The Current

Last week Dr. George Gallup published a survey on Defense and what people thought about it. He found them unhappy (and misinformed) about the rate of plane production, deeply concerned for the gen eral state of Defense. He also found a majority for: > Running defense factories 24 hours a day (three shifts) (89%, yes).

>Federal conciliation instead of strikes in defense labor disputes (93%, yes).

> Commandeering factories whose owners balk at defense contracts (71%, yes). > Working overtime at regular pay "if it would help speed up the defense program" (75%, yes).

There were other signs that the defense current ran strong and deep. At the slightest public hint that something had been bungled in Defense, letters of protest harried the responsible agencies in Washington. The War Department published a long list of U. S. companies. All were out for something (tax concessions), but all were producing something for Defense: powder, trucks, elastic stop nuts, brass & copper, engines, airplanes, cotton cloth, machine tools, worsted, rope. Army lieu tenants (the Valley Forge Military Academy at Wayne, Pa. claimed tax concessions on the ground that it was expanding its capacity to train cadets). President Roosevelt sensed and rode the current.

At a press conference, he put his mood in a parable about Ford Motor Co. According to the NLRB and a U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ford has violated the Wagner Act. Yet the company has received contracts to make aircraft engines, a fleet of tiny armored cars for the Army.

Result : a row. Asked about it, Mr. Roosevelt was reminded of the time (1937) when he was asked whether the General Motors sit-down strike in Flint was illegal.

Of course it was illegal. But the question should not have been asked at that time.

The authorities had a higher objective in mind. The objective then was to get the men out of the plants without bloodshed, and that was done.

The President stopped there. He left the correspondents to finish his parable, draw its moral : that of course Ford Motor Co. was up to its ears in trouble with NLRB, but the U. S. now had a higher objective. The objective was national de fense, and that objective was going to be attained, regardless of Ford Motor Co.'s labor policy.

Reports. Public discontent with de fense last week precipitated some favor able reports on progress. The National Defense Advisory Commission announced that military aircraft and engine production was up from 400 planes, 800 engines in June to 700 planes, 2,400 engines in December; that light-tank production was up from near zero to 100 a month (an underestimate); that (U. S. plus foreign) contracts had been speedily let for 50,000 planes, 130,000 engines, 380 naval vessels, 17,000 heavy guns, 25.000 light guns, many another item.

Under Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson boasted that production of Garand semi-automatic rifles at the Army's Springfield arsenal was up to 560 a day, would be 1,000 a day by next summer (plus 200 a day to be made by Winchester Repeating Arms Co.). He said that armament production generally was five times what it was a year ago; that the Air Corps had upped its personnel "on schedule" from 3,322 (Regular & Reserve) officers, 1,894 cadets and 45,914 enlisted men in June to 6.180 officers, 7,000 cadets, 83,000 enlisted men (by Jan. 15).

Secretary of War Stimson released some astronomical totals on old, mostly obsolescent arms sold to Great Britain from World War I surpluses (via a U. S. Steel trading subsidiary): 945,000 rifles; 25,000 Browning automatic rifles; 17.716,500 Ib. of TNT; 2,245 field guns (.75 mm.); 10.148.000 rounds of rifle and machine-gun ammunition; 83.581 machine guns.

Fog. Yet these imposing figures did not allay the national worry, nor stay Congressional investigators. Part of the reason was that there was something wrong, not necessarily with any one figure, but with the substance of official information about defense. Anyone could sense that people in Kansas City, New Orleans and Salem, Ore. could not know precisely what was wrong. But they could sense the effects, gather that somehow there was a miasma of half-statement, conflicting arithmetic, camouflaging fog.

Last week the fog thickened. Facts and situations which in themselves were both presentable and reassuring were either withheld or exaggerated. Example: 73-year-old Secretary of War Stimson last month boggled some of his statements when he confessed a deplorable lag in Army housing (TIME, Dec. 23). After a decent interval, the War Department last week loosed a flood of releases to correct the resultant impression that the whole program had been boggled. One exuberant handout reported that housing at Fort Dix, N. J. would be completed on or before Jan. 10. Officers at that mud-bound post confessed that the scheduled date of completion was Dec. 17, that only by heroic efforts would the job be done in several weeks.

The Defense Commission got into similar trouble. When the Commission announced contracts for "50,000 planes," aircraft manufacturers added up their orders, found only 37,000. The Commission presumably had in mind 12,000 more bombers, planned but not yet ordered. As in most such cases, the over-all error was small; the unhappy effect was public confusion about defense.

Behind the fog over aircraft production was many a hopeful fact: at aircraft plants production was rising toward impressive levels by spring. Slow but promising progress was being made toward at least a minimum standardization of types and specifications, lessening delays on production lines. But, from official sources, what people mostly got was a deadly impression that nothing was being done, that nobody knew quite what to do. Typical was the pathetic publicity on ClOman Walter Reuther's proposal to turn unused automobile capacity, machines and machinists to aircraft production.

Washington dispatches reported Defense Commission functionaries "who declined to be quoted by name" as slapping the plan down. Next day the Commission's publicity office slapped it up again, said it was still under consideration. Yet the facts were fit to print, would have heartened millions had the story been frankly told by a responsible spokesman. Technicians could and did find many sound objections to the plan. But the automobile industry did indeed have idle or nearly idle machinery, plant space, skilled men adaptable to aircraft production. Defense Commissioner Knudsen had long been hammering away to get that capacity into use, had a specific plan under way to do so (by last week, contracts had been let for four plants to put together bombers from assemblies and engines made in part by the automotive industry). Mr. Reuther had probably overstated the immediate adaptability of automobile plant machin ery, the possibility of "500 planes a day" any time soon. Many motormakers undoubtedly underestimated their own potentialities, hung back from the sacrifices that would be required. Aircraft manufacturers wanted to keep as much defense pie for themselves as possible, even if the cutting were somewhat delayed. Labor was jealous, suspicious of them all. Caught between the lot of them was Commissioner Knudsen, whose burdens include the legend that he is a superman. Hardest fact of all to see was the certainty that the automobile industry was going to make aircraft engines and parts, that Walter Reuther's plan had at least served to speed that certainty.

"Don't Tell." On War Department walls last week appeared a cartoon (see cut p. 16), admonishing employes to hold their tongues. It was old, and it was borrowed from the British, whose public information services are worse than the worst in Washington. It was also symptomatic of wishful official thinking in Washington that the best way to dispel confusion is to eliminate information about defense. "Information of value to the enemy" was a phrase heard increasingly often. That legitimate secrets ought to be kept secret, no loyal citizen denied. But the French Army ("best in the world") fell in a cloud of secrecy and not until Nazi bombers were over England did the British people know the full measure of their nonexistent airmadas.

"Don't Tell Aunty," said the borrowed British poster. What some officials, longing for the camouflage and comforts of secrecy, forgot last week was the first lesson that small boys learn. Aunty always found out what went on behind the barn.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.