Show P Sun n G I I 4 Drew Pearson noted columnist who writes for The Telegram Telegram I and many other newspapers throughout t tile the e country is performing performing perform perform- ing a valuable public service in calling attention to excessive army stockpiling of materials In a recent column he brought out that the Mead committee had learned after strenuous war department efforts to keep the information secret that the army had vast quantities of goods stored up for up-for for instance blankets pairs paira of sun glasses pairs of cotton shorts pairs of mens men's woolen drawers bed sheets fatigue jackets just to mention a few Pointing out that the announced army anny program is for a pea peacetime force of about men Pearson emphasized how ridiculous such stockpiles were in that they amounted to 60 sun glasses per er m man n cotton shorts per man 57 fatigue jackets and so on It is of course perfectly ridiculous to maintain such stockpiles stockpiles stock stock- piles for a million-man million army It even bordered on the ridiculous to build up such stockpiles for our wartime army of around men It must be remembered that these were all outfitted anyway Why did we need an extra six blankets per man an extra seven pair of sun glasses an extra 15 cotton shorts and five woolen drawers an extra seven fatigue jackets That was just wartime overbuying terribly overbuying terribly wasteful and expensive overbuying Now its it's just hoarding inexcusable hoarding inexcusable hoarding which keeps from the starved goods-starved public a lot of needed useful items which could go a long way to relieve present shortages We Ve threw a away way billions of dollars by buying too much during the war The least we should do now Is get some return on that excessive expenditure by declaring the excess stocks surplus and selling elling them to the public |