A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabell La Follette AFRIEND recently returned from overseas service, where he had seen a good deal of the Russians, told of an embarrassing question put to him by one of them....
...The months are going by, and here in the United States and scattered all over the world there are thousands of our men "rotting from the neck up," as our boy puts it...
...What more vital "reconversion" is...
...I make no claims on military knowledge, but soldiers are still human beings and in a democracy must still be counted as such...
...Eisenhower and now Gen...
...there...
...However righteous his crusade when he set out, a soldier in a foreign country always ends up in the wrong...
...Gen...
...I note, for example, constant references in the press to returned veterans re-enlisting in the services...
...Bob writes from Manila, "Boredom is still the big problem here but I'm doing as well as possible against it...
...One of Bob's friends writes that he reports for duty and sits in a room four hours every third day...
...One was quoted as saying to his commanding officer, "I don't know what those people out there are talking about...
...the rest of the time he is on his own in a devastated German town with no facilities...
...It can go into your homes and take your boys and send them anywhere it wants to, but it has to beg for your money...
...Why not make the services attractive to men who feel this way and let the average citizen return to his work and education...
...The debt-burden we are passing on to them is tough enough, but to hand the problems ahead to a generation embittered by our muddle-headed lack of appreciation of their value is certainly a tragic indictment of our perspective...
...Both government and the military are loath to give up their wartime power where they could always rely on quantity instead of thinking out a plan to accomplish the ends with the greatest economy in men and money...
...The defeat of an occupation begins when the war that brought it ends...
...It is indeed an appalling question, but the ghastly events of the past decade demonstrate that the answer does not lie in giving government more power...
...Another war loan drive is on...
...With an election year approaching, national and state administrations are whittling at their budget statements in order to show the voter that they deserve to be kept in office...
...WE are playing fast and loose with the most valuable asset we have—our younger generation...
...Anyone with half a grain of sense knows that our expenses remain and will remain staggering so long as we pursue the policy that "there is always more where that came from...
...As one mother of a boy in Germany demands, "Why are they calling for compulsory military training when they can't even keep the boys busy now...
...I can't rid myself of the conviction that just as we are squandering money we are squandering these men...
...Air men here and abroad are lucky to get two hours a day at their work...
...He says, "The occupation of a country, though it may castigate the vanquished, degrades the victor...
...Clay are both urging food for Germany, not for any sentimental reasons but for the tough problem they have on their hands...
...As you can see, there isn't much to write about—I'm just 'keeping up the lines'—but I'm as contented as it's possible for one of my temperament to be in the Army...
...MacArthur obviously not only has a plan for the occupation of Japan but likewise looks ahead to the problem stressed by the aforementioned British aviator, yet listen to the roars of rage from both State Department and military sources when he announced his policy of cutting down the occupation forces to a minimum...
...The "conscription of wealth" which so many of us urged as a war-preventive over a long period is shown not tobe the answer because the power lies in those who conscript it...
...The Mor-genthau Plan, now essentially in operation, may accept the idea of Germans digging their own graves for their deaths from starvation during the Winter, but the American officers in charge of American troops know pretty well how Americans are going to feel if they have to "preserve order" among starving men, women and children in food riots...
...Others frankly state that they have got used to "security" and "having my thinking done for me" and can't adjust to doing without it...
...As a matter of fact, as political controls work out, there is conscription of wealth for a great part of our people, from the pressure of public opinion to "taking the contribution at its source...
...No matter how horrified the "Hard Peace"ers may be at such sentiments, they are echoed in the letters of most of the boys who are doing the occupying...
...It is so much easier to ask for more of either than to think out the means of doing the job with less...
...THE money is bad enough, but how much longer is the American public going to put up with the same attitude toward our men...
...It was bitter enough to fight the war, but now to be left wasting away along with the idle tanks, guns, and other material is soul-corroding...
...A British aviator has a challenging article in this month's Harper's entitled "Military Occupation Can't Succeed" in which he cites examples from history that each military occupation of a country' has resulted slowly but inexorably in the defeat of the victorious power...
...Pointing to a war loan poster, the Russian aviator asked, "One thing I don't understand about your government...
...The totalitarian governments which control wealth as well as life have been the great offenders against peace...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 46
