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Show ' which i-'.ds is right. In the meantime, mean-time, the United Nations high ' command continues 10 prepare lor a grand-scale invasion of Euroi If tha. invasion is to succeed, i they figure, at least a million ' spu'rbly-equipped righting men 'mii't be landed and there must i be another million in reserve, j This, when it happens, will be : the greatest military operation in j hist ry. j ECONOMIC I HIGHLIGHTS j i i National and International Problems Inseparable I National rationing of gasoline, as recommended by the Baruch committee, is not proposed because be-cause there is a shortage of motor mo-tor fuel. To the contrary, there is an abundance of gasoline of all ordinary grades, and in the producing areas the oil companies compan-ies are hard put for sotrage facilities. fa-cilities. Gasoline rationing is to be imposed, instead, to save rubber rub-ber and to save rail and water transporation facilities for other uses. At the present time, gasoline is rationed in 17 Eastern states. According to Leon Henderson, it will be extended to the balance of the country on precisely the same basis. That means that the average motorist will be entitled to four gallons weekly enough to carry him about 60 miles. Supplemental Sup-plemental allowances are given to "essential" drivers. Practically all nleallrp driving will he pliminnf airplane, vital as it is, can't win a war alone. Such persuasive friends of the plane as Major de Seversky are convinced that if the United Nations Na-tions could build and keep in operation enough planes, Germany Ger-many and Japan could be literally obliterated from the skies and that major land operations would thus be unnecessary. The fact that the airplane has not yet proven a decisive weapon means nothing in their opinion because no nation has as yet been able to keep up air attacks on the scale necessary. The majority of military experts don't go as far as this. They argue ar-gue that relatively few of the bombs dropped by planes ever hit important objectives, and that the damage done can, as a rule, be swiftly remedied. They point out that constant progress is being be-ing made in air defense such as camouflage, anti-aircraft guns and fighttr planes. They think that the airplane can do an all-important job in "softening up" an enemy and in disrupting his supply sup-ply lines but that it will be up to navies and armies to finish the job. No one can say with certainly ed for the duration. The effects of this will be felt most severely in the West. In the East, with great cities and heavily concentrated populations, the motor car . has not been nearly so necessary as it is in the West, where distances are vast and cities are few and far between. Furthermore, public transportation has naturally natur-ally attained a higher state of development in the big population areas. The street car and bus systems, sys-tems, outside of the largest cities, are simply no adequate to handle the load that has long been carried car-ried by private automobiles. Drastic restrictions on automobile automo-bile use will work a veritable revolution re-volution in this nation. West of the Mississippi, where distances are great and interurban transportation trans-portation limited, no one can estimate es-timate the effect of the slowdown slow-down that will occur. The motor car dominated our fashion of living ever since, the First World war. To millions of people, the family car is practically as necessary neces-sary as food and shelter. During the twenties and thirties, there was an ever-increasing migration away from towns and cities into suburbs. Men and women lived ten or twenty or more miles from their places of business. Just how these people will, get back and forth now that car operation is to be cut to the bone, is an unanswered un-answered question. It is impossible impos-sible for them to move closer to their jobs, for the reason that there are severe housing shortages all areas which have war industries indus-tries of any kind. The desirable solution to this problem is to produce enough artificial rubber to keep our cars moving. But it seems impossible to find out just how well or . badly the synthetic rubber program pro-gram is doing. The oil industry is making progress in the manufacture manu-facture of rubber from oil derivatives. deri-vatives. The tire companies say that they can produce tles from reclaimed rubber which will give fair service if driven slowly. A start is being made to produce another kind of synthetic rubber from grain alcohol. However, there seems little question but what the program in general is still moving too slowly and that is largely the fault of the government- No two high public officials of-ficials have been able to agree on just what should be done. As a result, it will probably be a long time before anything resembling re-sembling even an emergency supply sup-ply of rubber is available for civilians. Within the next year, without rubber, transportation problems will become acute. Tires are really beginning to weal- out in volume now, and more and more cars are going into dead storage for lack of rubber. This is going to hit farm production in a crit ical manner. Street car and bus companies are doing the best job possible, for the most part, but they simply haven' enough roll, ing sock to meet the need. Inter-urgan Inter-urgan transportation was abandoned aban-doned long ago in many parts of the country, and the tracks were torn up. We in America depend almost entirely on the motor car for short-haul transport. So the lack of rubber remains our Number Num-ber One domestic problem. The argument goes merrily on between the air-power enthusiasts and those who think that the - t'Jri---,-i",..,.i.-r".i;r.--i |