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Show GENERAL JOHNSON Jour: Can't Tell About Dictators . . . Stalin Might Order Sit-Down . . . Roosevelt Cabinet Now Chiefly From New York. By HUGH S. JOHNSON WASHINGTON- As suggested some weeks before the Finnish campaign, cam-paign, the Russian army has a mush-like quality which offsets some of the weight of its overwhelming numbers. A government can't expect its soldiers sol-diers to respect and have confidence In their generals and other officers if it has no confidence in them itself. it-self. That Mr. Stalin has no such confidence, he has dramatically proved by liquidating one army leader after another and other generals gen-erals by platoons. It is reported that 30,000 subordinate officers have been executed or dismissed. All important im-portant commands are accompanied by political commissars. You can't operate an army on such a plan. Comrades can't be permitted to debate whether they will attack, stand fast, or run. Not Enough Equipment. Considering everything, Joe Stalin's Sta-lin's military outlook is not so hot Nevertheless, we should not fool ourselves our-selves about the gallant and masterful master-ful defense of Finland. As more facts become available, it appears to have been, on the part of Marshal Mar-shal Mannerheim, as brilliant a campaign as there is on record. But, in the very nature of things military, that kind of thing can't go on forever. Lee and Jackson made monkeys out of the Union generals for three years, but, except for the possibility of outside intervention, the end was certain. Overwhelming numbers and weight of metal are very likely to decide the issue In any long pull. Anything Might Happen. Furthermore, brilliant as was the Finnish defense in this campaign, the day-to-day news of it was misleading. mis-leading. It sounds as though the Finns were completely destroying a new Russian division daily. They did mop up one and handled others roughly, but so much annihilation simply isn't possible in that kind of a war. Some of this exaggeration was due to overlapping stories, but it is a safe bet that the good news did not suffer any at Finnish hands. If it were not true that anything might happen under the dictators, you could say, on all the precedents, that Russia will simply have to tune up a real steam roller and crash through any resistance that the Finns can raise. But these gorillas don't seem to know what is written in the book of rules. Comrade Stalin Sta-lin might settle with Finland for some face-saving sop, or he might just dig in and sit. It would be no more strange or unprecedented than the sit-down war in the west. With the appointment of Bob Jackson Jack-son as attorney general, there will be five members of the cabinet from one state New York or, if you count Mr. Edison, who at least used to live there, six. Secretaries Hopkins, Perkins, Morgenthau and Farley and now r s tne attorney general, gener-al, all hail from the Empire state. There is little to be said for the fetish of territorial terri-torial representation on the cabinet if there is a question of the best brains and ability to be weighed against a question of domicile. But when there is no NO DOUBT question, uiere is a precedent, hoary Secretary Per- witQ fa favQr Qf kins no doubt SQme M is a woman. . . . . , tion to the various territorial divisions. None of the five or six except Mr. Jackson and Mr. Farley is burdened with fitness for the job. The President Presi-dent could have selected as well from any place in the nation including in-cluding Samoa and Guam. Harry Hopkins is a good egg but he doesn't have the foggiest notion about commerce. Mr. Roosevelt is his own secretary secre-tary of the treasury and of the navy, and, insofar as it is the partisan political job of the cabinet, his own postmaster general. Mr. Farley has eaten the smoke of his own inward fires, taken his wounds, done his job as far as he was permitted and never released a squawk. In that case alone it was a question between ability and locality and if there had been eight other New Yorkers, Jim couldn't have been omitted. Then there is Muddom Perkins, but she is there to represent not a state but a sex. There is no doubt that she is a woman. Mr. Roosevelt doesn't care much for able men, but he does care painfully pain-fully for complacent men. If a man is able and a good yesser his ability might not disqualify him, unless it happened to be so great that he took some of the spotlight. Then Mr. Roosevelt would crack him down or sew him up as he did so cleverly to Pretty Boy Paul McNutt, who has been as neatly and completely bundled bun-dled as a caterpillar in a cocoon. Mr. Jackson falls in the first class discussed here great ability and fitness fit-ness for the job and second to noni :is a yesser. |