Senator Truman Reports

Specific mistakes in Army camp construction have already been exposed (TIME, Dec. 23, et seq.); this week the Senate's Defense investigating committee looked into causes, warned against costly bungles in the future. This the committee did well and tartly, in a 98-page report prepared by Senator Harry Truman and Counsel Hugh A. Fulton. Excerpts:

> The Army failed to heed the lessons of World War I, had no adequate plans for camps. Result: of $828,000,000 spent on 229 troop-housing projects, at least $100,000,000 was wasted. Said Senator Truman in an oral aside: "We used that $100,000,000 figure because the Army admitted that much. It will run two and a half times that much, easily."

> Fantastically poor judgment, misinformation (and, as the committee failed to add, political porking) sometimes resulted in bad camp sites. Example: "In locating Camp Davis [N.C.] the site selected was swampy area and in effect a peat bog. The spongy nature of the terrain necessitated the building of concrete parking strips for the mechanized equipment which would rapidly sink if left standing . . . on the ground itself.

> Renting cars, trucks, tractors, etc., instead of buying them in quantity, caused big losses to the Government, huge profits for contractors.

Remedy & Defense. The report originally had a few kind words to say about the difficult construction problem which the Army had to face, admitted that U.S. soldiers now had better housing than in World War I. Irate Senator Truman deleted these references, also conceded that Congressional politicians had been responsible for some of the mistakes. But, said the committee: "There were very few officers in the Quartermaster Corps or in the engineering corps who were at all fitted to cope with the problems involved in the camp-construction program."

This finding was a sharp slap at the Army's Quartermaster General Edmund B. Gregory and his corps. Sharper still was the committee's chief recommendation: that Army construction be taken entirely away from the Quartermasters, and that camp maintenance and construction be transferred to a new and separate organization of qualified specialists.

General Gregory had some sensible things to say in self-defense: that the Army wanted maximum speed, had to pay for it; that the Quartermaster Corps alone was not responsible for all the mistakes. According to his charts, 94.8% of Army construction has been completed since his tremendous job of emergency building began last June. Said he last week: "It's axiomatic that you can't save time and money at the same time."

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