The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1941-09-04
DEFENSE PLANNING LACK
IS HIT IN SURVEY MADE
OF PROGRAM TO DATE
Depression in Midst of Boom
Seen Result of Failure
to Face Realities

Excerpts from a series of articles
in the Washington ID. CO. Post. sur
veying the National Defense Program
and illustrating the confusion and in
efficiency with which it has been adj
ministered)
America needs munitions and
ships, In answer, it has a spending
boom with an appetite for copper,
steel, zinc, and brass every whit as
rapacious as the defense industry.
To get the guns and planes and
munitions, America needed military
planners to prepare the buying list;
industrial experts to mobilize the
worlds greatest most modern, most
efficient factory; a central economic
body to secure raw materials, ma
chimes, labor, management.
Instead, America got military
planners who started to prepare in
terms of a cavalry skirmish on the
Mexican border; industrial experts
who were looking out the window on
the job of getting supplies and COM
placently watching industry mobilize
itself for civilian production, not
guns; a military and economic high
command which consistently shot be-
hind a moving target, failing to
sketch the job to be done, failing to
delegate the authority to do it.
In this picture, the White House,
the Army, and the Office of Produc-
ton Management (along with it's
predecessor, the National Defense
Advisory Commission) have been like
a bad outfield
The ball was a high fly.
Each fielder screamed, yours"
The ball fell between them.
Ever since, each has been blaming
the other.
Of $5,880000,OOO appropriations
for new industrial facilities, which
themselves take one or two years to
build before they can produce the
items for a shooting war, contracts
have been issued for less than half
the amount.
We are not spending for defense at
the rate of three or four billions
month, as we must to achieve real
armament production to match the
Axis. Instead, we are spending less
than 000,000,000. And even this
rate was not achieved until June and
July, more than year after we
started.
Although there has been, indeed
much better civilian business than
ever before, considerable segment
of it is about to come to a sickening
halt-a depression in the midst of a
boom-with thousands of factories
made idle, millions of men out of
work
This impending depression is the
result of a slight oversight The
NDACOPM neglected to provide suf-
ficient raw materials for both $780,
000,000,000 civilian production and a
defense program of even small pro-
portions-at present only $9,000,-
100000.
The fact that 5000 or 5000 shut
down factories and one or two mil
lion jobless men will not be immedi-
ately put to work to step up a lag
ging defense output is the result of
another slight oversight The NDAC-
OPM neglected to plan for the con-
version of those factories and men to
armament work.
The failure to convertible failure
to even plan for conversions basic
The tone was set at the White
House, which for month after month,
through a slight oversight, failed to
face reality and let the Nation know
that the defense program was going
to hurt. 1t should be remembered that
the President of the United States is
commander in chief of production, as
we'll as Commander in Chief of the
Army and Navy
Instead of calling on existing great
factories to convert to military pro
duction, the defense agencies busily
helped industry build new plants and
acquire new machine tools.
To start the great bulk of defense
production from scratch, in new
plants, with new tools, was to do
things the long way when time was
desperately short, the insufficient
way when volume was to count.