A 'STUPID, CRIMINAL' POLICY
A 'Stupid, Criminal' Policy THE insatiable demands of the Army for more and more men, and still more men, and its fantastic refusal to release all but a few of those who have done their bit and...
...Sen...
...Hershey should be awarded the Congressional Medal for letting the cat out of the bag...
...My opinion is that it was not intended to work, and that it was only created to confuse and bewilder...
...Instead, we have the prospect of mass discharge at the very moment when reconversion and unemployment are at their peak...
...Congress has created a monster Frankenstein that will crush this nation unless Congress itself calls a halt...
...We have 3 times as many generals and colonels and lieutenant colonels as we can use against Japan...
...The hard-hitting Colorado Democrat said he had obtained figures from the Treasury Department showing that with a one-front war in July, 1945, the War Department spent $4,357,753,293, while in July, 1944, with 2 wars on, it spent $4,242,625,-704...
...When there is a shortage of workers is the time to return every possible man or woman to civilian status...
...The letters hailed the bill as "sound policy" and "forward legislation...
...Sen...
...Robert Wagner, New York Democrat, registering their approval of the general objectives of the Wagner-Murray-Thomas-O'Mahoney bill providing for a joint effort of Government and business to provide full employment...
...The Army's lack of cooperation in helping to solve it is blind and stupid and criminal...
...SECRETARY STIMSON'S reply was an anemic document, distinguished only by his arrogant refusal to inform Congress and the country what his plans were and why, and his insistence on the present system of discharge...
...This is a healthy sign that some of our business leaders are abandoning 19th Century economic thought and have come to recognize that business prospers only when the great mass of the people prosper...
...It is a growing recognition of the fact that genuine independent business has its best friends in a well-paid worker and a prosperous farmer...
...Stimson that no "mumble-jumble" would do this time, and he challenged the Secretary of War to refute the estimate that no more than 3 million American soldiers can be deployed in the Pacific by the end of 1946...
...The Army rejected with disdain my simple 'first in, first out' discharge formula...
...JOHNSON, a leading member of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, drew on his extensive investigation of Army needs when he pointed out that "the maximum number of men we can transport, supply, and use on the Japanese front by the end of 1946 cannot be more than 3 million...
...The nation is going to need their help if we are to answer the challenge that only under totalitarianism can we have security and abundance...
...Johnson and Taft that it prevent, by law, the costly and senseless maintenance of an Army that is 3 times larger than we need...
...It is "impossible," he said, "to see how even 7 million men can be used in the war against Japan, and we still have about 8,300,000...
...Recently 6 prominent business men sent letters to Sen...
...But the Army is holding back...
...Unless there are basic changes in the next 2 months, Congress should reassert its authority as the nation's policymaking body when it reconvenes, and accept the counsel of Sens...
...The successful business man of today and tomorrow is one who sees his greatest enemy in the sterile scarcity policy of monopoly and cartels...
...Both Senators pointed out that the War Department's criminally stupid policy is not only creating a. desperate situation now—when we need some of the trained miners and railroad workers who are in the armed forces—but may seriously wreck all our hopes for a sound and balanced reconversion to a peacetime economy...
...SEN...
...We hope that it means a pulling away from the old gospel of despair preached by die-hard financial leaders who believe that full employment can only be realized in a totalitarian state...
...Sen...
...Hershey, director of the draft, in Indianapolis that after V-J Day Selective Service intends to keep on drafting 100,000 men a month is the final pay-off...
...Johnson told Mr...
...From the first it was a certainty that the point system would not work...
...The latter rose in the Senate to denounce the Army's policy as "blind, stupid, and criminal," and to point out that there was no justification whatever for keeping more than 8,000,000 men under arms when the Army couldn't possibly use more than 3,000,000 men in the war against Japan...
...We all realize the delicacy of 'busting' some of our great generals back to captains and majors, but we cannot afford an Army twice as large as our military requirements dictate, to save anyone's face...
...The time for a decisive showdown with the brass-hat bureaucracy is now overdue...
...Stimson had made no effort to accept the challenge...
...In its place they adopted a mathematical monstrosity...
...A Hopeful Sign ONE of the most hopeful signs for the future we have seen in a long time is the increasing emergence of business leaders as champions of Government-business cooperation for providing a program of full employment in the United States...
...The statement by Gen...
...Only by rejecting the counsel of restricted production and restricted employment for the sake of unrestricted profits can genuine free enterprise hope to stay alive...
...Johnson shot right back with the assertion that Stimson's decision "means millions of bitter, discontented men milling around the United States in uniform during the next 18 months," and "it means a transportation crisis, a serious manpower shortage in vital industries, and the styming of reconversion...
...Taft used came from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson when he replied to a blistering attack by Sen...
...Johnson...
...A 'Stupid, Criminal' Policy THE insatiable demands of the Army for more and more men, and still more men, and its fantastic refusal to release all but a few of those who have done their bit and more were the targets last week of two courageous attacks by U. S. Senators —Robert Taft, Ohio Republican, and Edwin Johnson, Colorado Democrat...
...Johnson rightly warned the swivel-chair strategists that returning 15 million men and women from the services to civilian life is a problem large enough to shake the nation's foundations...
...Taft called for an immediate halt in the drafting of more men, asserting that "the stupid, stubborn policy of the War Department in maintaining an Army of as big as it was on V-E Day should be overruled . . . and forbidden...
...Then why in the name of common sense," he asked, "must we maintain an Army of 8 million...
...We hope that in the troubled days ahead more of our business men will join the vanguard now made up of such men as Henry Kaiser and the 6 who have spoken out for the Wagner bill...
...THE 7 million figure which Sen...
...As this was being written, Mr...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 33
