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Show General HUGH S. fej Johnson 'M Jour: aaaxJhAaKSUl Uolud FMn f VSV Scnfca Washington, D. C. 'SHORT OF WAR' On the most debated questions in the public's mind, the President's speech on the state of the Union didn't say much that he has not said before. It is far more significant in what it did not say. One thing it did not say were the words "short of war" in promising aid. Many of our most belligerent unofficial armchair arm-chair strategists who also began advocating ad-vocating aid but stressing "short of war" have now also dropped that qualification, and some want war right now. The President followed these only in dropping the words "short of war," which 'he was so careful to include in his campaign speeches. Nevertheless, he did indicate that definitions of "acts of war" in international in-ternational law are "out" so far as he is concerned, since the Axis Powers Pow-ers have disregarded these laws. In this he is probably right, but most of the opposition to his proposals has not rested on purely technical acts of war, which are not physically physical-ly acts of warlike aggression like trading the destroyers. They have questioned our taking physically offensive of-fensive action in foreign waters that would automatically engage us in war like crashing a blockade with a naval convoy. On the whole list of questions in this category, the message is resoundingly re-soundingly silent. Are we to repeal the Johnson act forbidding loans of money to defaulting nations, or the Neutrality act which keeps our shipping ship-ping and our people out of danger zones? Are we to permit shipments of contraband of war in American vessels or convoy shipments to belligerents bel-ligerents with the implied threat of naval action against any belligerent blockade of them? All that part of the message, its silences as well as these suggestions, remain to be cleared up. With its main part, all-out and greatly speeded speed-ed arms production and defense, the whole country will follow him. Some of it has been ahead of him for years. It is just possible that the unexpected obscurity of the other part is a matter of necessary or prudent timing controlled by something some-thing that is happening or intended intend-ed abroad, and which Harry Hopkins Hop-kins is going over to explore. On j the main questions of immediate policy we must wait and see. The message is not revealing. j I MONETARY REFORM Nothing more necessary and con- ! structive than the Federal Reserve I anti-inflation recommendations has come out of government in a long time and nothing more hopeful than the President's apparent acceptance ac-ceptance of them at least in part. Early in his first administration. ! Mr. Roosevelt was "sold" a cluster of schemes to increase deflated prices by monkeying with money, debasing the nation's currency. Among them was the authority granted to the President to debase the value of the dollar by buying gold and paying for it as much as twice as much as it is worth, and j to buy silver also for much more than it is worth and issue dollars against that phony price at a still i higher figure. Another, more difficult dif-ficult to explain, was the plan and practice of spending billions more money than government had, paying for it by bonds sold to the banks 'rather than to individuals) and letting let-ting the banks pay for the bonds simply by crediting government j with the price of the bonds. Without going into too much detail, the tend-j tend-j ency of this is exactly the same as printingbales of irredeemable money j unless some limit is put on the bank's power to use this swiftly in- creasing mountain of credit exactly I as though it were actually money deposited by their customers from their earnings or sale of goods. It expanded the amount of "bank" money to fantastical heights just as printing truck loads of flat paper money expands the currency. The effect of either kind of expansion will sooner or later be to make the people afraid of the value of money and start an upward spiral of prices or downward spiral of the value of money, which is the same thing and both are "inflation." Briefly, the Federal Rcservo recommends rec-ommends putting a limit or a complete com-plete stop to all these authorities and practices and also to put a limit to the amount of our vast gold hoard that can be used as a basis for further fur-ther increases in the volume of either bank or actual money. None of these authorities was used In full and none actually produced the real inflationary effects for which nil vere designed, but the danger of those effects exists. It never has been controlled before be-fore but it rnu.';t be controlled this lime. If it isn't, it will double or treble the costs of living, of government govern-ment and of war Itself. If that Is permitted to happen. In view of the tremendous debt we have and the even greater expense we face, it I could possibly bankrupt this nation and it certainly would inerease ihe burdens on our long pufTeriru; people 1o the breaking point. What is at stake here Is n matter of scores of billions of dollars, perhaps per-haps more than the cost of two or three world wrirs, |