The Wilmington morning star., 1940-05-24
Editorial Comments
From Other Angles
THE NEED
New York Herald-Tribune

Inc war department ldDuldllOn OIL eAlSL-
ing equipment stocks in comparison with the
totals requested under the emergency program
shows something of the size Of the rearma-
ment problem so far as the ground troops are
concerned. The Army has but 141 modern
lied ISIS on hand, and is asking for ten times
as many. 1t has but twenty.eight light and
medium infantry tanks; it is asking for 92S,
And So on through the list. But even the
requested totals often seem almost ridlculously
small beside the giant forces which Hitler
has flung into the conquest of the world.
Fourteen hundred light field guns would be
swallowed up in a single corner of the vast
Flanders battlefield. Of the heavy tanks -
the thirty-ton monsters which have proved
the surprise and terror of the German ad.
vance-the War Department has none and
requests none.
The War Department list indicates some
thing of the size of the true task ahead; it
does not so clearly reveal its compleXity. This
equipment program may do as a starter. but
can it be any more than a starter? Is it not
already outdated in some respects by the les
sons Of the Flanders fighting? And just what
military function is the Army, under this
equipment program or any other that may be
adopted, being prepared to fulfill? Who is
a~nalyzing such questions and who has the au-
thority 20 give the answer?
The Presidents preparedness program as a
whole seems clearly pointed in the right direc-
ton. In laying the primary emphasis on a
great air force, asking that naval building be
maintained about as at present and recon-
mending only the elimination of the worst
equipment deficiencies for the Army at pres
ent, it accords in a general way both with the
lessons of the European fighting and our own
strategic position. But within these broad
d~irectives there lie concealed a host Of intri
cate issues of policy, organization and detail.
Granting that $4,000 planes is a satisfactory
strength for the air force, how quickly must
we plan to attain it? Priorities will soon be-
come a burning problem. Dc anti . aircraft
guns or automatic rifles come first, bombers
or pursuit ships, air troops or ground troops
or sea forces? How must the plans be modi-
fed to keep up with actual experience in
Europe? How heavily can we commit our
selves to one type of massed produced military
mechanism, or how long dare We wait to be
certain that another concept is not better?
"De1ense," the President himself said. 'can
not be static but must grow and change
from cay to day" BIT he has no agency to
conduct and control such a fluid policy. Two
separate service staffs, with a semi-autonomous
air corps cannot do it, unless they are welded
lnlO a single INSTRUMENT LOT WI dlu even
then the soldiers and sailors can err. as Euro
pean experience is showing, from conservation
or lack of imagination. Committees of Con-
gress, civilian industrialists, political critics
cannot do it; even the President, for all his
talents, cannot do it no one man can. AT
every point in the rearmament problem one
comes up against the imperative necessity for a
directing staff, enlisting the best military,
industrial, financial and administrative brains
in the country, as the foundation for any
military effort which can hope to confront
the kind of war machine into which Hitler has
forged his entire poole. The President also said:
Our security is not a matter of weapons
alone. The arm that yields them must be
strong, the eye that guides them clear, the
will that directs them indomitable. These are
the characteristics Of a free people.
willing to defend a way of life that is prec-
ious to Them
1t was moving rhetoric. Unfortunately, the
tortured fields of Flanders show it is the op-
posite of the truth. These are precisely the
characteristics that the free peoples cannot mani
fest in action-unless they receive the admins
trative organization and direction to make il
possible. 1t is the supreme responsibility to the
President to call such a staff into existence.