The Penalties

Nazi tanks, crunching west through the mud and sleet of Luxembourg and Belgium last week, gave the U.S. two separate setbacks: one on the Western front, one on the home front. The size of the military defeat would be measured some day in American soldiers killed, wounded, captured. The shape of the home front defeat was already obvious. U.S. civilians would begin a not-so-happy New Year by paying penance for incorrigible optimism.

Suddenly, with the news of the German breakthrough, many U.S. preoccupations--even Christmas--seemed like luxuries. It was no time to scramble into a peacetime job, or to talk about manufacturing refrigerators.

Last week's communiques were a resounding vindication of those who had been denouncing overoptimism for three long years. With the bad war news justifying every move, Washington went to work fast and hard on civilians:

P:OWMR Boss Jimmy Byrnes suddenly ordered all horse and dog tracks (horse tracks alone handled a record-breaking $1,126,308,645 in pari-mutuel receipts this year) to shut up tight by January 3 and remain shut "until war conditions permit." He also threw a blunt question at Selective Service: what about all those 4-F professional athletes between the ages of 18 and 26? "They proved to thousands by their great physical feats upon the football or baseball field that they are as physically fit ... as are the 11,000,000 men in uniform."

P:OPA planned to ration most of the foods which had become point-free earlier this year: meat (including utility-grade beef), canned vegetables, fats.

P:OPA warned that a revised shoe-rationing system is coming up, since there is not enough leather to let everyone have two new pairs of shoes in 1945.

P:WPB slashed the production of passenger car tires for the first quarter of 1945 by 1,650,000; junked all tire-rationing certificates issued before March, 1944; informed A-card drivers that they could: 1) try to find recaps next year or 2) get off the roads.

P:WPB, invoking some of its sweeping priority powers for the first time in the war, ruled that hereafter, if employers ignore WMC regulations while the Government is trying to get 300,000 more workers into war plants, WPB may snatch away the offending company's fuel, materials, transportation.

P:Selective Service upped the draft quota for January and February from 60,000 to 80,000.

P:WPB froze until further notice, at present levels, all civilian goods production.

In an Order of the Day to his troops last week, General Eisenhower had found cause for hope that the enemy's big gamble might be turned into Germany's "worst defeat." But the wartime habits of U.S. civilians seemed destined to follow the philosophy of WPBoss Julius A. ("Cap") Krug: the U.S. must assume that we will still be fighting Germany in 1946.

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