Show GENERAL HUGH S 1 JOHNSON ahw niu washington D C WITCH HUNT has the witch hunt actually begun I 1 heard it but several letters and telegrams inform me that a conspicuous radio news commentator is warning the public to watch carefully members of the keep out of war committees because they are appeasers appease rs and are trying to make us afraid gen bob wood who was honored by congress for his work in helping to build the panama canal and brought back from an important post in france in the to spark the american war production efforts as quartermaster general is being put on the pan col charles lindbergh who brought home the greatest honors american aviation ever knew and who first jolted american and british complacency dy by revealing the tremendous hidden powers of german air armament is now under the wand of the professional witch finders even his lovely fearless quietly philosophical wife has taken a dirty dig or two from such professional breast beat ing as dorothy thomp ton on what goes on here most of the people who want to dress up uncle sam as something more canny than his old role ss as the worlds prize fat boy with the bag of candy in a world of dead end urchins were awake long before these tardy tom tom beaters witch doctors and sioux sun dancers were even aware that there was a vast sinister and growing danger in the world some of them had been hammering at the inexcusable indolence of england the equivocal horse trading of france and above all the spineless inactivity of america long before the cloud no bigger than a mans hand became a thunderhead and began to belch lightning an all of them are and have long been for all out defense of this country all are against hysterical dissipation of it who speaks tor for america they or their half crazed critics if they were so much more nearly right before maybe they are more nearly right now when they question whether we should rush headlong into a gun fight with our gun not even loaded and as a first act give away our guns our greatest lack right now is will rogers who said america never lost a war ol 01 or won a conference we can wonder what he would say about lets take the silly fool dollar mark from aid to britain from how many billions have we taken the silly fool dollar mark for foreigners it would be hard to say we took them off from the bill we footed for the last World war to a present total with interest of about 14 billions b illi ons 0 BIG FOUR O lt the fourman four man control of industrial mobilization consisting of the secretaries ret aries of war and navy mr knudsen and mr hillman may do some good but it is not as some have said the equivalent of the war industries dus tries board plan that worked in 1918 to provide the fastest re arma ment ever recorded by a great nation it violates an essential and basic principle of that plan it takes nothing from experience it is an experiment there are four great and insistent demands in time of war they are those of the army the navy the allies if any and greater than these and just as important the needs of civilian population heads of the army and navy are under heavy responsibilities for two of those needs with the best intention in the world it is only human nature for them to grab and fight each for their own to seek in extreme cases even monopoly control of all the best sources and supplies of material manufacturing storage and transportation por tation facilities power and labor that a guess that happened early in world war I 1 and continued to happen until it was stopped by the war industries board we are rushing into a program of production just as great to have that happen without any regulation is a very bad thing it creates unnecessary shortages to the great prejudice not only of all the people but the armament itself it unnecessarily essa rily tangles and disrupts the whole industrial machine it multiplies cost reduces speed and makes doubly difficult the eventual shift back to a peace economy for that reason and many others the director of mobilization should not have to work under the control of the army and navy as he must do if he is one of a committee of four in which a division of opinion would result either in a deadlock or a domination by the purchasing departments part ments our experience in the world war and the experience in every other country indicates that the director of mobilization should be independent ot of any statutory purchasing agencies it is his part of the job to ordinate coordinate co all purchasing programs with each other to prevent confusion delay waste and loss but that is only part of his job and not even the most important part the 0 ther other part is to operate cooperate co organize speed aid and supervise the whole industrial structure for maximum efficiency and production |