Show GENERAL ad HUGH S ajohnson I JOHNSON GULF STREAM ATTACK WASH washington this column Is as crazy as a at le least ast nine out of ten of the world shaking baking schemes that come in my mail daily but one out of a thousand d does oes have a little merit for example once a gent wrote me that ordinary chicken wire could stop adank a tank I 1 thought that was goofy but my college mate general wesson now chief of or ordnance d wrote me that the letter presented areal a real idea well this is my brainstorm so m many any people pull them on me I 1 ough to be entitled to at least one ever since I 1 was a kid I 1 have been told that the gulf stream Is a sort of hot water radiator system that is held away from most of our eastern coast by a cold wall of arctic water it is out there lust just the same from 40 to miles to seaward you can actually see it and know it from the encircling warmth when you enter it it veers across the atlan atlantic c ocean and is partly re responsible for the mild warm climate of the south c coast t of england and also of spain france ireland and scotland it if it could be deflected up our own and the canadian coasts it might give them the climate of the riviera and put most of mr hillers Hit lers conquests on ice the gulf gulf stream itself Is not very great but it carries a lot of tropical water with it icat at least on the surface it goes through a narrow passage between the bahamas and florida could any kind of engineering works there divert its flow exactly what makes the gulf stream act the way it does is not quite certain the rotation 0 of f the earth the configuration of the ocean floor prevailing winds and a lot of other unknown quantities are in the equation the engineering of hydrodynamics water in motion is largely empirical pir ical which means that it is governed by no predictable mathematical ca 1 formula the way water flows through a faucet or what happens when you stick a dyke out into an ocean current has to be determined by experiment no hydraulic engineer is wise enough to say with absolute assurance either that the guu gulf stream could or could not be diverted averted d in along our atlantic coast lan and daway away from mr hillers Hit lers europe the only dependable way to find out is to make a miniature model of the atlantic ocean and play with the water jn in it As a practical matter that is impossible but there have been many well informed speculations on this possibility nobody ever wanted or dared to go very far with them b because e in spite of our winter and rough weather we were getting along we well 11 enough and it was unthinkable to meditate on turning south europe into a labrador by a few clever engineering works off the florida coast it may not be so unthinkable tomorrow if our interventionists are correct mr hitler may soon have converted his cradle of our civilization into an abomination and threaten us with a similar fate he may have seized the british navy and enough french british Britis ti dutch danish swedish norwegian and belgian building capacity to make it hopeless for us to compete since he hesitates at no methods of destruction st however devastating why should we it if this particular method is by any chance remotely available it would never have to be used even herr hitler could not risk the of 0 halt half a continent As I 1 reread re read what I 1 have written it seems too grotesque to submit and yet I 1 have heard competent engineers toying with this jules vernes verne fantasy it certainly is not impe sible iu hi frantic search VA weapons that may be used against us I 1 wonder what a commission commissio n of expert hydra hydraulic illic engineers would say of this ode one for codr our defense maybe they would just say page orson wellesly Wel lesl 4 SELECTIVE DRAFT to beat dictators demo democracies democrat crac fes have bave jot got to show the power to xee e as clearl clearly yand and efficiently and be as willing to serve and sacrifice any of their potential enemies A case in point is the new selective service bul my fully 90 per cent 0 of f our people are ardently ln favor A t adequate defense there is a of opinion about just what that means but most people kno know w that it means a very large navy a great increase in our army large reserves of trained men and mountains of new equipment I 1 have heard few people who bew wew un unwilling willingto to accept the judgment ol of our military and naval experts as to type n umbers numbers and quantities needed thus far therefore democracy id working as well as any govern government meat but when it goes to methods tor for raising that army the welkin rings with every sort of coa fusion of counsel that defeats democracy c or drives it to dictatorship there are several provisions of tie the service bill that I 1 shinki can provo wrong in principle but in the main the bill is necessary and andi sufficient failure to enact it promptly may lead to something much worse one objection is that we can ret rely y on volunteering to get more than a million men |