Evening star., 1944-01-22
To Insure Peuce

teacheS anything, 1t teaches that
large-scale disarmament and the
extremes Of pacif1sm. far from per-
petuating peace. invite aggression
and war. Between 1919 and 1899,
the three major democratic powers
of the West-France, Britain and
the United States-let their brains,
muscles and spirits go soft, deliber-
ately cultivating nonmilitary policies,
as if thinking that by building static
defense systems. reducing their
armies, scrapping their battleships,
investigating the merchants OF
DEATH" passing neutrality laws and
adopting noble resolutions to make
plowshares out of all the swords Of
the world, they could somehow rem
der themselves secure and effect a
universal pacification that would
endure.
There can be no doubt that this
encouraged the warlords OF Japan
to grab Manchuria in 1881 as the
first move in vast plan of conquest.
Nor can there be any doubt that it
encouraged Mussolini to gobble up
Ethiopia. and Hitler to undertake
his gigantic campaigns to enslave
Europe and the world. For it is true,
as Charles E. Wilson, executive vice
chairman OF the War Production
Board, declared the other day, that
these aggressors probably never
would have dared to do what they
have done, had the great western
democracies kept themselves in
readiness at all times to cope with
any military emergency. But neither
France, Britain nor the United States
did this. Instead. they neglected
their arms, and the story OF what
happened to them as result is too
familiar to need elaboration. Only
through combination of good luck
and eleventh-hour production mir
acles has victory over the Axis be-
come possible.
AS far as the United States is con-
cerned. this lack of preparedness is
not new. We have been unready for
nearly every war we have fought,
and it would be trusting too much to
the stars to permit ourselves ever to
be unready again. This is the point
made by Mr.. Wilson. Disarmament,
he says, has been discredited as a
safeguard against aggression and
now we must try the opposite full
preparedness according to a con-
tinuing plan" in which there is con-
slant cooperation between industry
and Government for the military
security of the Nation. In Mr.. Will
sons words. we must mount our
national policy upon the so1M fact
of our industrial capacity for war,
and a research capacity for war"
To this end he would harness the
technology and science of both in
dustry and the armed services for
the development of new weapons
and the steady perfecting of old
ones, and he would do this in such a
way as to make it clear to the whole
world that our productive machine
would be capable of shifting smoothly
and swiftly from peacetime output
to meet the needs of any emergency.
The American people have tradi-
tional and wholesome distrust of
militarism, but Mr.. Wilson'S idea is
not militaristic. It does not call for
huge expenditures or for huge stand
ing armies. 1t calls simply for a
policy, plan, working program of
scientific and chronological pre-
paredness that can be fitted into our
peacetime way of life without diff
Guilty. 1t asks no more of us than
that we see to it, in the years to
come, that Americas strength and
brains, its craft and knowledge, are
kept forever ready" If we do this,
our weapons will never be behind
the times, and our industrial plant
will be geared to produce them with
special speed, and the possible az
gressors of the future will have more
than little reason not to challenge
us.