The Wilmington morning star., 1944-11-28

| ers His articles serve the good purpose
of making people thinko
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Downright, 1914, by King Features Syndicate.)
NEW worry Altogether from various
sources. including President Roosevelt's press
conference last week, it is now made clear
that he resorted to deception and fraud IN his
campaign speech of Oct. % in which he boast
ed of the amplitude of the ammunition and
equipment which were being sent to Ameri-
can fighting men in battle.
In his press conference, the President admit
ted that ammunition was being rationed and
that lives were being lost a result of this
shortage.
On the same day, J. A. Krug, the new deal
er who replaced Donald Nelson as chairman
of the War Production Board the response
BILE agency. admitted that the ammunition
"erogram'' was 48 per cent behind. The lag in
the gun program" was II per cent and the
lag in the combat and motor vehicle pro
gram 81 per cent.
Another spot of bad news was contributed
by Mrs Anna Rosenberg, indispensable and
ineradicable new deal ideologist, old friend OF
Mrs. Roosevelt and present regional director
of the War ManpoWer Commission About two
months ago Mrs. Rosenberg went to Europe
toned outside Metz. This shortage she said,
had been blamed in part, for the delay in
the capture of Aachen. That discovery was
made long before Roosevelt's speech of Oct.
%, so obviously ammunition was short and
lives were being lost for the lack of it at the
very hour when he was appealing for votes
with false statement.
The actual state of affairs was not avail
able to Governor Tom Dewey. 1t was a mill
tary secret closely held by the President as
commander chief and his subordinates both
military and political. And the true condition
was concealed for the Presidents political ad-
vantage and Dewey's disadvantage at the
polls.
1t apparently did not occur to Mrs. Rosen-
berg to give this information to the people be-
fore election day when Dewey was anayzing
the feuds and failures within the War Pro-
duction Board. 1t apparently didn't occur to
Lieut.. Gen. Brehon Somervel, the former
WPA administrator in the political realm of
Filorello La Guardia, to contradict Roosevelt's
campaign statements until he had been re-
elected on the false pretense that all vital sup
plies were going to the right place at the
right moment down to 1.-The last cartridge"
Prior considerations having been duly serv-
ed, however, Somervell thought that the ap-
p1opriate people to tell about the shortages
were the 900 professional unioneers of the
American Federation of Labor assembled in
New Orleans for their annual session OF self
laudation and brawling, nevertheless, even in
breaking the shocking secret to these para
sites. including the usual quota of racketeers,
thugs and DRINKS, Somerveu saw no wrong
in praising them for underlined part
which they had played in achieving a rate
of production that now added up to failure.
Generals Marshall and Eisenhower now also
broke their silence but carefully, SO as to
brighten the people at home and drive cutters
back to the factories while refraining
from any criticism of Roosevelt. Nelson, Krug
or the unioneers whose no-strike pledge had
been vilated ten thousand times These two
generals are non-political and above CONN.,
vance. But, after all, Roosevelt is their Cine,
as he took such vain pleasure in pointing out
so many times during the campaign, and they
couldn't very well blurt the truth until he
gave the word after election.
Krug's mathematical analysis of the reasons
for failure was reminiscent of those other sta
tstical CONNECTIONS which theological figure
takers delighted to issue early in the game to
prove that some tiny percentage of the pop
uiation controlled all the money He didn't
mention the word failure or course for the
responsibility would have been his Nelson's
and Roosevelts and would have confirmed
DeWey's campaign charges of inefficiency, due
to wranglng and political conspiracy, in the
War Production Board. Instead, Krug said
production rate of five and one-haf billion
dollars month was required and blandly
observed that 40 per cent of this was behind
schedule" He carefully blamed nobody but.
with pleasantly sef-serving formula set forth
that labor shortages, changes of design, in
creases in demand and lack of facilities, were
responsible
This was one situation in which it was i'm
possible to blame poor old Herbert Hoover,
Warren Harding's Ohio gang ex-Congress-
man Ham Fish. 1t may have been Roose-
vclts hope that in their alarm over the news,
itself, that lives were being lost in consequence
of failure, the public would not recall his
Boosting of such recent date and his great
self-satisfaction as the architect of victories
both in battle and in war production
Parenthetically, the same day that the
CLOS convention, in Chicago, formally solldl-
fled the Political Action Committee into per-
mantrt political auxiliary of the Roosevelt
party the A. P. reported from Gary, Ind,
about fifty miles away, that 80 cranemen mad
ended a two-day strike which had halted al
production at Carnegie-Illihois and made oooo
other steelworkers idle
In the Roosevelt labor statistics, so olten
quoted to minimize the effect OF strikes, THIS
will count as 48-hour strike OF ~ men, not
48 hours of lost production for 5,O39 men. Inns
is the home union of Phillip Murray the presl-
dent Of the CLIO, who affirmed his remuneration
of the strike weapon in war industries Inc
cIO convention was adorned by the presence
Of Mrs. Roosevelt.
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