WASHINGTON CALLING…
Washington Calling... Washington, D. C. WATCH for Washington to go off on a great reorganization jag. Everybody'll be doing it, although in some cases, of course, "reorganization" will consist...
...The war ended in Europe May 8; the Russians declared war Aug...
...Everybody'll be doing it, although in some cases, of course, "reorganization" will consist mostly in changing a few titles or making three jobs grow where two grew before...
...Reports of many of those who have returned from overseas trips stress a great deal of guzzling, gambling, and girling, not to mention the more normal overlapping of authority and assignments...
...George C. Marshall steps down, which will be soon...
...Now, this makes awfully good reading, of course, but nobody who knows how the brass hats operate takes this kind of chatter seriously...
...Ickes has piled up a great deal of support, some of it from potent conservatives...
...8, as promised...
...Dwight Eisenhower will become Army Chief of Staff as soon as Gen...
...Chancellor McCracken of New York University, he recalls, said far back in 1898: "When military invention perfects the flying machine, to which my former associate, Dr...
...The only reorganization of the War Department—and Navy, too—which would mean anything would be the elevation of civilians to positions of top authority...
...On an all-important issue like peacetime conscription—clearly a policy that must be decided by Congress and the country—the War Department mobilized every important general in the service (except one) to bombard the House committee with what purported to be expert testimony and which actually was designed to intimidate members of Congress by planting the idea that a man couldn't love his country and want to defend her against potential enemies if he didrft believe in regimenting every mother's son for military training in peacetime...
...Everyone interested in government is waiting eagerly for the report of Bob La Follette's committee on the modernization of Congress and for action on President Truman's plans to revamp the executive arm of the Federal Government...
...a lot of earnest thinking on how to make the instruments of government more responsive to the exacting demands of a new age...
...In the United States, the Army does not run the country, but it does not even run the Army itself except to the extent that the people directly and through their representatives in Congress understand and approve of policies...
...A number of officers did...
...It just doesn't add...
...Significantly—and there's been no mention of this in the public prints— the nation's outstanding genera 1— Douglas . MacArthur—did not participate in the War Department putsch for peacetime conscription...
...Minnesota's labor-baiting Sen...
...MacArthur, alone among the top commanders of the war, wrote no testimonials for permanent regimentation...
...Elder States-man Henry L. Stimson will soon depart as Secretary of War, but his leaving will mean little change because the venerable old gentleman was never really boss of his department...
...Officers in Europe were asked to sign up for Regular Army duty in peacetime and promised commissions if they signed...
...Seriously, though, there's a lot of soul-searehing here...
...AN OLD, OLD, FALLACY Devere Allen, editor of the Worldover Press, commenting on the frequently expressed hope that the coming of the atomic bomb may frighten the world into keeping the peace, noted the other day that this "is an old, old fallacy...
...Best guess in Washington is that Gen...
...Langley of the Smithsonian, is devoting his time, ability, and energy, so that it is able to drop explosives of untold power upon any ship, then it seems to me the nations will receive a very strong impulse to the learning of war no more...
...The other day, for instance, a top Army official struck a serious pose, tuned up his voice to pontifical pitch, and then let go with this one: "If we are to do our military job well and completely, we must never permit ourselves to forget that the Army is under civilian control...
...What is needed is a civilian with gusto—and authority from the White House—to roam through the Pentagon fairyland and bring some order and sense out of the waste and chaos...
...In public, of course, the Army approves the fact that Congress sets the policy, but whenever a member of the Senate or the House criticizes an Army policy, the brass hats get the sandbag squad to work on him...
...Most of the civilians who get appointed to policy-making posts in the War Department are either loaded with the Army point of view before they are picked, or soon fall victim to tremendous social and political pressures from as smooth a gang as you ever saw in action...
...He created the impression—• intentionally or not we don't know—that if he had to give in a bit here and there on the terms of settlement in Europe, it had been well worth while because we had won Russian agreement to enter the Pacific war in return...
...THE ARMY'S SANDBAG SQUAD Some of the more astute boys in brass recognize a storm brewing, and they're beginning to feed the Washington correspondents tall tales of how the Army is going to mend its way...
...This doesn't square, of course, with the reports which were current in Washington for some time—and which were formally confirmed on the floor of the House of Commons by Winston Churchill last week—that Generalissimo Stalin had agreed long before— at Yalta—to come into the war no later than three months after the end of hostilities in Europe...
...THE JUNKIEST OF JUNKETS Congress has been on the pan for sending so many of themselves to Europe and the Pacific on a wide variety of junkets...
...Joseph Ball is determined to make a fight for passage of the anti-labor Ball-Burton-Hatch Bill when Congress reconvenes...
...How, then, could Russian entry into the war have been the concession we gained when we yielded to Soviet demands in the European settlement...
...Nomination for the junkiest of junkets yet is the one composed of military andcivilian officials to "investigate the effects of strategic bombing on labor markets...
...Not so well known because of press silence are the unjustifiable junkets of civilian Government employes who have been scooting to all parts of the world on equally inexplicable tours...
...The War Department may have a first-class explosion on its hands if it persists in its bull-headed determination to send veterans of European combat duty to occupation assignments in the Pacific...
...IT DOESN'T ADD UP When President Truman jubilantly broke the news several weeks ago that the Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan, he made it clear to the nation that this had been his great achievement at Potsdam...
...DEPARTMENT OF THIS AND THAT Harold L. Ickes, tart-tongued Secretary of the Interior, is hanging on to his post with grim determination and now seems securely enthroned...
...The one major department which is preparing a big splash on how it's planning to reorganize and reform is the War Department, but insiders expect little more than sound and wind out of the Pentagon Building...
...He seems to have outstared Robert Hannegan, Democratic Party Boss, who had that job ticketed for a good machine Democrat...
...But now, they are being frozen into the service for the duration of the occupation, and are being shipped to the Pacific, regardless of the length of combat service in Europe, and all this without any further assurances of the promised peacetime commissions...
...Some of the major departments have begun to look themselves sternly in the mirror—Agriculture, for instance, and now Labor under progressive Lewis Schwellenbach, and State under Jimmy Byrnes...
...Of course the Secretaries of War and Navy are civilians, but they are largely window-dressing and formal mouthpieces for the generals and admirals...
...The measure is now being dubbed "The Ball and Chain Bill...
...A lot of the criticism seems justified, for to some of the Congressional feather merchants it has been a chance to see the world and have a vacation—at the public's expense...
...Marshall is past the retirement age of 64...
...One Army device has infuriated officers with European service...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 36
