our Atlantic coast and away from Mr. Hitler's Europe. The only dependable way to find out is to make a miniature model of the Atlantic ocean and play with the water in it. As a practical matter, mat-ter, that is impossible. But there have been many well-informed well-informed speculations on this possibility. possi-bility. Nobody ever wanted or dared to go very far with them because, be-cause, in spite of our winter and rough weather, we were getting along well enough, and it was unthinkable un-thinkable to meditate on turning South Europe into a Labrador by a few clever engineering works oil the Florida coast. It may not be so unthinkable tomorrow to-morrow if our interventionists are correct, Mr. Hitler may soon have converted his cradle of our civilization civiliza-tion into an abomination and threaten threat-en us with a similar fate. He may have seized the British navy and enough French, British, Dutch, Danish, Dan-ish, Swedish, Norwegian and Belgian Bel-gian building capacity to make it hopeless for us to compete. Since he hesitates at no methods of destruction, de-struction, however devastating, why should we? If this particular method is, by any chance, remotely available, it would never have to be used. Even Herr Hitler could not risk the glacia-tion glacia-tion of half a continent. As I re-read what I have written, it seems too grotesque to submit, and yet I have heard competent engineers engi-neers toying with this Jules Vernes fantasy. It certainly is not imoo-sible. imoo-sible. In today's frantic search U4 weapons that may be used against us, I wonder what a commission of expert hydraulic engineers would say of this one for our defense. Maybe May-be they would just say: "Page Orson Or-son Welles!" SELECTIVE DRAFT To beat dictators, democracies have got to show the power to see as clearly and efficiently and be as willing to serve and sacrifice any of their potential enemies. A case in point is the new selective selec-tive service bill. Fully 90 per cent of our people are ardently in favor of "adequate defense." There is a difference of opinion about just what that means, but most people know that it means a very large navy, a great increase in our army, large reserves of trained men and mountains moun-tains of new equipment. I have heard few people who were unwilling to accept the judgment of our military and naval experts as to type, numbers and quantities needed. need-ed. Thus far, therefore, democracy lj working as well as any government. But, when it goes to conscriptive methods for raising that army, trie welkin rings with every sort of confusion con-fusion of counsel that defeats democracy democ-racy or drives it to dictatorship. There are several provisions of the service bill that I think I can prove wrong in principle, but in the main the bill is necessary and sufficient Failure to enact it promptly may lead to something much worse. One objection is that we can r.ct rely on volunteering to get more thr.n a million men. |