The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE campaign undertaken by the military authorities to get National Service enacted before the invasion starts is doomed to fail. Both morale and production are in good shape on the eve of the death grapple with Hitler. Only if the Germans succeed in bogging down the invasion is there a chance of a successful effort to push a law through. National Service has degenerated into a fighting phrase, with all business organizations, labor unions, and farmer groups against it.

If the issue were to he forced, it would rock the country at a time when the country should be kept steady. President Roosevelt had such a prospect in mind when, in reply to a delegation which had urged him to press for enactment, he reputedly said that he could not possibly add National Service to his existing burdens. And certainly these are many and heavy enough.

The case for National Service has suffered from its advocates. The military men tried to dragoon the support of businessmen in a way that left businessmen even more stubborn in their opposition. Statements reiterating their stand came out of the very parleys which the military had called for the purpose of winning business support. It is the industrialists’ considered opinion that, in the present temper of labor and the farmers, production would suffer. The opinion, coming from such a source, is certainly entitled to respect.

Statements to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no overall difficulty about war production. This fact is shown by the figures of men engaged in making war material. The peak of employment was attained last November. Since then there has been a gradual falling off, the result of cutbacks in military orders. It is estimated that at the present rate the layoffs will be up a million by the year’s end. Such a situation certainly indicates no crisis in production. What bothers the military men is the existence of particular bottlenecks. But surely these can be remedied by machinery that already exists.

The businessmen’s testimony was countered by a statement on the extremist side signed by Messrs. Stimson, Knox, and Land. The military complained about the “alarming” rate of factory labor turnover. But it is necessary to examine the word “turnover” before subscribing to their point of view. Turnover is a composite of the layoff and the quit rate. Layoffs, to be sure, have gone up, but the quit rate has gone down, and men have been laid off as the result of military cutbacks. Turnover in these circumstances is involuntary.

As for the quit rate, this, though declining, is certainly not satisfactory (and absenteeism is most unsatisfactory). The military men say that out of every 1000 workers employed in February, 65 quit. The War Manpower Commission says the figure is 45, though even this figure is too high. But the quit rate cannot all be charged against labor, since the incidence of the draft and necessary shifts in employment both go into the quit rate. The sum is that the military themselves were unduly alarmist.

A new job after Hitler

Around Washington there has been a shortening of the estimates of the time it will take to polish off Japan after Hitler has been disposed of. The war in the Pacific is expected to be predominantly a navalair war; and if it is, there should be no shortage of men to fill the needs of our forces.

What the military are afraid of is the sharp increase of voluntary quitting after Hitler’s armistice. Such a fear is mentioned every time National Service is spoken of in military circles. Without a doubt the men in the factories will begin looking around for peacetime employment as soon as Hitler is licked.

This natural reaction can be regulated — for controls will remain in being: the War Production Board wall still have control over the allocation of materials, the Office of Price Administration over prices, the War Manpower Commission over employment, and the Office of War Mobilization over general economic activity.

Soldier versus civilian

Perhaps the major argument in favor of National Service is that it will equate the obligation of the fighting forces with the home front. This argument is entitled to respect. Secretary Stimson talks about the schism between military and civilian. Those who have talked to men back from the fronts know that he does not exaggerate. A bridge between the home and fighting fronts is badly needed. National Service, of course, would be the best bridge material, though it might not be sufficient at this late hour.

Did the President miss the bus after Pearl Harbor? If he had then applied the theory of total war, he would have proposed National Service, not to mention a really stiff tax program. And the country, stirred to the depths as seldom before in history, would have responded in the first and full flush of enthusiasm and patriotism. At the eleventh hour it cannot be done.

There ought to be among the fighting forces more understanding of what the home front has accomplished. If they don’t know the facts, Stalin does; it was to American production that he raised his glass at Teheran. It would have been well to publicize this episode everywhere. The way that our resources and our industrial genius have been mobilized in this war is a miracle that cannot be sufficiently related.

Our matéeriel — in general, of course, not in all items -cannot be excelled in weight and quality. There was truth as well as modesty in the comment of a Pacific aviator who was asked why we are so superior to the Japanese in the air. His brief reply was, “Our engines.” The achievement has been soft-pedaled because of the military fear of slowdowns and the military anxiety over particular bottlenecks. A bottleneck in even a tiny item can slow dowm a whole program.

The final manpower demands of the military were provoked by two new factors: (1) the speeding up of induction arising out of the inter-Allied decision to push up the ante of the American manpower contribution to invasion; (2) the realization that in the original military plans there was not a sufficient allowance of infantry.

