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Show GENERAL JOHNSON Jour: Washington, D. C. REARMAMENT DAWDLING The rearmament program is dawdling for two reasons. Government Govern-ment is not organized for industrial mobilization, and neither is industry. indus-try. This Is not the fault of the war department This country made two startling contributions to the art and science of major modern war in 1917 and 1918. One was the selective selec-tive service idea for the mobilization mobiliza-tion of man power. The other was the War Industries board method for mobilizing industry. Neither was fished out of a hat Both were perfected through a painful pain-ful period of trial and error mistake mis-take and correction until, at the end, they were working well. Almost as soon as the war was over, the war department began a careful study of both. Few regular officers had been Included In either effort but nearly all the principal actors were living and the records and reports were copious. Year after year, these experienced experi-enced men were brought back to lecture class after class of officers in the war college and army industrial indus-trial college on all these experiences the underlying principles, the blunders blun-ders and triumphs, the blind alleys explored and all the stone walls Against which these pioneers had butted and bloodied their heads. As a result of all these studies and stories, the war department drew up plans for both mobilizations for major war men and materials. Year after year, these plans were revised and carefully checked with the veterans of the earlier effort On the principle of Industrial mobilization, mo-bilization, of which he had directed the 1918 effort, Bernard M. Baruch devoted much of his time and energy, ener-gy, patiently helping the war department de-partment to perfect an adaptation of his original plan to every changing chang-ing circumstance. When this emergency arrived, the war department was ready with plans complete almost to the last comma for both selective service and the industrial effort. The war department's draft plan , was permitted to be put into effect with very few changes, but, for some reason, its equally well constructed con-structed and war tested plan for industrial mobilization was ditched. The result is before our eyes. The draft machinery is running as well as any such great effort could be expected to run. In industrial mobilization mo-bilization we are repeating by page and number and almost by date every ev-ery single blunder of 1917 and 1918. These all had been plotted and provided pro-vided against in the war department depart-ment plan. It Is Impossible to carry on without with-out confusion, waste and delay an armament program running into billions bil-lions by simply flinging it to a peace-geared peace-geared industry as a bone is tossed to a dog. It requires careful organization or-ganization of both demand and supply, sup-ply, organization of the many and sometimes conflicting government procurement agencies, as well as organization of the myriad producing produc-ing agencies of industry. That has not been done at all and that is what is the matter with things. WASHINGTON THE CENTER This City of Washington was established es-tablished as our seat of government govern-ment partly on the argument that it was a central location and partly in a kind of trade to insure national assumption of the debts of the states. Perhaps the Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen the astonishing expansion of our country, coun-try, but now our central location in area is somewhere in Kansas, and our center of population, (not yet announced from the last census) is probably in Indiana. As a result Washington is about as inconveniently located as possible possi-ble for most U. S citizens to exercise exer-cise their constitutional right to visit the seat of the government. Nobody would dream of suggesting suggest-ing that the capital be moved. Its location is hallowed in our history What with its own advance and the decline of others due to war and misfortune it is, by all odds, the j most beautiful city in the world. It is advancing yearly In beauty as well as in wealth and population. No, the capital will never be changed, but why are other cities and all the states so complacent about permitting so much of their money to be drained away to bf spent in this one spot? The great head administrative offices have to be grouped about the Chief Executive, Execu-tive, but why do the hundreds oi thousands of workers? It has always been a marvel tt I pork-barrel-rollers, whose bid for reelection re-election is the Squeedunk post offlci or the improvement of Skunk creek have overlooked this possibility. In stead of making a short snack ol work for a dozen plumbers, carpenters carpen-ters and masons or a dredging crew, they might bring home a continuing payroll In real money. It is astonishing, too, that the states and cities haven't done aome low and lofty squawking over being so copiously and continuously milked for a distant community and get. ting so little in return. |