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Show General Jrd HUGH S. JOHNSON nM Jour: BhssA&aigiJRua Unite Fixture J WNU Sartaa Washington, D. C. DEFENSE PRIORITIES There is about to issue in Washington Wash-ington an executive order recreating something very close, in form at least, to the War Industries board of 1918. While it will not disturb the recent re-cent quadumvirate of Stimson for the army, Knox for the navy, Knud-sen Knud-sen for industry and Hillman for organized or-ganized labor; Knudsen.will be the actual working member and the show will center around him. Like the 1918 organization, there will be departments for priorities, commandeering comman-deering and price control. Some of the latter will not be the central organization. or-ganization. Neither were they all there in World War I. The price-fixing commission was then a separate organization, housed with the War Industries board, the chairman of which was a member. The commandeering section was composed of officials of the various purchasing departments and, while its orders had all to be signed by the chairman of the big board, its organization or-ganization was separate. Of these three key departments, only the priorities commission was an integral part of the big board. In practice it made no difference. They all worked in perfect harmony. This is the general pattern of the new proposal with Mr. Stettinius probably at the .head of the priorities priori-ties division, Mr. Sidney Hillman conducting labor relations and Leon Henderson presiding over prices. If this happens, priorities and price control will both be outside the production pro-duction office of the four-man control and in the advisory commission. If there is a disagreement between these two, the army and navy secretaries sec-retaries will have the deciding votes. This is unfortunate. These gentlemen gentle-men want ever-increasing production produc-tion and are bound to be impatient with delay. The most obvious delays de-lays will be labor strikes and disputes. dis-putes. If the army and navy side with industry (Mr. Knudsen) the welkin will ring with complaints not only from labor but from every radical rad-ical element in Washington, none of which like this arrangement anyway, any-way, and all of whom think business busi-ness men should not be in it. So the armed services will come in for a hail of epithets reactionary, reaction-ary, Tory brass hat, martinets, dictatorial dic-tatorial and even Nazis or Fascists. This is too bad. Neither the army nor the navy should be put in a position of having to decide such disputes. dis-putes. Some wholly impartial agency should do that and this organization or-ganization does not provide such a tribunal. The split in the ranks of organized labor makes Mr. Hill-man's Hill-man's position doubly difficult. A NEW ORDER? Early in this new year, there is a lot of talk about bringing a new order. or-der. This new order seems to be some kind of regimented society socialism. In England, Mr. Winston Churchill tells his people, there will be something some-thing new that more people will have more privileges. Far be .it from this column to depreciate the prime minister. We might not agree with Churchill but we must admit that, whether It is his American blood or the British blood of one of the greatest of soldiers, sol-diers, the duke of Marlborough, Mr. Churchill is a force in the world. This is not intended to be a critique of war strategy. It Is a criticism of economic strategy. Do we have to remake our world on some sort of regimented pattern of human effort? ef-fort? The idea on which America was built was half Thomas Jefferson and half Adam Smith. Their greatest works came out in the same year 1776. We don't hear so much about Mr. Smith. We hear a lot about Mr. Jefferson. Both said the same thing in different ways. They said that if we release the energies of millions of people to invent in-vent their own fortune and future in their own way the human race will progress much faster than if we try to tell people from some central fort of knowledge and goodness how to be prosperous, free and happy. It is doubtless true that, in our more crowded communities, more regulation is necessary. But there is still no man sufficiently smart to be smart enough for all men. There has been no man since Jesus good enough for all men. What we need is to continue our trust In the mass of us. After all, what went before democracy was effort regimented regi-mented by some king or tyrant. There is nothing new in these new ideas. The question Is simply whether wheth-er regimented effort Is better than free effort What we have done In this country by free effort speaks for our system. The American formula of democracy democ-racy of leaving every man not only free but dependent on nothing but his own efforts is what our fathers thought would produce a maximum result for all people. "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves In three generations," means nothing more. Whether men are dependent on what their fathers have saved or whether they are dependent on a beneficent government which means on the rest of us the resuh is the same They simply are no' any good. |