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Show GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Jour: faturn Jr 'NV Sms AS TO PERSHING'S SUGGESTION NEW YORK. General Pershing says that we ought to sell 50 "obsolete" "obso-lete" destroyers to England to save our own country from Germany. On the same subject George Fielding Eliot says: "The question which we have to ask ourselves is a plain one. It ought not to be befuddled by such non-essentials as whether the transfer trans-fer of destroyers to Great Britain would or would not be 'an act of war'. It would be of course, but that is only an academic question . . . The legal definitions of international interna-tional conduct. . . are now obsolete." It seems that everything is now obsolete as far as it suits the purpose pur-pose of those who are hell-bent on getting this country into a war for which it is completely unprepared. The destroyers are "obsolete." Our own engagements in treaties and conventions and the things we have always stood and sometimes fought for are, in international law, "obsolete." "ob-solete." As to the destroyers being "obsolete": "obso-lete": If they are, how does it happen, hap-pen, as men of this opinion intimate or argue, that the battle of Britain, the fate of the world's freedom and the safety of our own country depend de-pend upon sending them to Britain? As an American officer said when it was being argued that we ought also to send over a million "obsolete" "obso-lete" Springfield rifles, "No rifle is obsolete that will kill a man with an aimed shot at 1,500 yards especially espe-cially when you have nothing with which to replace it." A ship doesn't necessarily become "obsolete" or "surplus" simply because be-cause it is 16 years old. Nobody has shown this more clearly and honestly than Major Eliot. I don't know his qualifications qualifica-tions as a naval expert, but applying apply-ing well known published naval standards and opinions as to the proper ratio of destroyers to battleships, battle-ships, Major Eliot showed that practically prac-tically none of these destroyers is surplus or can be taken without stripping our own navy. They are no more "surplus" than "obsolete." Just as a sidelight, most of them are armed with four-inch and three-inch three-inch guns, as well as with antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns. Except for World war 75 mm. artillery (about three-inch), three-inch), cannon of higher caliber and anti-aircraft guns are what we do not have, what we most need and what we have the least prospect of getting quickly. In Mr. Knudsen's last progress report as published, "bottle-neck" items of procurement were discussed dis-cussed as well as those in which there were no bottle-necks. But he didn't mention cannon. He probably proba-bly didn't mention them because the trouble there isn't just a bottle-neck. It's a needle's eye and a flock of camels. Major Eliot is very frank and very accurate in calling the shipment of destroyers an "act of war." It is war itself. But it is vicarious war undercover war. The kind of war we have always condemned and pledged ourselves not to wage. The weakness of this position seems to me to be this: Our policy always has been not to be aggressors in any war. We fight only when we are attacked or threatened. These war minded men are put in the position of having to say, and they do say, that we are so threatened threat-ened now to the death. If that is not true, then we ought not to go to war even to this blind-pig, bootleg war. If it is true, then we ought to go to war tomorrow with everything every-thing we have. In a fight to a knockout you can't "hit soft." LINDBERGH AND PERSHING You can get a sample taste of what "can happen here" from the debate in the senate blasting Charles Lindbergh's speech. Three New Deal senators, than whom there are none whicher, danced around the torture stake: Minton, Pepper and with deep blushes for my own home state of Oklahoma that ineffable cx-teacher of elocution and Desarte, Josh Lee. These gentlemen offered to disembowel dis-embowel Lindbergh for saying that if we are going to do business at all after this war is over, we will have to do it with both victor and vanquished, even if the victor is Germany, Ger-many, that we shall have to reconcile recon-cile ourselves to this idea and that it would be wise to try to intercede to stop this war before it destroys any more of civilization. Some journals imply that Lindbergh's Lind-bergh's speech had been ghost-written by Nazis and contrasted it with General Pershing's urging that we send part of our navy 50 destroyers destroy-ers into this war by the subterfuge of "selling" them. I disagree with part of what Lindbergh Lind-bergh said, but the man who denies his right- to say it as being un-American un-American convicts himself thereby of an un-American state of mind out-Hitlering out-Hitlering Hitler. Black Jack at 80 is still one .of the world's great soldiers, but he knows as little naval strategy as I. George Eliot unconsciously "obso-leted" "obso-leted" his text at the moment of its utterance. However, it may later be dragooned by the apostate Knox. I happen to know that the navy doesn't agree with General Pershing. |
