Assurance

The American invasion army in Britain was equipped down to the last possible chocolate bar, the last possible extra pair of socks.

The Army & Navy bigwigs were steadily cutting back production of all kinds of war goods. The scheduled spending for war goods had already been cut back this year by $16 billion. And last week the Navy went further, cutting back actual fighter-plane production by chopping off $180,000,000 of orders, and by telling planemakers not to try to exceed production schedules. Many men were laid off (see BUSINESS).

Nevertheless, in the same week three of the nation's war leaders solemnly warned Congress once again that the U.S. must have a work-or-fight law.

Crisis Talk. All three, WPBoss Donald Nelson, Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson, averred that they were anxious about the war labor situation. Donald Nelson used such phrases as "desperately acute," "a great danger," "very grave," and "serious" to describe the manpower needs in the casting and foundry industries, lumber, pulpwood and textiles.

Secretary Forrestal, newly sworn in, pointed to the labor turnover in Navy Yards, now at a peak of 60%.

Citizens wondered how on earth the Navy had been able to get its ships.

This Seven-Seas fleet of such vast size and power that it is almost a world police force in itself had been built, apparently, by men dissatisfied with their working conditions--practically by transient laborers, if the Navy Yards turnover was at 60%. And even as Donald Nelson worried over the manpower to make landing craft, production of landing craft shot up 35%, in figures reported this week.

And they wondered again, as Paul McNutt, the central figure in manpower management, ended a vacation in French Lick, Ind. by telling reporters: ". . . We're pretty well on top of [manpower] right now. . . . There are some isolated spots giving us trouble--bearings, foundries, and shipbuilding plants." That did not sound like crisis talk.

Somehow the U.S. had not been able to work up any real rage over the latest wave of strikes. The Detroit foremen's strike, which made 60,000 men idle, had been knocked in the head quickly when the Air Forces Chief, General H. H. ("Hap") Arnold, told the War Labor Board at a public hearing that the Air Forces had lost 250 Mustang fighters through the strike. But the strike brought few letters to editors, and few editorial cartoons. Below the level of Washington bigwigs, no one seemed outraged.

At the Senate Committee session where Messrs. Nelson, Forrestal and Patterson appeared to plead for a work-or-fight law only three Senators showed up out of 18 on the Committee. And all three announced themselves as against the bill. Even the bill's two Senate sponsors, North Carolina's Bailey and Maine's Brewster, confessed they were about ready to give up.

Uneasy Conscience? The plain fact seemed to be that the U.S. does not want and will not stand for a national service act. Washington has alternately shown the citizenry two pictures--one of vast production, the greatest Navy in history, a perfectly equipped Army; the other of potential dangers due to the manpower problem. The U.S. has plainly indicated that it likes Picture No. 1, and sees no merit in No. 2.

Why, then, did the U.S. war leaders continue to urge the work-or-fight law? The answer seemed to lie in the uneasy conscience of the home front, contrasting its safe and easy life to the sacrifices of the fighting men. This was shown when Secretary Forrestal asked Rear Admiral Thomas L. Gatch, commander of the battleship South Dakota at Savo Island and Santa Cruz, to give the real reason for the bill. Said Tommy Gatch:

"I fear the resentment of fighting men against the men at home who are getting ten times the salary they are and are not backing them up."

Then Bob Patterson admitted: "We might get by without this measure, but it gives an assurance which I think the fighting men are entitled to."

But the U.S., knowing its own production strength, knowing that it could produce whatever was asked, felt that it had already given the soldiers the "assurance" of home-front backing. That assurance was in the multitude of weapons now in their soldiers' hands. If there was something more wanted than such material assistance, the U.S. did not know what it was.

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