Milford chronicle., 1942-12-11
Milford, Friday, December liz 1912

offensive usually is followed by a
less spectacular but equally i'm
portant period devoted to what is
sometimes referred to in dispatches
as the consolidation of positions. "
This simply means that forces
which have been released to plunge
ahead, thereby losing some OF
their original conference, must
again be drawn together and sup
piled with the necessary tools for
continuing the advance.
Where the new drive gathers
great momentum, it may carry a
long way before this consolidation
take place. Periods of consolida-
ton often give the effect of rela-
tive inactivity; actually, they are
likely to be marked by efforts as
energetic as those which accom-
panied the initial attacks.
A somewhat similar situation
exists in wartime industry. In nor
NAL times the rise and fall of the
production curve is determined by
number of factors, chiefly con-
sumer demand. Since war is a
consumer of almost unlimited ca
pacity, war production ideally
should rise uniformly to meet
steadily increasing war demands,
but in fact this never happens.
There are periods of necessary con-
solidation and adjustment in the
industrial forces as we'll as in the
military. Furthermore, a chang
ing military situation is bound to
alter the character of industrial
output-we may find it's more i'm
portant at a certain time to launch
ships than to get out tanks, or that
a new type of fighter plane is more
Immediately needed than other
types.
And so, in order to keep our
mode of warfare and our civilian
war economy flexible enough to
meet unexpected requirements of
domestic and world strategy, a
great many wartime measures must
be labeled Subject to change"
War has always demanded flexi-
bility of mind. 1t was this quality
which enabled General George
Washington to swing his army
from New Jersey to Virginia, where
it could join Lafayette and the
French feet investing Yorktown,
and so win the Revolution. 1t is a
quality of vast importance in this
war, where new models of every
type and new devices of every sort
are constantly replacing older
forms of military equipment
sometimes with such rapidity that
by the time certain items reach the
battle fronts they are on the way to
becoming obsolete.
On the home front we have seen
many changes in the approach to
problems of adjusting civilian
economy to the needs of war, and
next year we may expect many
more. In transportation-one of
our chief "headaches"-we have
had to shift and extend policies in
order to meet the pressures grad
ually exerted against every part |
of the whole transportation sys-
TEN, freight and passenger. And
major part of the overall problems
has to do with saving rubber. The
rest of it is chiefly how to save
space, in buses, street cars, rail-
way coaches, freight trucks, and I
freight cars. We save rubber, or
space, or both by shipping fewer
goods, getting along with fewer de-
liveries, travelling less.
The terrific congestion in travel .
over Thanksgiving showed the alb
solute necessity of cutting down /
travel during the Christmas holi-
days. To ease the situation. Army |
furloughs between December 12 |
and January II will be granted to |
no more than 10 per cent of the /
enlisted strength of any camp. If
soldiers and their families are to
be deprived of holiday reunions. it
is obviously the duty of civilians
to cut out all unnecessary travel,
both local and long distance.
The whole purpose of gasoline
rationing is to keep as many autos
on the road as possible. A survey
showed that in the rationed areas
23 per cent of the motorists were
driving more than 40 miles an hour
on rural highways, while in sec
tions then unrationed, 81 per cent
were still Indifferent to rubber saw
ing. 1t is plain, therefore, that we
could not safely trust to voluntary
measures to conserve our precious
rubber stockpile, now being re-
duced at the rate of $4,000 tons a
month.
When we first entered the war