A Smaller Army?

Pundit Walter Lippmann, who for two years has hammered home the assertion that Adolf Hitler is a fearfully real danger to the U.S., last week came out with a new proposal: to cut down the U.S. Army. He wrote:

"The consequences which are almost certain to flow from the new orders [to clean out German raiders] given to the Navy are immensely important--so important, I venture to suggest, that we can seriously ask ourselves if it may not now be justifiable and actually desirable to reduce the size of the American Army.

"It certainly cannot be denied that the development of the war and this latest development of our own policy have together radically changed the situation which existed when the country decided to raise in feverish haste a great mass army."

Circumstances have indeed changed since the summer of 1940, when the U.S. decided to increase its pipsqueak army sevenfold. Then the U.S. feared that Britain might fall by September, that the British fleet might be surrendered to Hitler, that the U.S. might soon have to face an enemy whom the U.S. fleet could not cope with. Today most of these fears have passed.

Pundit Lippmann pointed out that keeping men in an idle army is a danger to morale, that the materials required for an idle army could better be used to send increased aid to Britain and Russia, or be converted to ship and aircraft building. But in one thing he erred: the present U.S. land force of 1,597,810 men is no mass army by modern standards. With Hitler estimated to have 300 trained divisions, the U.S. Army now comprises 34.

Exclusive of the Air Forces (which Pundit Lippmann excepted from his suggested reduction) the Army today numbers a round 1,400,000 in officers and men. For purely defensive purposes, military experts now consider that the U.S. Army needs as minima these forces outside the continental U.S.: Iceland, 15,000; Philippine Islands, 160,000; Canal Zone and Caribbean bases, 200,000; Hawaii, 200,000; Alaska, 110,000. Total 685,000. For permanent establishments in the U.S., to man fixed.bases, provide anti-aircraft and air defense for the coasts, it needs a minimum of 1,000,000 more. It also needs a minimum task force of 75,000 to sally out if trouble breaks in any part of the Western Hemisphere. Grand total of these minima: 1,760,000 men.

In the light of all these contingencies, many a Lippmann reader thought last week that the pundit's suggestion made scant sense. Even his conclusion--an appeal to the President to prove that he was honest in his promise not to engage U.S. troops on foreign battlefields--could be charged to a wistful faith in a commitment made in disregard of the facts of present-day international life.

Like Herbert Hoover, Pundit Lippmann apparently assumed that the war against Hitler is already on the way to being won. Like many another American and Briton, he failed to recognize that the summer of 1941 has shown not the strength but a basic weakness of the alliance against Hitler: for a whole summer while the Nazis were busy fighting Russia, Britain did not have the strength to launch a single attack of importance on Germany.

If Hitler succeeds in disposing of Russia this fall or next spring, it may be necessary once again to revise ideas of how the war is going. Britain has shown no signs of being able to resist a major Nazi attack on Africa--either toward Suez or Dakar. Also, if Russia falls, the Japanese are likely to cut loose--falling first on Siberia, later on Singapore, the Indies, Australia.

Even if no A.E.F. ever goes to Europe, the time may come when the U.S. may need to consider the advisability of sending an expedition to keep the Germans out of key points in West Africa facing South America, or the Japanese out of the Indies. For Anglo-American control of the seas cannot be a matter of complacency so long as the Germans can romp unchecked over the land.

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