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Show WHAT THE SPEEDOMETER SAYS The speedometer on the .American pleasure car has been talking out loudly ever since Pearl Harbor. Those with keen ears have heard the warning tha this country was ignoring the fact that we were coasting on the assumption that some way we would be able to ride to Victory. Recently the President appointed a committee to investigate and clarify the rubber and gasoline situation. situa-tion. The results of this investigation has not been consoling or comforting. In fact it is apparent that unless drastic steps are taken our economy may be disrupted through a stagnation in motor transportation. transporta-tion. j According to Leon Henderson, OPA director we are traveling a billion miles each day which is classified classi-fied as unnecessary driving. This is the equvalent of two hundred thousand recapped tres. The ration boards throughout the country are issuing twenty thousand recap orders each day. This means that we aren't even keeping up with a fraction of our pleasure riding. Mr. Henderson, in a Sunday nation-wide address asked all motorists to voluntarily limit themselves to .the provisions imposed by gasoline rationing in the seventeen eastern seaboard states, which is an average of 240 miles a month.- This voluntary action is to be in effect only until machinery for nation-wide rationing ration-ing can be set up. Probably one of the diffculties, the average American Amer-ican citizen is having is to distinguished between this and the last world conflict. During the last war many of the sources of supply were never in hostile hands. Further the first war did not have the area scope that this gigantic struggle has attained. This is a vastly different war than history has ever recorded. Mechanical superiority must be achieved in the quickest possible time in order to bring the war to an early end with the least human sacrifice. Tanks, airplanes, ships and guns in an ever increasing number must be provided. The conserving of rubber and gasoline may well be the beginning of the sacrifices we are asked to make. It is true that the average 240 miles a month puts the question up to the owner: How valuable is my car now? But then the question of how valuable everything one owns would be in case of defeat is another thing to think over. Cache Valley motorists, like other Cache Valley folks, have not yet awakened to the full impact of this war. Fortunately for us we live in a comparatively compara-tively safe area and the likelihood of devastation here is remote, while we are the strong nation we have always al-ways been. We should, however, realize that our security se-curity is possible only through our national strength and m these days of force and power politics we are safe only so long as we "have air, sea and military superiority over the foes of freedom. It should be easy to cut down our driving to become a partner of the boys Over There. |