Evening star., 1933-04-18
Scrapping the Army,

Secretary Of War Den has received
the Budget Bureaus orders. transmitted
through the White House. and has in
dicated that while the proposed cuts
in the War Departments 1884 expendi-
lures would deal drastic blow to the
Army, "orders is orders" and his de-
partment will do the best it can If the
proposed reductions are essential.
The second phase Of the Budget Bu-
reaus attack on the Army followed.
Gen. Douglas Macarthur and other War
Department officials went into pro-
longed conference with the civilian
heads Of the Budget Bureau to discuss
the extent Of the cuts and when and
where they might be made. The details
will not be known for some time. But
what they mean generally can be un-
derstood by the fact that the next years
appropriations have already been cut
by more than 100000, 900 under the
current years appropriations for the
War Department. and the Budget Bu-
reau now seeks to take away $l44, ,000,-
900 additional. In other words, Con-
greSs allowed the War Department
S467, ,458 900 for 1898. For 1884 Con-
gress cut that allotment to s349, $40, ,749
The Budget Bureau now asks that this
S349, ,840,749 be reduced by s144, 900, 900,
or to s205 ,84o,7 TAG. which is less than
half the appropriation for 1888.
How these cuts can be made without
putting the Army out of business is the
task that has been handed to the mill
tary authorities. They probably mean
the retirement of from two to three
thousand officers, the retirement or dis
missal of from twelve to thirteen
thousand enlisted men, abandonment of
most of the river and harbor work,
elimination for the time being of citi-
zens' military training camps, Reserve
officers training camps, reduction by
more than half Of National Guard
training expenses, which probably
means elimination Of Summer camps
and severe curtailment of drill periods;
abandonment of some Army posts, re-
ductims in purchase of materiel and
cuts In allowances for transportation.
Taken together, the proposed reduc-
tions in strictly military activities,
amounting to about s90,000,00O means
that in land disarmament this country
proposes to go further than anybody
ever dreamed Of going and Is as will
ing to scrap the military machine, with
out international agreements, as it was
willing to scrap battleships with inter-
national agreements.
Nor is the amount of the reductions
less interesting than the method Of
making them. As in the case OF other
proposed curtailments, the objective
sought is a horizontal cut to an arbi-
trary figure. The sacrifices necessary
to achieve this reduction are Of sec
ondary importance and are, apparently,
outside the scope of Budget Bureau
considerations. The task Of the pro-.
fessional military men is no longer to
build a military machine adequate to
meet the demands of national defense,
but to take the jig-saw puzzle fragments
left after the Budget Bureaus saving
and to find out what the resulting pic
ture will look like.
That it will jar all preconceived no
tions of national defense is beyond
doubt. And it is question whether
the newly-acquired sanctity of Budget
Bureau recommendations should serve
to prevent general understanding of the
full effect of the Budget proposals upon
the Army and national defense. There
can be no such understanding until it is
made known what retrenchment steps
must be taken and what new policies
are thus established to come within the
limits laid down by the Budget Bureau,
whose official personnel at the moment
is concerned merely with figures.