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Show military sense, are not closelv trolled n their general ora Ca tion and can be thrown into fusion and panic more readily t?"" a well-disciplined military fo , than 6.0CO miles from Moscc-v across the North Pole to Southern South-ern California. Army oficers never tire of expounding ex-pounding their own theories on the possible direction and intensity inten-sity of air attacks in the event of a shooting war. They are far from being of one mind. One of the opinions advanced during the large-scale war games in Texas and Louisiana, just concluded, con-cluded, was that, in light of the relations between Washington and Berlin, a declaration of war easily could be followed by a token bombing bomb-ing of New York or Washington from Greenland. Only fuel would be needed for en enemy's temporary base of operations. op-erations. Could not gasoline be deposited de-posited by air on Greenland's great ice cap? Whatever the possibility of air attacks, it is the task of the armed ' services to take preventive measures meas-ures well in advance of the emergency. emer-gency. The great New England-De-troit-Pitstburgh industrial triangle, trian-gle, vital to rearmament and in- dispensable to the prosecution of a war, must be protected from raiders' rai-ders' bombs. California's aircraft factories must work unmolested by enemy planes. The entire civilian population must be made to understand that vast air defense measures are being be-ing taken in its behalf. Apart from the purely military aspects of preparedness, the army's greatest concern, in contemplating the possibility of air raids, is panic pan-ic among the teeming millions of America's big cities. An Amercan Legion vesii pocket manual on air defense say, "the most vulnerable point for psychological psychol-ogical attack in time of national crisis is that . . . civil population, for civilians are less disciplined n defense this way: (a) the ability to obtain information on movements move-ments of hostile air threats, (b) the ability to attack these treats in the air, and (c) the simultaneous simul-taneous protectio nof sensitive areas ar-eas by adequate warning. To achieve that the army is setting set-ting up warning networks in the areas assigned to the four air forces for-ces in continental United States, establishing interception centers to dispatch planes to attack raiders rai-ders and, finally, collaborating in First Civilian Air Raid Training to Start They are called Paul Reveres 1941 style. A half a million of them, men and women, are being enlisted from coast to coast in a civilian army to constitute a warning net- I work against air raids if the Uni-ted Uni-ted States gets into a shooting I war. I arrangements to fight fires, care for dead and wounded, decontaminate decon-taminate gassed areas and perform multitudinous other services. In preparing for any contingency, contin-gency, the army must assume that the United States could be bombed. Bomber ranges 1 are lengthening. The army air forces already have an experimental plane, the Douglas Doug-las B-19, which can fly the Atlantic At-lantic and return non-stop. In the next few months the, navy will have a plane of equal range in service. The British have flown bombers, bomb-ers, with their racks empty, 7,-000-odd miles. The Russians have flown more Thousands of them will be in training under simulated wartime war-time conditions on the North At-latic At-latic seaboard for a week starting today. Other thousands will receive instruction in-struction in North and South Carolina Car-olina later in the month. They are, or will be, the civilian observer corps, patterned after that in England. On them will depend in part the prevention of fires in the nation's na-tion's vast forest lands, which could be set by incendiary bombs; the protection of vital factory districts dis-tricts from air raiders, nad the thwarting of panic in a civil population which, up to now, has been no closer at a bomb burst than what it has seen in the movies. mov-ies. Civil participation in air defense de-fense is at once the most intriguing, intrigu-ing, and yet the most unromantic aspect of the army's multi-billion dollar preparedness program. It is intriguing because ultimately it will employ not 500,000 but as many as tfice that number of common citizens. It is unromantic because it poses one of the toughest workaday work-aday problems the army has ever faced. Plans have progressed to the point where the army and coordinated coor-dinated agencies of the federal government are stipulating that only men volunteers are wanted as outpost observers. At "filter" and general information inform-ation centers, where in wartime reports on airplane movements would be digested and assessed to determine whether swift interceptor inter-ceptor planes should be dispatched dispatch-ed on defense missions, women are being asked to serve. Qnly in its conception is the plan for America's air defense simple. In its application it is almost as complex as a study of the fourth dimension or of the more lyrical aspects of human psychology. The army states adequate air |
