Show dispelling THE FOG by charles michelson preparedness activities may be the chief concern of america today bt people must not get the idea that thai because of the imperativeness of national defense measurer the business of taking care of our domestic problems is being neglected indeed in many instances the two problems RO go hand in hand ev cry mile of new highway tor for adds to the speed and con vengence veni ence of possible military movement should the emergency bequir ing such mobility ever arise with will a broad continent that might demand M and the swiftest shifting shit ting of materials and men coast to const the roads that have been constructed as part of our public works and re employment program would have iad had to be rushed as part of the plan to make the united states ready for any contingency that might result from the course of the war abroad As it is they are better roads than could have been laid in a furious rush we ire are told that the experience n of f the european conflict has shown that it is possible for armies to move miles in a day as against the 12 miles a day that was the rule iule when the infantry really traveled on foot now they go by airplane pa ane in racing lorries tanks and other gasoline propelled vehicles and much of their artillery is pow pov ered where it used to be horse drawn so the surfaced roads are geared to a military purpose and are not merely elements in pleasure riding bus and van service airports and landing fields then there are arc the new and im improved airports all necessary conveniences in this flying age particularly in view of the vast airplane program that comprises so great a part of the preparedness proposals critics of the bave sought to make the country believe that the performance of th thi relief workers has rot not amounted co icicy talk about sweeping lears and publish cartoons of workers worker e ang on their shovels and that sort of thing according t to a recent report of col harrington head of the activities one seventh of all the highways roads and streets in the united states or more than miles have been built reconstructed reconstruct edor or improved b labor in four and a half years of operations during the same time these work ers on relief projects have built reconstructed or improved about a thousand airports ar a ports and landing fields with installation of tens of thousands of markers beacons and flood lights all of which while undertaken purely in the interest of civic aviation come into the total of measures for the protection of our country the same is true of hundreds reds of docks wharves and piers on the shores of waterways which were built or modernized by the men building young men then there are the camps while military aims were not in view in the establishment of these camps some two million young men have learned in then sanita tion discipline and the habits of group activities their physique has been built us their morale as been taken care of naturally the same steps that fitted them better for civil life have put them in prime shape to discharge whatever dl duty ity may devolve on them should the fall call be made to rally to the defense of the republic should that unwelcome necessity come upon us in short if as everybody hopes prep is all that win be required to prevent any nation or group of nations attempting to exploit the western hemisphere the C C C comps camps have built a beer bory 1 oi 01 youn t men into a great civic asset on the other hand we have now a corps that would be invaluable in 11 any emergency and that might have degenerated sadly had not the project taken them from the idle hopeless drifting population of the depression period incidentally there was activity of the not so spectacular as the ribbon like highways not so striking or noticeable as the I 1 now new airports but perhaps more use I 1 ful than either of these great achi leve ments that is the feeder roads among the tribulations of the farm er cr the dirt road by which he reach es cs the main highways and so on to his markets marke tse has been the worst ruts huts and boulders in summer chuck holes and mud in the win ter made the passage from innumerable farms to town an ordeal not 9 a few farms found themselves ab sol marooned by bad weather broken axle sand bogged down vehicles were commonplace troubles ithe got busy in correcting these people genc generally yally do not realize that about worth of work has been done every year in I 1 this direction by the men who were taken from relief rolls and giver jobs making the farm to ni market arket roads passable about the only time the average tourist speeding along on the great highways becomes conscious of what these secondary routes have become is when he is forced to t make a detour then he finds that instead of struggling along through underbrush tire cracking rocks and treacherous swamps he is moving on a decent pavement but the main are the farmers themselves I 1 have no statistics to show how much time is saved to them by better roads but the wear and tear on their tempers must be considerably lessened where the money went perhaps in this brief recital there imay may be the answer to the question so often repeated b y the G 0 P spokesmen pok esmen particularly by those os aspiring to the presidency what iwas was done with the money appropriated in the last seven years I 1 there is another angle to this ques 1 tion to listen to the minority party orators one might think that the american army was not only do de cimina ted but that both the army and navy were destitute of everything military forces need the fact i is that the army though legions short of what may be required is larger than it has been in twenty years and is botter better armed and e quipped while the navy is bigger and better than any peacetime peace time A merican marine force it must be remembered that the democratic administration not only had to modernize and build up but it had also to take up the slack due to 0 neglect by the throe three preceding administrations dating back to the disarmament conference in which we ive jettisoned jetti not only the program for the best navy in the world but actually sunk the most modern battleship of the time when it was 85 per cent complete it must be admitted that disarmament was popular at the time but that does not alter the fact that we had to make up for that sacrifice value for money received A favorite argument against the various recommendations by the president for improving and modernizing ern izing the army and navy establishment lish ment is that under his direction ion more than six billion dollars have been spent and that there was little to be shown for this outlay the critics did not mention that under the three preceding republican administrations the war forces of the united Stat states eshad had been systematically ati cally ignored it began back in president hardings disarmament conference when we abandoned a big navy program that would have hept bat w at the top we sunk about worth of ships among them the very latest and most pow erful battleship we had ever planned and then we went into the doldrums A large part of the expenditures tures at which they sneered was to make up for the previous neglect the roosevelt administration has constructed war ships it has tripled the number of navy planes and doubled the number cumbe of army planes it has given us tanks antiaircraft anti not aircraft guns and antitank anti tank guns none of which we had when the present administration came into power |