Evening star., 1942-09-12
BY SAMUEL GRAFTON.

we no longer nave RUBBER Sltu-
alton to deal with. We now have a
rubber scandal. The Baruch Com
mittee tells how the Soviet Union
offered us the use of her rubber
experts last February. That offer
was never accepted, though the
Soviet Union has been making syn
thetic rubber in quantity for 10
years.
The obvious explanation would be
that the capitalists in Washington
had so little use for Communists
that they you'd not take rubber
data from them; wouldn't even ask
them for the time of day, so to
speak.
The explanation is less pat. Rus
sia makes rubber, but she makes it
from alcohol Our Washington
experts are violent partisians of the
use of petroleum.
And so some one in Washington
and we don't even know his name,
never took up the Russian offer, and
eight months have been wasted.
Bernard Baruch tells us that our
new rubber plants might now be
we'll on the way to completion If
the offer had been accepted. 1t
was turned down during the war for
freedom in order to make the world
safe for petroleum.
Wrong in Each Case.
Now this is so extraordinary a
fact that the mind shudders away
from it. 1t is even hard to put into
words. You can remark: That
man blew up war plant" and the
phrase is understandable, the crime
connoted, though horrid, can be
grasped. But when you say: Those
men held up our wartime rubber
program for eight months" the
mind is almost too stunned to react.
1t can only say something like;
"Ooooooo!" the dazed syllable with
which the human animal greets in
conceivable disaster.
You would know what to do with
man in a shabby coat who de-
stroyed one kettle in a rubber works.
In wartime we punish small crimes
and errors savagely, though sabo-
tage has never yet brought any
country to defeat.
Must we be helpless in the pres
ence of those great. big, quiet mis-
takes and solemn, silent, willful de-
cisions which really make the diff
ference between winning and los
ing war? Can't we detect danger
unless it goes bang?
Two years ago, our experts de-
cided against expanding our steel
capacity. A year ago, they de-
cided against converting the au-
tomobile industry for war. This
year they decided against using the
Russian rubber processes.
In each case they were wrong.
In each case the satellites of these
experts, the toothy school of edi-
torial writer's, backed them up. And
the net result (now that we have
the Baruch report to blow the can't
away is that the little man must
realize that this is really his war,
not only in the sense that he must
suffer in it, and fight it, but in the
even crueler sense that he must
understand it. The Baruch report
tells us that we cannot hire any,
body to understand our problems
for us.
Impartial Experts Myth.
The Baruch report, a report hv
laymen in the field of rubber, blows
up the myth of the impartial expert.
There Is no such man. The ex-
pert reads his data in the light of
his own past, and his own ambi-
tions, precisely as a legal expert
reads the Constitution in the light
OF what he already believes to be
| true.
And 1t is up to us, poor little us,
10 feel our way among experts, to
insist on what we want, as some
OF us insisted three years ago on
not selling oil to Japan, and two
years ago on producing more steel,
and year ago on converting the
auto industry to war.
Any member of Congress who had
dug into the rubber mess would
have known that the Russian Offer
had been rejected. I knew it six
weeks ago, and wrote about it, ano
who am l? Mr.. Bruce Bliven ex-