OCR Text |
Show 'WASHINGTON NgWS pro i FROM OUR CONGRESSMAN W. K. GRANGER Recently Major General George V. Strong.assistant chief of staff, appeared before an Executive session of the House and gave information concerning the strength of the Axis powers. This information infor-mation is now made public with relatively minor deletions for military security. General Strong praised the fighting qualities of I our armed forces and stresses the I fact that we have made material gains, and they do not in the least reflect anything but final victory. Therefore, the things he points out are the worst things that we might expect to meet. "It is true that a small portion of territory held by he Japanese in the South and Southwest Ta-ciflc Ta-ciflc hjs been wrested from iheir control. It is a fact that the Russians Rus-sians have retaken large portions of the territory captured by the Germans, but it is also a fact tnat more loan nan me territory taken by the Axis powers in their victorious advances in Africa Af-rica still remains in their hands, and there is no evidence that German military power has materially ma-terially decreased, and there is no sign the Japanese troops have lost any of their willingness to fight and die in defense of Japan in any remote outpost. In both the European and Asiatic Asi-atic theaters great forces of well-trained well-trained enemy troops, well led, well equipped, are ready to fight us. Germany dominate Europe. Eu-rope. She controls a population of some 325 million and draws upon practically the whole of Europe's industrial and economic resources. re-sources. She faces us with more I than 300 well trained divisions, j She has millions fo foreign work-1 work-1 ers in her war industries. riprmanv began total mobiliza- tion of her manpower before the war started. In June, 1939, there were 23 million persons engaged in war industries. Today there are 35 million. A complete pel-ture pel-ture of Germany's manpower j potential can be obtained only if the entire population under j German control, some 325 million mil-lion which gives an available labor la-bor supply of approximately 350 million, is considered as contribut-I contribut-I ing in some measure at least to the German war effort Last winter Germany lost 20 divisions in Russia and more recently re-cently lost 8 divisions in Africa. These 8 divisions have been replaced re-placed with new divisions armed with the latest arid most modern equipment. The 20 divisions lost in Russia have also been replaced. |