Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 7, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 January 1941 — GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Says: [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Says:

I’fiiMd Folium tNU Vrrico

Washington, D. C. ARMS PRODUCTION Our snail’s pace arms production doesn’t need any declaration of an emergency or new legislation to speed it up. It needs just one thing, authorized and responsible management and leadership in the government itself. That seems so plain as not to need argument. Even a very small industrial effort needs that. Nobody would drehm of starting one without that. Mr. Knudsen says that the public is “sold’’ to the necessity for speed and production, but that industry and labor are asleep. Almost at the moment he was saying that, another member of the rearmament advisory overhead, Mr. Nelson, was tolling us that the trouble is that the public is apathetic, asleep. This is not to criticize these gentlemen. They haye done marvelous jobs of making without straw such bricks as we have 'manufactured. Tiie “straw’’ that management of a great effort needs is authority. They haven’t got it. But did anybody ever hear of any determined effort on their fcart tp get it? It is well known that there has been' none. In the absence of such an effort, perhaps we should look twice at these indictments of the public, of labor and of industry—especially When pne of these authorities says that the public is to blame while the other feels that the public attitude is satisfactory but that industry and labor are the goats. Whenever a man, or a group of linen, step into the driver’s seat, t .ere is only one goat when the-bus doesn’t run. It is the man at the irois. If he didn’t get the right line or has accepted a faulty • ! era tor, it doesn’t lie in Insmouth to blame either the passengers or the rest of the crew. Mr. Knudsen is right about the public attitude. The public has been far ahead of government for defense from the very start, ahead of both congress and the executive department. It balked at nothing. It is ready for any sacrifice. ? As for labor and industry, they are the public, Their response at such a time depends entirely upon government leadership of them. are b p lead, swing and heel horses of this team. They can haul the load d-1 every ounce of their weight Son the traces. But they can’t set it he pace and direction without a guiding intelligence and inspiration ta* spark the effort. There is no hanging back on the industrial side. T 'is never been more willing'and eager since World War I. The solution of our problem n’t vreside in wqrds and gestures . i laws and new, strange and unAmerican devices. It resides in work and common sense and competent leadership. + + ♦ TERRIBLE URGENCY ** Just now, in the highly successful ' p-herding process of forming m* re or . less panicky public opin-. :• n, there are three principal shibdmieths or sloganeered conclusions floating about Washington:, o first is*a sort of hushed whisthat the next 120 days will decide the fate of the world, including ours. This is the “terrible urgency’’ mystery and out of it grows a second that we should begin financing the British Empire over this short! crisis by gift or loan, secured or otherwise to the extent of about $2,000,000,000. A third, somew r hat inconsistently, is that this is a struggle to an absolute knockout between Hitlerism and democracy, that we must get into it with force of arms, and that it must go on until one or the other ’ is wiped completely off the slate. No matter which of these conclusions or any variation or opposition of them is held, there seems to be i difference of opinion whatever that we must get our industry into on all-out, high speed war production immediately and that we are g it. So let’s skip that. We ought to take a long look, however, at this proposal to finance the British Empire, We can’t reach a decision on the basis of any 120-day crisis or any $2,000,000,000 estimate. Britain has plenty of resources here to get all that we shall have to give for many times 120 da5 r s. -If this is to be a long war to the destruction of Hitler on the continent and we now concede the amount of interest or obligation necessary to warrant financing this phase of it up to $2,000,000,000, we are hooked—inextricably involved. There is and there can be no limit on the billions we must spend. When you get into a war, you don’t count costs. That isn’t all. Helping by supplies to enable England to resist invasion, to maintain the British fleet and shut Hitler up on the Continent of Europe, as Napoleon was blockaded, is one thing—largely a matter of maintaining naval and air supremacy. Invading Europe and destroying Hitler is quite another thing. He has a superior army with all the equipment accumulated during years of Napoleon blew up through interior revolt but, compared with the grip that Hitler has taken on his conquests, Napoleon was a sissybritches.