The Wilmington morning star., 1943-03-29
BY RAYMOND CLAPPER

WASHINGTON.-If I seem to be
writing too much about plans for
after the war, it is not because
l think the war is almost over.
Nothing in sight suggests any
early end, not even in Europe.
/ We have been in North Africa
almost five months and it may be
| two or three months more before
we have driven the Germans out.
AS Secretary of War Stimson says,
we may expect favorable progress
in North Africa but we must pay
for it with heavy casualties. Many
more heroic Allied soldiers will die
in the hard fighting that is still
ahead there.
Our ideas of the speed of war;
fare have been influenced unduly
by the early German blitz sweeps,
the quick victories in Norway, in
Holland, Belgium and France. A
better guide would be the long,
slow, grim swinging of the tides
back and forth in Russia for near
ly two years, since Hitler march
ed in.
In our preparations here at
home, we must assume that the
war will go on for some time. 1t
was put very well this week by
one of the officials of the Sun Ship
building Co. He said we ought to
stop considering the war as an
emergency and instead consider it
as our way of life. That is what
Germany, Japan, Russia and Eng
land have had to do. We will be
more effective if we do the same.
That means a vast amount of
tightening up. 1t means that we
can't go on improving on manpow-
er forever. The Sun Shipbuilding
yard, which 1 visited this week,
builds three-fourths of all Ameri-
can tankers. These people are un-
der pressure to more than double
last years production of 40 tank
ers. They have 10000 people work
ing. They need 10000 more. They
hire three people while losing one
for the draft.
They have only about thousand
women working, and they should
be training toward using 80 per
cent women-1O times their pres
ent employment. That, at least, is
what will have to be done if the
manpower strain is to be carried
over a long period. There is no
work more essential than building
tankers, in the race to keep the
German submarines from choking
off fuel to Allied armies across the
Atlantic. But men are being taken
steadily for the Army, and women
must pc trained to substitute if
production is not to suffer. That S
the story all over America.
A long war means that we can
less afford to tolerate the kind of
thing that has been disclosed this
week. The production of defec-
tive steel, covered up under fake
records, is the kind of thing that
needs to be cracked down on so
hard that it will discourage others
from taking any chances of that
KIND. The .antastic profits of ship
operators, charging all that the
! traffic will bear, are certainly not
to be condoned at a time when
we are trying to induce the coal
miners and the farmers to refrain
from charging all the traffic will
bear. The cocky attitude of the
shipowners down here, who ha,oh-
tly spurn suggestions that thew
dlsgorge some of their fat profit:
on the ground that they are within
their legal rights, is not going to
help in winning the battle against
initiation. A''o'
The fact that this is ant to be
a long war makes it all the more
imperative that the battle aeains+
initiation be waged relentlessly
The increasing shortage of goods
increases the pressure for infla tion
The longer the war goes on tha
more steam is built up behind ir1e in7
flation. III
Fortunately he Treasury No.