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Show fpGENERAL )&id HUGH s' JOHNSON 1 L -J IkMMM r WNUfcwfJ Washington, D. C. WITCH HUNT? Has the witch hunt actually begun? be-gun? I haven't heard it, but several sev-eral letters and telegrams inform me that a conspicuous radio news commentator is warning the public to "watch carefully" members of the keep-out-of-war committees because be-cause they are "appeasers' and "are trying to make us afraid." Gen. Bob Wood, who was honored by congress for his work in helping to build the Panama canal, and brought back from an important post in France in the AEF to spark the American war production efforts ef-forts as quartermaster general, is being put on the pan. Col. Charles Lindbergh, who brought home the greatest honors American aviation ever knew, and who first jolted American and British" complacency by revealing the tremendous hidden powers of German air armament. Is now under the wand of the professional profes-sional witch finders. Even his lovely, love-ly, fearless quietly philosophical wife has taken a dirty dig or two from such professional breast-beating Boadicea's as Dorothy Thompson. Thomp-son. What goes on here? Most of the people who want to dress up Uncle Sam as something more canny than his old role as the world's prize fat boy with the bag of candy in a world of Dead End urchins, were awake long before these tardy tom-tom beaters, witch doctors and Sioux Sun Dancers were even aware that there was a vast, sinister and growing danger in the world. Some of them had been hammering hammer-ing at the inexcusable indolence of England, the equivocal horse trading trad-ing of France and. above all, the spineless inactivity of Amei ica, long before the "cloud no bigger than a man's hand" became a thunder-head thunder-head and began to belch lightning. All of them are, and have long been, for all-out defense of this country. All are against hysterical dissipation dissipa-tion of it. Who speaks for America they or their half-crazed critics? If they were so much more nearly right before, maybe they are more nearly right now, when they ques-tion ques-tion whether we should rush headlong head-long into a gun fight with our gun not even loaded and, as a first act, give away our guns. Our greatest lack right now is Will Rogers, who said: "America never lost a war or won a conference." We can wonder what he would say about "Let's take the silly fool dollar dol-lar mark from aid to Britain." From how many billions have we taken the "silly fool dollar mark" for foreigners It would be hard to say. . We took them off from the bill we footed for the last World war to a present total, with interest of about 14 billions. see BIG FOUR The four-man control of industrial mobilization, consisting of the secretaries sec-retaries of war and navy, Mr. Knudsen Knud-sen and Mr. Hillman, may do some good, but it is not, as some have said, the equivalent of the War Industries In-dustries board plan that worked in 1918 to provide the fastest re-armament ever recorded by a great nation. na-tion. It violates an essential and basic principle of that plan. It takes nothing from experience. It is an experiment. There are four great and insistent demands in time of war. They are those of the army, the navy, the allies, if any, and greater than these and just as Important, the needs of civilian population. Heads of the .army and navy are under heavy responsibilities re-sponsibilities for two of those needs. With the best intention in the world it is only human nature for them to grab and fight each for their own to seek in extreme cases even monopoly control of all the best sources and supplies of material, manufacturing, storage and transportation trans-portation facilities, power and labor. That isn't a guess. That happened early in World War I, and continued to happen until it was stopped by the War Industries board. We are rushing into a program of production produc-tion just as great. To have that, happen without any regulation is a very bad thing. It creates unnecessary unneces-sary shortages to the great prejudice not only of all the people but the armament program itself. It unnecessarily unnec-essarily tangles and disrupts the whole industrial machine. It multiplies mul-tiplies cost, reduces speed and makes doubly difficult the eventual shift back to a peace economy. For that reason and many others, the director of mobilization should not have to work under the control of the army and navy as he must do if he is one of a committee of four in which a division of opinion would result either in a deadlock or a domination by the purchasing departments. de-partments. v Our experience in the World war and the experience In every other country Indicates that the director of mobilization should be independent independ-ent of any statutory purchasing agencies. It is his part of the job to co-ordinate all purchasing programs pro-grams with each other to prevent confusion, delay, waste and loss; but that is only part of his job and not even the most important part The other part is to co-ordinate, organize, organ-ize, speed, aid and supervise the whole Industrial structure for maximum max-imum efficiency and production. |