Evening star., 1942-06-26
Congressional Critics

SUIISTSSSIO0Ot SIICICS
In defending the report of the
House Military Affairs Committee.
which was highly critical Of some
phases of our war program, Chair
man May said to his colleagues: If
the time has come when a congress
sional committee can't come out and
criticize people who are entitled to
criticism, we ought to adjourn"
That statement, as far as it goes. is
entirely correct. Certainly, congress
Sional committees not only can, but
should, indulge in criticism where
criticism is justified. but the difficulty
in this instance is that the commit
tees complaints are not directed at
the people, or at all of the people,
who are entitled to criticism"
The critical sections of the report
are directed to the Maritime Com
mission, the War Production Board,
the War Department and, in par
ticular, the Army Air Corps. The
burden of the complaint is that these
agencies have been guilty Of wide
spread and ineXcuSable waste of pub
lie funds amounting to millions of
dollars There Is no doubt that
there has been a great deal of waste,
and it may very we'll be that the off,
cials OF the agencies in question are
in part responsible. But the story
does not end there, and the report
is deficient in that it fails to dig
down to the basic causes for this
waste and inefficiency
At one point. the report recognized
the fact that too much emphasis
was placed for the last few years on
social reforms rather than national
security and conceded that Con-
greSS, the administration and the
public must accept responsibility for
this shortcoming But this phase of
the matter. fundamentally important
though 1t Is, was CLOSED over in the
committees statement.
The incontestable truth, however,
Is that the deplorable waste Of re-
cent months is directly attributable
to our failure to provide adequately
for national defense In the years
when our military strength could
have been built up in orderly fash
ion. This was not the fault of the
War Department., for all of the armed
services, year after year, pleaded
earnestly for funds which were de-
MED them. The responsibility rests
with the people. the administration
and the Congress, including a num-
ber Of those representatives who
voted in favor of the critical report.
Throughout the years when the war
clouds were gathering, and when we
might have been building up the
Army and Navy on a rational and
relatively inexpensive basis, we were
unwilling to spend the necessary
funds for military purposes. Too
many of us preferred to believe that
war would not come to America, and
that, therefore, there was no reason
to spend large sums on armament.
AS a result of this policy, and when
we finally realized that war prob
ably was inevitable, we were faced
with the problem of building a mill
tary organization from the ground up
almost overnight. The emphasis was
on speed and more speed. And speed,
of course, means waste. 1t was the
pressure of time which gave birth to
the cost-plus contracts, which were
denounced so strongly in the COM
mittee report. But the blame should
not have been placed on officials of
the War Department or the War
Production Board. 1t was their re-
sponsibility to do a job in a matter
of months which should have re-
quired years, and the one thing they
could not afford to do was to fail.
Certainly, they have gotten results.
The one clear lesson that all of us
should learn from this experience is
the futility of adopting a penny
wise and pound foolish policy in
matters of this kind. If that lesson
is learned and remembered in the
future, the waste of which the COM
mittee complains will not have to be
written of as q total loss.