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Show GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Jour: A COLTLE OF TEETH Washington, D. C. This is a parable. It is being written within the hour that I had two teeth yanked. They were fine perfect teeth. All mine are. Never before, except for one that got broken in a controversial colloquy, did a dental surgeon ever do anything any-thing to me and I am 58. At 80 my mother had all her teeth. It I runs in the family. This year, in the cool Impartial efficiency of the army medical corps, I was told by the chief of dental surgery at Walter Reed hospital: hos-pital: "These two teeth have to go if you don't want to lose half a dozen." I was very angry. Even his X-ray X-ray showed their perfection. I raged up to New York to consult con-sult Independently my favorite expertstwo ex-pertstwo of them Ted Fonarton and Joe Levy. 1 Now my two teeth are gone and, as the anesthetic wears off, it hurts like hell. Everybody remarked what swell teeth they were, even after they were out. But an infection had destroyed de-stroyed the foundation in which they were imbedded. By the protective action, advised by experts less than two years ago, I could have saved them. I felt nothing, so I didn't do what my experts ex-perts advised. Englnnd understands this sort of thing now and so do France and Holland and Belgium. We are beginning be-ginning to understand it in a panicky sort of way. Three years ago a veteran expert on American industrial preparedness, prepared-ness, a man with unusual sources of information in Europe, Mr. B. M. Baruch, told the President what was going on there, what wasn't go- I The Merry Month of May By Thomas, ing on here at all, and not going on fast enough in England and France. But we rocked along exactly as I did with my teeth. Now that we see what ingenious fiendishncss in the hell of modern war looks like, every drowsy editorial page, column of comment and panicky legislator begins to demand "billions for defense." de-fense." O. K., but it isn't enough. We can't meet this danger simply by "passing a law," even if it appropriates appro-priates billions. The answer to three questions is absolutely imperative. (1) What are we to defend? That is an answer to be made by the President and the state department. (2) What do we need to defend it? That is an answer an-swer to be made by the army and navy. (3) How can we best and most quickly and economically get what we need? That is for the leaders lead-ers of industry. For God's sake let's show just a fraction of Hitler's intelligence and preserve not only our skin but the teeth we are going to need so badly U. S. BLUNDERS Among the snap judgments coming com-ing out of Europe is that only a dictatorship dic-tatorship can make effective war It is not a fact. Woodrow Wil-son Wil-son said wisely of 1918: "The highest high-est and best efficiency is the spon-taneous spon-taneous co-operation of a free people." It is true that we stumbled lamen-tably lamen-tably before we got into the war-and war-and immediately afterward. We stumbled because we were misinformed and far from unity of purpose. As soon as the grcat majority of our people were informed in-formed and had decided on what we must do, no nation in history-not history-not even Germany today-over "ldae 3 quicker, better or more massive mobilzation and attack H isn't a question of form of government gov-ernment or organization. It is sole- cr of right m in ii- U a dictatorship were the answer Stahn is the most absolute on earth inSh"?''5 doiaord.smash-ng doiaord.smash-ng job of war-making and showing England didn't ;v, any other business h s hmn Pas.p-.rt to oblivion. " |