Mr. Churchill says America and Britain will breach Hitler’s fortress on a 50-50 basis. That will be in the first attacks. The subsequent support will come mainly from America. The quotas have been fixed and no misunderstanding between Washington and London remains.

Some differences had to be ironed out even after Teheran. The British wished to give the air weapon a more extended test, and there was great anxiety on our side to open the second front, for political as well as military reasons. The need to keep to our schedule with Stalin is a paramount consideration in Washington. Never far from military minds is the desire to do nothing that might prejudice the prospect that one of these days Stalin will fight the Japanese. And the first requisite to gain this decision is clearly a second front on time.

Why we failed to be forehanded about the infantry must be left to the historian. Was there a fault in the War Department’s arithmetic? At any rate, the men had to be found, and found quickly.

Two decisions followed: (1) a decision to induct men under 26, regardless of occupation; (2) the axing of the Army Specialized Training Program.

Both of these events produced a swift reaction in the public mind. For the toning down of the under-26 decision, credit must be given to Manpower Chief McNutt. Mr. McNutt has had his just share of criticism as an administrator. But in this case he deserves credit for going to bat in keeping induction selective. It would have been the height of foolishness to put all men under 26 in uniform. Already there are many cases of young men who should have been left in key jobs vital to the war effort, let alone vital to community service after the war.

“College foxholes”

The axing of the ASTP left the country with a problem as serious as that of the colleges. The ASTP was a Presidential idea. It had two objects: first, in modern war brain as well as brawn must be mobilized; and second, we must see that essential professions are maintained for post-war community service. Accordingly, uniformed eighteen-year-olds of intellectual promise were sent to the colleges for higher education. Training these specialists had kept two hundred colleges busy.

Results even as reported from the fronts have been held to justify the experiment as a war measure. All of a sudden, however, it was virtually abandoned. It is said that these “college foxholes” were never popular with the ground forces, and when the demand for infantry was fully realized, there was no difficulty in bringing the War Department hierarchy around to the ground forces’ point of view.

Some of the work will be salvaged by a subsequent decision to enroll seventeen-year-olds for college training until they are of draft age. In some cases they may be allowed to finish their courses, but for all practical purposes the program is dead, though the university presidents are not fully persuaded yet that hope of resuscitation has vanished. They have issued a powerful statement calling for review. They contrast the care with which the British, who were as prodigal of their young talent in the last war as we are in this, have safeguarded and utilized their young, brilliant experts.

Two results are predicted in case remedial measures are rejected: (1) a very serious dearth of trained chemists, physicists, engineers, bacteriologists, and biologists; (2) a gap in standards of technological education which may not be closed for a whole generation. The Army so far remains stubborn, and the whisper is going the rounds in military circles that the college curriculum was boneheaded. The obvious retort is that it was established in deference to the requirements given the colleges by the War Department itself.

Is Dewey clear?

The pattern of the Presidential race is gradually appearing. Governor Dewey, with the retirement of Wendell Willkie and General MacArthur, is held to have no competition for the Republican nomination. All the mystery now relates to the Democratic nomination. Will the President run again? The doubts in Washington are mounting, with Mrs. Roosevelt thought to be adding her persuasion that the President take time out to look after his health.

Whatever the outcome, the lines of the Dewey campaign are clear. He has more or less adopted the foreign affairs policy of Wendell Willkie. Maladministration will be the leading Republican charge in connection with foreign as well as domestic affairs. Already the New Yorker has tilted with Secretary Hull on censorship.

But chiefly the emphasis of the Dewey campaign will be on the youth versus age issue. It will be said that the Roosevelt administration is tired as well as old. As to age, F.D.R. certainly has the oldest Cabinet in American history. Before the death of Secretary Knox, it had five septuagenarians. A Washington paper recently dug up, by way of contrast, the ages of the Republic’s first Cabinet. Here they are: Thomas Jefferson, 46; Alexander Hamilton, 32; Henry Knox, 39; Samuel Osgood, 41; Edward Randolph, 36. A telling contrast.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

The mood of the capital was affected for the better by General Omar Bradley’s reaction from the doleful invasion forecasts. Confidence is reposed in full measure in General Eisenhower. Beyond the war, the wonder grows whether we are not slipping into a sauve qui peut attitude on the part of the great powers. However, Secretary Hull and a Senate group have started work on a blueprint of world organization. Meanwhile most of the non-war activity in Washington, as in the other Allied capitals, is concerned with a struggle for position when the war is over.