Evening star., 1940-11-02
Text Of We Address Blaming New Deal for Lag Plane Outpu
ny the Associated Press.

~ the Associated Press.
ABOARD WTLLKIE TRAIN IN
JERSEY, Nop. 2.-FolloUfng Is
the prepared tert OF a radio talk
last night by Wendell Willkie,
Republican presidential c1ndt-
date, from his special campaign
train:
For several weeks have been
campaigning across the country
preaching the doctrine Of pro-
duction. I have tried to show
that industrial and agricultural
production is the foundation of
national defense as well as Of do
mestic prosperity.
The third-term candidate, in
his speech at Boston, finally ate
his own words and admitted that
expanding production is essen
tial. In that speech he dis
cussed, among other things, the
question of military airplanes.
And this is what he said:
What counts most in sus-
tanned air power is the produc-
tive capacity of our airplane fac
tories"
And he went on to say that
the productive capacity of the
United States will make us the
strongest air power in the world"
The Record Will Show When
This Rapid Progress Began.
But he has come to it fear
fully late. And even now he
does not seem to know the diff
ference between production on
hand and production that Is just
on order. The third-term can
didate in that speech repeated
his promise to attain a produc-
ton capacity of $4,000 planes a
year in the United States, and
he said:
DAY and night we are work.
ing and making rapid progress
toward that goal" That sounds
good. But let's look into the
record to see just when we began
to make this rapid progress and
see how far we are getting.
But it's very late. Years ago
Spain was used as a proving
ground for the bombing and fight
planes of the dictators. Whole
towns were wiped out by the Nazi
bombers to test the power of
modern war planes. The lessons
Of Spain and of the Far East i'm
pressed our War Department. In
June. 1887, Secretary of War
Woodring. in his annual report to
the President warned us of the
need for strengthening our air
forces. He said:
ut should be borne In mind
that modern aircraft cannot be
quickly improvised. The con-
struction of airplanes necessarily
takes considerable time. Hence
our peace-time strength should
approximate rather closely our
requirements in war"
That was more than three
years ago. Yet the third-term
candidate in a special message to
Congress in January, 1899, had
this to say:
mo responsible officer advo-
Gates the building up of an air
force to the total Of planes on
hand or of productive capacity
equal to the forces of certain
other nations"
Statement Came Four
Months After Munich.
Note that he said not merely
that we didn't need the planes
on hand, but that we did not need
the productive capacity.
That was four months after
Munich. Nine months later, Po-
land was blasted into surrender
by Hitler's air force. Yet 1t was
not until May 16, 1910, almost
eight months after the surrender
of Poland, that the New Deal
administration woke up to the
fact that the United States had
only a few hundred fighting
planes. incidentally, none of
those planes was up to the stand
ard of the war in the air that
was raging in Europe. Not one
of them had self-sealing fuel
tanks, armor or sufficiently heavy
fire power.
But at that late date, the