The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1943-06-29
ROBINSON cRUsoE's GOLD

about winning or losing the war, and some
of the queerest, as Key Westers who listen
to the radio know, come in to us over the air.
Sunday, for instance, an American who
is an authority on Oriental matters, won
dered if we would be able to continue the
tempo of the air raids over Europe He said
that Germany was forced to abandon her
about warfare in the air on England be-
cause of the vast cost in men, money and
material and he intimated that Germany
and Italy think the Allies will be forced to
decrease the intensity of their raids for sim
liar reasons.
He cited the cost of big air raid in
SO many gallons of gasoline at so many dol
lars, the loss of so many planes at so many
more dollars and then gave the number of
flyers who either lose their lives or are cap
tured.
Of the three things he mentioned the
one that concerns us chiefly is the loss of
precious lives-lives just as precious to the
men who lose them as is our own. As to
money, in the final analysis, it is of minor
consequence. 1t is like the seat in a Ferris
wheel that returns to the place from which
it started. The United States, for instance,
gets its money, either in taxation or the sale
of bonds, from the people, who give it back
to the government in never-ending cir
cling OF the Ferris wheel. The greater the
governmental expenditures the larger be-
comes the amount that the people give back
to the government. The only danger from
that procedure is that the people may pos
sess too much of the money at the same time,
as that would lead to initiation, but Uncle
Sam will see to it that our financial belts
are kept frightened.
Let's take squint at Germany. In the
course of seven years, despite the fact that
her financial structure still felt acutely the
effects of the worst initiation the world had
ever known, together with the crushing bur
den of the first World War, she built up
and thoroughly equipped the most stupen-
dous war machine in the history of the
world. How did she do it? The answer is
easily found in material and manpower. As
for money, Germany had little of it, barely
enough to shunt back and forth between its
people and the government, SO it swapped
With OLHeT HdtiOiiS It's lIid1HHiSAy
for raw materials that were needed.
The United States, with its Allies will
win this war not because it has the greatest
hoard of gold the world has ever known,
but because of its manpoWer, its inventive
genius and its tremendous resources OF the
raw materials that are essential to the Win
ming of the war. We are pressed for few
materials that are not produced IN this
country, but we are either obtaining them
from other members of the Allied Nations
or, as in the case of rubber, producing them
alphabetically
And bear in mind that the Axis powers
have only one-eighth of the manpower in
the world
Germany, Italy and Japan are now
losing their ships and men and planes far
faster than they can be replaced, whereas
the United States alone is doubling the num-
Der of ships and planes every three months,
compared with the production of the pre-
ceding quarter.
Money, unless it can obtain its equival-
ent in raw materials, is of no more use TIC
Germany and italy, than Robinson Crusoe's
bag of gold was to him on his lonely island.