THE DEMOBILIZATION MESS
The Demobilization Mess ALL during the war—from the moment of Pearl Harbor on—the mistakes of our military and naval brass hats were carefully kept from the public gaze on the grounds, often...
...The Big Five prefer to work alone and in the dark, and they are getting away with it because all the eloquent advocates of the brave new world of international cooperation prefer to look the other way...
...1,1944, when we had yet to cross the Rhine and still to approach the Philippines...
...The facts are on record...
...Almost every day brings a new and more baffling announcement of who's to get out when and why...
...Having fixed the minimum strength actually renuired, the Administration could then swiftly •prov'de for the release of the remainder on an equitable basis of service, action, and dependency...
...Wa don't happen to be military experts, but it c1 * :eem to us that it is possible for the military p"-.d naval chiefs of America to sit down with our ci ilian leaders and work out an intelligent program of action for one year—a program which would provide a minimum force for the occupation obli-gations we have assumed and for our national de-fense...
...The spectacle is nothing short of shocking...
...Meanwhile, the elaborate machinery created at the San Francisco Conference of the United Nations, gathers dust and rust...
...Lincoln's recommendation apart from so much of the current chatter about Japan is the salient fact that he is not trying, at'bayonet point, to force a made-in-America democratic revolution on the people of Japan, but rather'trying to revive and reinvigorate basic democratic forces which were at work before the war lords seized control...
...The International Cooperative Alliance, whose headquarters are in London, reports that before the war Japan had 15,328 cooperatives, with a membership of 6,842,200, with a working capital of approximately $2,275,560,000 in American money...
...Representatives of the smaller nations have been denied admittance and have been ordered to submit their problems in writing and to come only when and if summoned...
...The figure was lowered a bit, but another roar of protest sent War Department officials scurrying to their subtracting machines...
...The first meeting of the so-called publicity committee was largely given over to wrangling over the sequence in which the communique should list the five Powers...
...Secret Diplomacy Again DESPITE all the pious promises to abandon secret diplomacy when the war ended, the Big Five's Council of Foreign Ministers is currently meeting in London behind guarded gates with the public permitted only an occasional communique on the more meaningless developments...
...The meeting place of the Foreign Ministers is hidden in a yard which used to be the site of Britain's royal stables...
...And so it has gone—a tug-o'-war between the people and the Pentagon Building, with the latter yielding only enough to satisfy the clamor of the moment...
...The Council created a special committee to prepare releases for the press, but decreed that all proceedings should be secret...
...The first fantastic statement that we would need 8,000,000 men under arms a year from now was hastily junked when the brass hats discovered the country would not stand for s'ifh outrageous nonsense...
...Now, however, the blinds have been raised a bit—and only just a bit—and the nation has an opportunity to watch the military bureaucracy in action as it proceeds to the task of peacetime demobilization...
...Perhaps it isn't bungling so much as a carefully hidden design—to keep just as large a standing army and permanent military establishment as the brass hats can get away with...
...Surely this is a hopeful sign—not an easy answer to a baffling problem, of course, but at least one place we can start if we meant what we said when we pledged ourselves to "remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people...
...Three months have gone by since the delegates completed their labors, but there seems to be no hurry at all to get the United Nations organization functioning...
...THERE is another way of looking at the present demobilization mess...
...T seems clear that the time has come for the for-¦*• mulation of fundamental policy by Congress and tv> Administration, and not the military bureaucracy which has a selfish interest to defend and many officers to maintain in the style to which they have become accustomed in wartime, A Constructive Note MURRAY D. LINCOLN, president of the Cooperative League of America, injected a hopeful, constructive note in the discussion about Japan when he called on our Government to exert every effort to encourage the growth of cooperatives in that country as a powerful factor for building economic democracy and as a practical antidote for militarism and monopoly...
...In a letter to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Lincoln gently reminded our policy-makers that the revival and encouragement of cooperatives will fit perfectly into the policy of the Potsdam Declaration...
...Boundaries are being fixed, colonies disposed of, and peoples traded off in total mockery of our pledge for open covenants, openly arrived at...
...1, according to the War Department's own figures, we still had an Army of 8,050,-000, or only 53,000 fewer men than on Sept...
...Chaos is piled on confusion, injustice on ineptitude as the muddled War and Navy Departments stumble and fumble their way into the demobilization nightmare they have themselves created...
...We have followed the feverish bulletins daily, beginning with the curt assertion when the war ended in Japan that the Army would still need 8,000,000 men a year from V-J Day until the announcement today that the Army thought it could stagger along with 2,500,000 men on July 1, 1946—and still can find nothing resembling a pattern, a plan, or a program...
...Council actions will be disclosed only after final decisions have been made, thus foreclosing the possibility of public debate and discussion...
...What sets Mr...
...Never, it seems to us, have so many bungled so badly so simple a problem...
...Despite all the whoopdeedo fed the press on who will be discharged, if and when, the simple fact remains that on Sept...
...Every promise of a speedier release of troops has been made only after recurring howls from Congress and the country...
...Of course it isn't as easy as writing off all the Japanese as militarists, monopolists, and monkeys, or as self-righteous as wrapping up a revolution and sending it to Japan, but it has a far greater chance of achieving the democracy we want for Japan because it would come from the people themselves...
...The Demobilization Mess ALL during the war—from the moment of Pearl Harbor on—the mistakes of our military and naval brass hats were carefully kept from the public gaze on the grounds, often fraudulent, of military security...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
