Imperial Valley press., 1942-10-14
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison


A little grumbling is beginning to
be heard in Washington to the eff
feet that the trouble with the
American war production effort.
the manpower situation and all the
other related war activities is that
there is no master plan. In other
words. no grand strategy.
The complaint runs that the
Army has simply asked for and is
letting contracts for limitless guam
ties of everything in sight, without
knowing whether they can be pro-
duced and alm9st without knowing
whether they will be needed.
That is a pretty serious charge
Army supply officers like to kiss
il of as a lot of malicious gossip
There is a master plan. they in
sist, an exact overall bill of re-
auirements which was made up i'm
December and January, after
Pearl Harbor. There is a plan
for 1912 and a plan for 1943, with
definite goals on every item.
There is even supposed to be one
for 1914.
The mere size of the program has
| been one handicap to confining its
specifications to paper. The
| changes in the war situation, nee
esSitating the making of brand new
| plans. have also made accurate
planning next to impossible. Diff
ficulties of making national in
ventcries cannot be ignored.
/ pt,f i,a nf oil fhacn
fectly good reasons why there is as
yet no master plan for grand
economic strategy, it is apparent
one difficulty is the fact that there
are too many sets of books in the
| government.
WHAT GOOD ARE FIGURES?
True, the Army Service CT Sup
ply may have very definite fig
ures on the quantities of every item
it would like to have. But what
good are those figures if there is
not enough steel in the whole
country to make those quantities?
Or what good is a bill CT require
ments if it calls for an expenditure
of more money than the entire ma
tional income?
The question then resolves itself
into whether the Army goals have
been set too high, whether "all-
out has been interpreted too lit
orally, resulting in the Oyer-prO-
duction of some item of military
supply, to the detriment of bal
anced war production which is
simply the production of the
right articles at the right time.
The easy Army answer that in
wartime it's impossible to have too
much of anything simply does not
make sense. n
Fortunately, Donald Nelson has
apparently not been fooled by any
such loose thinking. He declares
there are constant discussions with
the Army and Navy chiefs of staff
to make them adjust their de-
mands to what can be supplied.
Eight pairs of shoes for every
soldier in Egypt is reasonable, Tor
a pair of shoes wears out in two
weeks on the desert and it takes
two months to ship him new ones.
! There are always seven replace
ment pairs in the pipeline Else
where, four pairs per soldier is
enough and the demands can be
cut back to that figure. The same
principle applies to tanks, guns,
mess kits or corned Willie.
Beyond that point, the Army pc
sition on this master plan can not
| be stated. The grand strategy is
of course the secret of the top COM
mand and it is right that it should
remain so. One Army complaint is
that too many people know the
grand strategy already. Thus l.
nance officers and War Produc-
ton board transformers who feel
that to do their jobs effectively
they should know what the general
staff is thinking are left in the
lark, and a part of this grippe that
he Army has no master plan per-
naps stems from these civilian gov
arnment officials.
NO OVERALL LIST
Looking at this master plan
question from the WPB point of
view. however, it soon becomes ap-
parent that while the Army may
have its goals for every item of
supply, these totals are net the
figures on which the War Produc-
ion board can base its calculations,
for the WPB must cover not only
Army. but Navy Lend Lease, Una
d Nations and the minimum re-
7uirements for the American civil
ian population as well.
WPP spokesmen admit that
WPP does not yet have this over
all bill of requirements. II is
claimed that these totals are
raridIy being assembled through
the WIPE requirements commit
tee now headed by Ferdinand
Eberstadt.
Donald Nelson declares that Eb-
rstadt is making rapid progress in
he scheduling of prograr"i for
finished products, but the fact re-
oains that neither WPB nor any
its predecessors, SPAB. OPM or
YDAC, has eve; at any time had
my accurate idea of how much
If every material it was going to
axe to supply the Army.