The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-06-07

ElasMm A duction M c n .
 " @ agement, And that added to the British reverses of the past month, makes for . sore " state of affairs and mind It will take real leadership to pull q people, out of Q blue funk of this kind, At the risk of being repetitious let 1t be said again that this Is c Job of selling the country on the seriousness of the present situation. The mere fact that these general reports about how defense has boz. ged down can get into circulation is evidence that the selling job has not been to well done thus far.
 To date, the only possible excuse for failure to exercise more direct leadership sooner may have been . fear that the country had to be led up to defense consciousness gradu- ally, that all-out defense could not be sold ahead of the capitalization of public opinion to support 1t.
 If that Is true, then announce. ment of plans for joy.rideless sun- days and the threat of Puritan week ends without gaS for the kitchen stove, light for the sink or power for the vacuum cleaner will accom-. plish as much as waking people up to what's going on as 1t will in con- serving resources,
 GOSSIP IS
 THE MENACE
 What hurts the defense effort as much as anything else Is the spread- Ing of pure gossip-if gossip Is ever pure-about everything from the Presidents hidden motives to the current rates of incubation on baby tanks or the wailing of lone con- gressmen on the deficiencies of the cir service.
 M would have been great, of course, if the White House, the army and the navy chiefs could have had plans for everything that would outsmart Hitler. Yet you can bet your boots that if the armed services had come to Congress two years ago, requesting only $i0 mil- lion for research on parachute troops, the screams would have reached to heaven. Expansion of airports had to he disguised as Q WpA project to get consideration. Certainly, if any department of government has missed the boat on defense, 1t has been Congress.
 The army did have It's ideas for mobilization the famous M.dAy plans, It had It's industrial survey on how the country's productive capa- city could be turned to defense. It also had plans for tanks and bomh- CTS. Practically ell of this planning had to he scrapped . year or 50 ago because war in Europe taught new lessons.
 And because 1t stopped to bring It's equipment up to date instead of going full speed ahead on the pro- duction of old models, the army Is taking It's terrific crosstlre of criti- cism today.
 TAKE THAT
 MEDIUM TANK
 One typical litle example of the way these runners are used is in connection with the tank program. The fact that the medium tank was completely redesigned In every de- tail except the running gear Is gen. erally overlooked. New factories had to be built from the ground up to make these 26-tonners, and produc. ton was further delayed to give preference to more-needed planes, Yet when one pilot model tank rolled off teh assembly line a few weeks ago. the rumor went around that 1t was phony, that 1t had been assembled ct Rock Island ar. senal and trundled to Detroit, just for show.
 The fact is that parts of that tank were made in Rock Island, just as the same parts of all suc- ceeding tanks will be made in Rock Island and shipped to Detroit for assembly. This one tank was plain ly indicated as Q pilot model, to test the still uncompleted factory.
 It had never been figured that any tanks could be produced in quantity before October. Over 1900 plants had to get going. Some ESQ., 900 workers had to be trained for aircraft production, and S00,000 for shipbuilding.
 It Is a characteristic of the Amer ican people that when they want something they want it in a hurry. That applies particularly now to production for defense. What IS gen- orally forgotten Is that when Hitler started to prepare Germany, he adopted a four-year plan. He was from 1883 to 1887 getting ready.