The Daily Alaska empire., 1949-09-27
THESE DAY
GEORGE F. SOKOLSKY
SINK THE NAVY.

! in the next war any more than anyone can guarantee there will not
 be a next war. Louis Johnson
 Secretary of Defense, is pledged tc achieve amalgamation of the Arm ed Services and he is personally pledged to economy, to the elimina- ton of duplication and waste. Il is now the general impression that this is to be achieved by reducing the Navy to q subordinate arm of the defense-to it's reduction from the pride of our country to an aux iliar-' ferry service.
 Ii this is what neecs oe, then sink the Navy After all. bows and arrows were not retained through 1 sentimentality after their useful ness as a weapon of offense and defense had disappeared. But who, in the year of 1949, is prepared absolutely to guarantee that there will be no naval warfare in the next war? The man who does make such an assertion now as- sumes a very great responsibility indeed.
 It, of course, is being asserted that all warfare will be in the air with a ground force to take over and hold areas captured by air power. The atom bomb is to devastate entire nations, wipe out the civilian population and the national industry. Then along comes somebody else who says that the atom bomb is not what it is cracked up to be. but that chem ical warfare and biological warfare will really do the job. We shall hurl germs and viruses and pests and plaques at people and they will die from disease rather than by bullets.
 Of course, there is no experience with all this. The atom bomb was hurled at Japan, but the Japanese had been brought to their knees before that by starvation, by the cutting off of their food and raw material supplies. Neither chemical nor biological warfare was actually employed, each side being afraid of weapon that could not be con- tained geographically. That does not mean that the atom bomb and the germ will not do infinite dam age in the next war. It does mean that we do not know, from actual experience, what it will do. We are like doctors quarrelling over wheth- CT it is the pancreas or the ad- renal gland that makes the patient sick when they really don't know.
 Everyone denies that he wants to sink the Navy, but that pre- cisely is happening. The morale among naval men is the lowest that it has been in our history. Pretty nearly every naval officer I per- sonally know - and know good many - is looking around to see what he will do next and none of them expects to go into the Army or Air Force. They are an embittered group and they will not keep quiet They are today par ticularly enhittered because the Navy is not permitted to present its cause to the American people
 This is bad public relations on the part of the Department of De- fense, and am surprised that Steve Early has not arranged it differently. If the Navy has no case, an open hearing would estab- fish the fact. If the Navy has a case, then the country is entitled to know what it is. Few of us are expert in these matters and many who pretend to be, merely repeat the perjudices of the side they favor. admit my lack of know ledge, my inexpertness, but add that I should like to hear the whole issue debated out loud. Uni fication does not mean suppression of the truth, nor will it mean any, thing but tragedy, if it is done without regard to the significance of all weapons in the next war.
 There is further error in not permitting the. Navy to state its case. It gives to laymen like my self the impression that there must be a motive for silencing the Navy, while giving the other arms ample opportunity to defend their judg- ment. That is not good impress sion to get about.
 Louis Johnson is doing an ad- mirable job which calls for the support of the entire country. Uni fication is a sound doctrine. Waste is inexcusable. Duplication of costs is outrageous. But is it necessary to sink the Navy?
 | Copyright, 1949, King Features Syndicate, Inc.)