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Show pl GENERAL fvSS HUGH S" JOHNSON ywJcuJ: Washington, D. C. 'WAR' PRICES One of the principal causes of war time shortages and sky-rocketing prices is the fear of them. The manager man-ager of any company making finished fin-ished goods out of raw materials Is responsible for continuous supply. If he sees ahead what seems to be a period of scant material and rising prices, he not only "covers" by buying buy-ing for his usual output for six months or maybe a year, but he goes as far beyond that as his resources re-sources will permit. This is "good business" from every ev-ery angle. It is a good speculative risk from the angle of probable rising ris-ing prices. It is good insurance against possible future shut-downs or delays due to inability to get materials ma-terials later. Finally, there is a temptation even to borrow money to increase stock piles and inventories to abnormal size. A period of price inflation is a good time to owe money and to own things. The combination of all these reasons rea-sons is almost Irresistible. Apply them to all the thousands of business busi-ness concerns, big and little, and you have a tremendous national force working everywhere to create the very condition of fear which has caused it. Part of these reasons work in the same direction for all individuals and for the great war purchasing government departments. All people peo-ple like to buy while they "can get the stuff and before the price rises.". An officer in charge of an arsenal or a navy yard turning out munitions has a really dreadful responsibility re-sponsibility for producing on or ahead of time and in quantity. He, too, fears the delays that future shortages may cause and to the extent ex-tent of his powers, will overstate his requirements and build up his inventories. inven-tories. Of course, this is a form of "hoarding" which is a war time word of evil omen. It is truly evil because the certain result of these practices is soaring prices, to the detriment of the whole nation and sometimes with a result of complete economic collapse and disaster. This column has continuously argued ar-gued against centralization of federal fed-eral power, but in a war economy some centralization is necessary in the public interest. In the haste to get the defense program through the legislature, not enough attention has been given to this phase. We need simpler and more direct emergency statuatory authority to control price, priority and increasing inventories. This is a subject that should have the immediate attention of congress even before tax legislation. We could lose more through price inflation in-flation in a year than increased taxes could recover in 10 years. MILITARY EXPERTS This has certainly been a tough war for the military "experts" both the columnist kibitzer or radio amateur variety and the real professionals. pro-fessionals. The amateurs have been bad enough, but the biggest boners of all have been pulled by those who from training, education and profession should really have been expert. The English and French bet their national existence on the experting of their soldiers and sailors that they could hold Hitler on the Magi-not Magi-not line and outmaneuver him north of that. They pushed Poland into-the into-the storm and then tossed her to the wolves and left all the small na-tions na-tions of Europe (that had been advised ad-vised by their own military experts to rely on allied strength) to be conquered con-quered in a few weeks. The English experts bet that they could outfox Hitler on the Norwegian Norwe-gian coast. They were wrong about that. too. Then Hitler's military high priests told him he could clean up the British Isles in 1940, but he is still at the channel ports Mussolini's mighty military men told him that Greece and North Africa Af-rica were pushovers, and see what 1 happened to him. Japan expected a tea party in China. She got it, but ! it was spiked with arsenic. Russia - marsh SeLby her Passionals that she could swallow Finland at a f"lp- fThat didn't happen and since Joe Stalin is more direct in his methods, he liquidated his experts and got some new ones. I don't know if they are any better The sciences of both tactics and armament have shifted too fast for toe experts. There are too many imponderables in modern war. The basic principles of war never change but military genius consists f aPPly"g them to new conditions and no such genius has yet appeared -no, not even Mr. Hitler's bright young men, notwithstanding their unparalleled conquests. For example Mr. Winston Churchill now tells us that uTs 7s :ust a war of machines-ships and land mechanical monsters-and that we shall never have to mobilize grea don t know whether war is no longer a matter of mass man power or not -and neither does Mr. Churchill I only know it always has been. He a clicking pretty well on military matters just now, but it's dn.iMr i whether any ieader ever many mditary mistakes in Z course of one lifetime and survived them as a public character. |