Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 10, Number 46, DeMotte, Jasper County, 3 October 1940 — GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Says: [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Says:

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Washington, D. C. ARMY AND BUS LINES In speaking to and with the National Association of Motor Bus Operators, I learned something to add to the many things I do not know. This country is now a gridiron of motor roads. A considerable part 3f its passengers and freight transportation moves over these roads in automotive vehicles. Whatever may be the fairness to the railroad networks of the low tax and roadbed costs to these competitors of theirs, this system is a very necessary part of our national machinery for transportation in both peace and war. Hitler has shown the necessity for the highest perfection in swift, motorized movements of army units. Our government has belatedly recognized it. We are getting ready to spend vast sums to motorize our army. Doubtless we sooi will be adding to our public highway system a new network of “strategic roads’’—feeder highways into areas that may be threatened and are not now well equipped for quick transportation of masses of men and supplies. Our new and only partly motorized army is writing a terrible record of delays and breakdowns due to halftrained drivers and repair and service departments. This is to be expected in any beginning, but it should be cured. • * * The record of experienced civilian bus and truck systems in economy, efficiency and maintenance shpws remarkable performance—averages of 75,000 to 100,000 miles of highways operation without mechanical delay. Recently, a motorized artillery battalion on a super-high-way averaged 16 miles per hour on a march of 135 miles—due to mechanical troubles. This is just one of dozens of recent examples. You can’t make an efficient motor fleet overnight. Our plans for a new swift-moving motorized army, capable of striking like lightning anywhere on either coast of our country, should be integrated closely with our splendid existing civilian system of motor transport. It would be foolish to attempt to parallel it completely for the army with another complete system of government-owned and operated motor vehicles. * • * General Marshall made clear recently that his plans do not contemplate a military motor fleet capable of carrying all his troops at one time. He suggested a “shuttle system’’ whereby the army motor transport is to take part of an army forward and then go back for the rest. If it only took half on a trip that would cut army speed by two-thirds. Why should there not be added to the plan, wherever possible, complete utilization in both peace and war of our splendid existing civilian motor transport system—not merely for carriage, but for maintenance of service? To do that requires experimental experience, while in an emergency all such transport would surely be suddenly commandeered and used in helterskelter fashion, it is as important to get a smoothly working operation by peacetime practice as it is to have experimental maneuvers with the National Guard. Is anything like that being done? On the contrary, because the quartermaster general of the army has a “joint military passenger agreement” with the railroads which is practically exclusive of the use of automotive transport, it is only in very rare cases that the civilian automotive systems can be used for the transportation of troops. One reason advanced by the quartermaster general for refusal to change that bone-headed senility is that the “joint military passenger agreements have been in effect between the railroads and the war and navy departments for over a quarter of a century.” So had the French military methods, which the German swift moving motorized attack smashed in a few weeks, been used for over a “quarter of a century.” This reason reveals the typical dry rot of the Crustacean bureaucracy which is so dangerous in this sw r iftly moving warlike world. * We must have our railroad network for military efficiency and you can’t keep it up without giving it business. But we also need our automotive network and we can’t reconcile that with a railroad monopoly. Something ought to be done about this tomorrow. • • • Gullion, Hershey ‘ldeal’ for Draft. General Gullion is to direct the selective service draft and Col. Lewis Hershey is to be his deputy. These are splendid choices. General Gullion, head of the legal department of the army, is a veteran of the World war draft. He knows every angle of its execution. There he worked first as head of its information and press relations sections. In that job he had to be expert bjpth in all the machinery of the draft and also in its bearing on the r public.