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Show U. S. Army Mans Outposts Of Far-Flung Battle Fronts'-1 United States Assumes Military Command A --. J In Area Many Times as Wide as l Its Own Borders. Lr By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WNTJ Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. Spring has unloosed her fluttering green scarf over the capital, the stark pattern of black branches against sullen skies was gone. Behind Be-hind the classic portico of the Treasury Treas-ury building I could see, from my high window, pointed tree tops like a jade comb in a gray dowager's hair. That was May in Washington as it has looked for nearly a quarter of a century. But there was a grim signature in the upper corner of this picture framed by my office window that made the whole scene modern strictly, brutally, 1942. It was the silhouette of a parapet, the top of a tall hotel and on the penthouse pent-house roof a black cylinder pointed upward an anti-aircraft gun. But that did not hold my attention. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, thou-sands, of those guns in the past weeks. It was a doughboy under his rounded helmet sitting on the edge of the parapet kicking his heels into space as his watchful young eyes followed the skyline. To me he was the symbol of a million men scattered from the Arctic to the Antipodes, scanning strange skylines, soon to see them all turn red. Never in history has a nation sent its sons out to as wide-flung a front as that which America is guarding today; never in history has such a terrible machine been built by a single people. In less than half a year a nation that yesterday spent less on its army than on its movies, its autos, or its cosmetics has begun to man the outposts of the United Nations. Gradually the United States has assumed military command in an area ten, perhaps 20 times, as wide as its own borders. Boys from Florida Flor-ida and Texas live in iron huts in Iceland under an American commander com-mander boys from the Dakotas are sweating in Asiatic jungles boys from New England are fighting sandstorms in the African deserts American generals give commands in China, in the South Seas, in India and the Levant. ' Y The car is still running though not so far in the East and the northwest north-west Pacific we still have at least one teaspoonful of sugar for our coffee, cof-fee, school begins, father goes to the office or the fields, there are still dishes to wash, shoes to shine, umbrellas to mend, babies to change. If it weren't for these common, engrossing things human beings could not carry on while the whole world goes through the excruciating ex-cruciating agony of travail that will bring forth something whose nature no one can guess. To survive this ordeal requires the dull, unthinking indifference of the brute or the faith of saints and martyrs. Canada Straggles for Financial Independence Changing its business all around Is one of the biggest jobs this country coun-try has today. Changing the business busi-ness of a hundred million people is a long, hard job. We've only really real-ly got down to cases since Pearl Harbor. But when the President told us about forgetting the "creature "crea-ture comforts" and the efforts that have been made since April 28 in Washington to carry out his seven point cost-of-living program most people began to realize that we are on the way. Recently I took a specially conducted con-ducted trip through a section of the territory of our northern neighbor, Canada, where they have been busy "changing" ever since 1939. From the moment you get off at the busy station in Montreal filled with uniforms and the folks there to meet them, you realize how important im-portant Canadians are to Americans, how important Americans ; are to Canadians, and how vital it is that each of these good American neighbors neigh-bors see eye to eye, work together and learn to forget "border and breed and birth" and to greet each other frankly and freely as brother Northamericans. Canada is big a little bigger in square miles than the United States. It has a tenth of the people to support and develop this great heritage. Unlike the United States, one-third of the Canadians are French-speaking and two-tairds of the English speaking mixed with a heavy smattering of races drawn from as many different lands as our own population. "Daughter I am in my mother's house, but mistress of my own" wrote Kipling of "Our Lady of the Snows" as he called Canada whose wide vistas of lakeland, prairies, mountain and forest were too wide for even his facile genius to bring to a single canvas. Now she is a grown-up daughter who can speak to the motherland on equal terms. Inter dependency Today, bound together in the same cause, the United States and Canada are more interdependent than ever. They must share in the framing of a new world after the war. Canada has never accepted a lend-lease arrangement with the United States. Canada's parliament has voted a free gift of a billion dollars to Britain. Canada, dependent on so much of America's output to sustain her war effort is struggling to maintain financial independence so that she can sit down at the peace table with no debtor's shackles on her wrists, no burrs on her tongue, as an equal counselor among the Northamericans. Northamer-icans. But because the United States is a giant, financially and industrially, and Canada is small in comparison, she is deeply affected by what America does'. That is why she is keenly interested in how the United States works out the program for checking inflation laid down in the President's message of April 27. Canada's war effort depends' on the United States for certain materials ma-terials which Canada neither grows in her fertile soil nor fabricates in her factories. Canada has things America needs. You cannot go into one of the busy Canadian war factories fac-tories without seeing the name of an American city stamped on some machine American machine tools is an essential which we have furnished fur-nished Canada so that she could equip not only her own army and-navy and-navy but help Britain to equip hers. And Canada has had a problem. She bought much more from us than we from her. American dollars became be-came as scarce north of the border as corn pone (and it's hard to think of an American product unknown in Canada). ' ' ' Tourist Dollars f One of the chief sources , of American Amer-ican dollars was the American tourist. tour-ist. The tourist trade fell dff with ' the beginning of the war. ! It has ' almost 'disappeared with the rationing ration-ing of gasoline and tires. - No Canadian Cana-dian can come to. the. United States and spend his money here (reducing , Canada's dollar exchange) without proving his visit is strictly business. One of the clauses of the famous "Hyde Park agreement" made by Prime Minister McKenzie-King and President Jtoosevelt was " "coordination "co-ordination of price policies." To--day that co-ordination has begun, 14 months after itwas laid down. For there "can be no effective price control in Canada if there is no control in" the states" who'SeTproducts she has to buy. If American prices should soa-r.how could the Canadian government force its own merchants to "keep prices do'wn bn' the many things they get from the United States, or how could the Canadian war budget bear the strain if the many war products they must have from us (gas engines, for instance,' for planes and tanks and trucks) -went up jn price? -; t ' Canada began to study price-con1-' trols immediately after her declaration decla-ration of war with Germany in 1939. But it was not until December, 1941, that maximum price , regulation went into effect. Since ,then Canada has been watching, waiting, hoping that we would follow suit, because there could be no Canadian price ceiling unless there was a ; "north--american" price ceiling. It would be a house with less than, half a roof. ..." On December 1, 1941, Canada froze prices and wages allowed for unpreventable rise in the cost of living by granting a bonus' in wages if the cost of living went up. It has, however, varied little, now if the President's program is successfully success-fully carried into effect, stabilization stabiliza-tion can be assured. We have followed fol-lowed the Canadian pattern. U. S. Influence But some American prices had already affected Canada. Take the typical case of the Canadian merchant mer-chant who either had to sell grapefruit grape-fruit at a loss or stop selling them because the Unittd States ;was. the only source. If all the merchants had stopped selling grapefruit it would have h,id a bad effect because be-cause it would have meant a greater strain on the market for other fruits or vegetables tomatoes, for instance, which happen to be in great demand for similar : vitamin content both at home and in Britain. |