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Show NATIONAL I AFFAIRS Reviewed by CARTER FIELD U. S. A.E.F.'s Free Mail Raises Question Of Abolishing Congressional Congres-sional Frank . . . Enemy Nations' 'Secret Weapons' Weap-ons' a Nightmare ... (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) WASHINGTON. What with all this talk about saving paper, decreasing de-creasing non-defense spending, etc., this should be a good time for congress con-gress to consider cutting down the almost unlimited use of the franking privilege for mail. An amusing sidelight on the attitude atti-tude of individual congressmen toward to-ward this question of saving postage post-age is given in the vote to grant soldiers overseas the right to send mail home free. The congressmen really thought they were giving the soldiers something! They were an estimated average of six cents a week! This is based on the idea that the average soldier and sailor will not write more than two letters home a week one to his parents and one to his girl. The average stated is purely pure-ly an estimate. There are no available avail-able figures, but parents of soldiers or sailors to whom the writer has talked say they would be tickled pink if the boys would average one letter a month to them. However, they all said, it was not to save postage that the boys refrained re-frained from writing as often as the old folks would like. The soldiers and sailors, for the most part, are kept pretty active. They are apt to be tired in their brief hours of relaxation and not inclined in-clined to tackle what, to most of them, is a laborious duty. A point in favor of the newest subsidy sub-sidy to the soldiers, which seems rather sound, is made by a person who is not a congressman. There may be, this gentleman pointed out, difficulty in obtaining stamps at va- I rious places to which the soldiers may be assigned. So the fact that the boys do not have to scurry around to obtain stamps might be much more important than saving a maximum of six cents a week. Apparently the best reason for granting this mail subsidy if we can assume this difficulty of obtaining obtain-ing stamps in the field to be the best reason did not occur to ANY member of the house or senate while the bill was under consideration. For the bill carefully confines this huge grant to enlisted men. It specifically spe-cifically bars the free mail plan to commissioned officers. As the 'officers 'offi-cers with the troops would obviously have the same ease or difficulty in obtaining stamps that the enlisted men would encounter, it would seem that the ONLY purpose of the bill was to increase slightly the pay of the enlisted men. Important to Congressmen One must not blame the congressmen congress-men for this, or think of the gift to our soldiers as trivial, as the lawmakers law-makers viewed the situation. For to a congressman the franking privilege priv-ilege is not trivial it is tremendous If deprived of that privilege the average congressman probably would spend more than a thousand dollars a year in postage. But with free postage for anything he chooses to send (congressmen have sent furniture fur-niture under the frank) the actual amount of unchecked service he gets from the post office department is of course much higher. In this time of bundles for congressmen con-gressmen there is no desire to discourage dis-courage giving, and certainly no desire de-sire to reach into congressmen's pockets, but why not put the mail on the same basis as stationery? Congressmen do not get free stationery, sta-tionery, unless they are chairmen of committees. They get an allowance every year to buy it. Why not abolish the frank and give every congressman and official offi-cial who is supposed to require it, an allowance for that purpose? Boy, would there be a saving of paper in Washington, not to mention the weight taken off letter carriers' feet! Why Not Use Some German Inventions? Secret weapons have been a nightmare night-mare to the military commanders of every nation at war not their own secret weapons, of course, but possible secret weapons developed by one of their enemies. The inventors of America have led the world for many years. Curiously Curi-ously enough Americans invented most of the weapons which are so important in this war. And' Britain comes pretty close to being second. Britain invented the breech-loading gun. She sent to the Confederates Confed-erates two breech-loading cannon of about three-inch size which were used at the battle of Gettysburg. If the Confederates had been able to use 100 instead of two, the tremendous tre-mendous difference in rapidity of fire, accuracy, and range, might have won the war for Roberl E. Lee. It would seem about time that the United Nations should be able to use successfuHy some former German Ger-man invention! That may be a little too much to hope for, but surely it is' about time that we used one of our own inventions in one of our own wars. |