The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-12-06

y
accounts of the confusion in Wash
ington after the 1918 armistice are
highly amusing, though terribly
scandalous. One observer had 1t
that of the 231 dollar-a-year men
then in Washington, 230 wanted to
go home at the earliest possible
minute. Some of them apparently
did, leaving on their desks I'M
signed letters. The catch phrase
of the day was that, 1.-The night OF
Nov. IL, the War Industries Board
caught the midnight train home"
The War Industries Board itself
which under the Craftsmanship of
Bernard NJ Baruch was the War
Production Board of its day, really
faded from the picture in three
weeks. While it had ample powers
for wartime, it lacked authority for
postwar operations. Belated pro-
posals to give the Board this post
armistice authority met with no
support whatever from Congress
The new Congress elected in the
November 1918 election was Repub-
lican and the 1ame-duck Congress
remaining in office would have no
part Of any proposal that came
from the Wilson administration. A
day after the armistice, Congress
had before it proposals to cut back
all expenditures.
Such was the psychology Of the
times for the immediate return to
normally.
TREND OF THE TIMES
Today, all this reads like hand
writing on the wall. The same
forces that shaped the course of
events in 1918 are shaping up now.
If there is any moral in this po-
tential repetition of history, 1t
should be found in the record of
what happened after the 1918 ar
mistice-months of uncertainty In
REIMBURSEMENT shifting gradually
into a year of initiation and then
the costly deflation Of the early
1920s
Fortunately, something does seem
to have been learned from this sad
experience. Whereas, in September
and October of 1918, President Will
son was counseling against any too
definite postwar planning and
Mr.. Baruch himself was too busy
running the war production effort
to give time to postwar planning,
today the President and Congress
and the war agencies have all made
a start towards postwar planning.
And Mr.. Baruch, as head of a
new unit in the Office of War Mo-
bilization under Justice James F.
Byrnes, Is in this war concentrat-
ing all his attention on these read
justment problems he did not have
time for in the last war, tackling
them one at a time in the order of
their Importance beginning with
termination of contracts, then the
disposal of inventories of surplus
materials, disposal of government
owner war plants and machinery,
and so on right down the line.
Private industry itself Is more
alert to the requirements Of post
war planning and the need for Or
derby rehabilitation than it was in
1918. That is perhaps the most en-
couraging aspect of all.
INITIATION DANGERS
The dangers of postwar infla-
ton are perhaps greater than the
dangers of wartime initiation. Re-
lease of wartime savings in a ma
tional spending spree could easily
result in great price rises. Ration
ing of production might be neces-
sary to avoid running up prices.
Seemingly minor problems like
these serve to emphasize that post
war readjustment will be one of
the most difficult periods the Unit
ed States has ever gone through,
The idea that no one should
waste time now, planning for the
future, is thus a fallacy.