OCR Text |
Show Washington With election anleties off their minds, Washington officials, in and out of Congress, are turning attention back to the more serious business of defense preparations. How seriously the international situation is taken by those who know most about it, from this country's point of view, can hardly hard-ly be put into words. One has to talk to the men who are trying to build up our national nation-al armaments, who will have the fighting to do if it comes to that, who are trying to keep the troubled waters of diplomacy properly oiled, to get a true impression im-pression of the gravity of the crisis which confronts the United States, as those who are closest to it regard re-gard it. It isn't so much what any of them says, as the way it is said, which impresses the listener. There is more public attention being centered upon the beginnings begin-nings of something like mobilizing mobiliz-ing the nation's manpower than upon what the best-informed men here consider of far greater immediate im-mediate importance, the speeding up of munitions production. For, no matter how fast we can train and equip an army, the prospect of having to send it into action depends upon how fast we can supply Britain with airplanes. The technicians say neither campaigner has an A-l delivery on the air. The true radio voice, I has no substance, no owner, and , a message of importance to all housewives. powder and shot, ships, food and medical supplies. That is the official view, not as openly expressed as it might be, but much more openly than it was before election. To all intents and purposes, we are committed to giving the British every possible aid short of sending an armed force of our own men which they couldn't use and don't want. 'To Help British To help the British by giving them all the planes and other fighting tools that we can spare is looked upon in Washington as a cheaper way of staving off a possible direct conflict with Hitler than it would be for the United States to take the atitude that the conflict between England and Germany Ger-many is none of our concern. We can't afford to let England be defeated, de-feated, is the way men in high position are now putting the matter. mat-ter. There is no fear of possible adverse election results to keep men's lips sealed now. It is difficult to offer a picture of the actual progress of the rearmament re-armament program. While nearly $10,000,000,000 of planes, guns, tanks and other munitions have been contracted for, it will be months, and in some cases years before the materials thus ordered will begin to be delivered. The ones which will come quickest are those for which factories are already al-ready equipped and have been turning out the identical articles for some time. That is true in the case of certain types of airplanes, the production of which can be increased rapidly because the basic development work has already al-ready been done. Standardization Sought But it happens that most of our American military planes have been produced, so far, on an experimental ex-perimental basis. Only a few types, mostly of training planes, have been standardized. And American manufacturers supplying planes to Britain have been called upon to make machines different in many important respects from anything American military men will accept.. ac-cept.. Now such obstacles are being straightened out. Over loud roars of protest from some of our own military and naval experts, agree- ments have been arrived at for the reduction of military planes to a limited number of standardized standard-ized types which will be used by the British as well as by our own forces. Similar agreements are said to have been made in respect to other air supplies, such as tanks, anti-aircraft guns and tti"e like, so that replacements of parts for British equipment can be made by using parts of American weapons. weap-ons. While there is little in the way of surface indications to suggest that anybody in Washington is concerned greatly over the Japanese Japan-ese situation, there are a good many questions to be answered before anybody can say there is no danger of hostilities between this country and Japan. The best diplomatic brain in our foreign service is Joe Grew, our Ambassador to Japan. He is understood to have personal access to the Mikado himself whenever he desires it. And the understanding understand-ing in Washington is that the Mikado is trying to conciliate the air party which is in control of the Japanese government, and if he fails to appease them he is likely to assume his personal authority as Son of Heaven and throw the warmongers out. Minor Business Boom In the meantime, while the National Na-tional Guardsmen and the recent volunteer recruits of the Army are being housed in encampments reminiscent of World War days, cantonments are under construction construc-tion for the first batch of draftees and the problem of clothing and equiping them is already starting a minor business boom. The Army's plan of organization will mingle drafted men, volunteers and the old-line Regulars so that every Army division will contain an equal proportion of all and there will be no such thing as there was in the World War, when drafted divisions were separate from volunteer divisions. Anyway, there isn't a corner of the nation where the people won't be fully aware that Uncle Sam is getting ready for trouble. |