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Today and Tomorrow BY WALTER LIPPMANN Back Them Up ( IT __ + r\ VioHId The immediate thing to De aone here at home to support Eisen hower, MacArthur and Halsey is to reject the O’Daniel amendment which forbids the Army to use ■teen-age drafted men in actual combat duty outside Continental United States until hey have had at least one years military train ing. The Senators who voted for this amendment need have no qualms about changing their votes. I have been told that it took the general staff a week of intense study to understand in full is dis astrous consequences, and no Sen ator need be ashamed, therefore, to say that he has re-examined the question and has changed his mind. For the intent of the amendment —which was to protect impetu ous but untrained men from being flung into battle—was altogether sound. The trouble with the amend ment is that its practical effect is to deliver a crippling blow to the Army and also that, as a protec tion to the young men themselves, it is a snare and a delusion. It is important that the people should understand why this- is the effect. The reasons are not obvious to a civilian, and the explanation has to be attended to carefully. The first thing to fix in mind is that the United Staes is sill build ing its army. When it is built, the army will consist of ground and air forces organized in a certain number of military formations. This work of building the Army will not be completed for about a year, and a great number of men are now being used not in the Army itself—but to build it. There are about a million men employed to build the army—to train re cruits, to run the innumerable schools, and to do the housekeep ing and administrative work all the way from the induction cen ters to the training fields. These million men who ai;e building the Army, and the physical facilities in the camps and schools, are just large enough to deal with the flow of recruits which pass through them in order to provide the ac tive Army with the number of trained military formations which our strategical plans call for. The Army building machinery might be compared to a transient hotel with a certain number of waiters and chambermaids and a certain number of rooms which can accommodate a certain num ber of guests if all the guests come when they are expected and check out again when the time comes for other guests to arrive. It will readily be seen that if the old guests stay on, then there will be no room for the new guests, and the whole traffic must become jammed and snarled up. * * * Now with this in mind, we can see what would happen to the Army if the O’Daniel amendment is made law. From January to June of 1943 about 800,000 teen agers will be inducted into the Army. Bur they cannot begin to go overseas until a year later. Yet next summer and next au tumn our armies in the field abroad will need about 500,000 men to keep up to their full strength. This does not mean that Eisenhower and MacArthur and our other com manders overseas expect 500,000 casualties next year. Not at all. We have fought no large land bat tles as yet. But in order to give men at the front a rest, to bring back veterans from the front to teach the Army what they have learned, to replace men who fail sick, and so as not to have to send wounded men oacK 10 odiue before they are fully recovered, we now use about 100,000 trained men a month as replacements. Under the O’Daniel amendment the teen-agers cannot go abroad as part of these 100,000 monthly replacements next year. Therefore in addition to training the 800.000 teen-agers, the Army would also have to induct at least 500,000 old er men, who must be trained be tween January and June, in order to fill the gaps between July and December. But the Army does not have the facilities for training both the 800,000 ’teen-agers, who can’t be used for a year, and the 500,000 older men. who would, therefore, have to be used. The hotel is not big enough, and we cannot afford to make the hotel bigger by tak ing still more men, needed for active service, to run the hotel. * * * One of the things must happen, therefore ,if the O’Daniel amend ment is not rejected. Either the Army must wreck existing divi sions and use the men and the officers to fill up divisions at the front—or—the Army must segre gate the teen-agers in separate divisions ear-marked for service a year later. This is a choice be tween the frying pan and the fire. To wreck existing divisions in order to rob them of men to fill up other divisions is to take the awful chance of not having enough divisions next year to push home the offensive, and to win the war if opportunity knocks. For we do not wish tc prolong this war one day longer than necessary, and it would be a dreadful situation in deed if, by next year, with the enemy cracking, we did not have the divisions ready to go to town and finish the job. * * * The other choice, which is to segregate the ’teen-agers, is equal ly bad. They would have to be segregated in infantry divisions be cause the facilities would not be available to train the young men in the specialized services. The ’teen-agers would, therefore, be come infantry shock troops, and because they were all very young, very impetuous, without the leav ening of maturer men. and rela tively unskilled in a military sense, they would have to be used in those operations where men are sacrificed most freely to gain an objective. Thus the ’teen-agers, whom the amendment is supposed to protect, would be denied the chance to become specialists, to choose an interesting branch of the service, to become officers as rapidly as their abilities permitted, and they would be earmarked in the mass as the least skilled ex pendable shock infantry. That is why the young men themselves, once they have understood tne O’Daniel amendment, are against it, and that is why their parents, if they will make the effort to understand it, will be even more passionately against it. The underlying error in the amendment is a very simple one. Senator Oljaniel and his col leagues thought it took a year to train a soldier. It does not. It takes on the average about four months. It does, however, take a year to train a division—that is to say to make a team, and where the Senators went wrong was in confusing the training of the team and the training of the individual player for his part on the team. They did not see that for a good division which has been trained as a division for a year, not to speak of all the ground forces of the air corps, new recruits who have had four months training are quite ready to join the team. They cannot learn anything more about soldiering until they join the team. That is why it is so vitally im portant to keep the old teams, the seasoned divisions and oher for mations, at full strength by send ing them replacements of fully trained individual soldiers. For what is hard to train are the teams, not the individuals who are absorbed into the teams later. That is why General Sherman said that 200 men in an old military unit arp worth 1.000 mon in p new military unit. * * * The case against the ODaniel amendment is so conclusive that it seems impossible to suppose that Congress will not now reject it. But if by any chance Congress does not now reject it, the meas ure will have to be vetoed, and the question reopened immediate ly. For the Army's carefully worked out plans must not be thrown off schedule at this time when our forces are on the march. -V If you drive your car 1000 miles at 65 miles an hour it will cost you almost five cents a mile. But if you drive at only 25. it will cost you only two cents a mile. (choked saltcellars?^ > NOT SINCE / DISCOVERED l [this non-caking salt!) ---NW THE OLD JUDGE SAYS... “Judge, would you mind tellin’Charlie here during our 13 years of prohibition. What what you told me the other night walkin’ you really vote for is whether liquor is going home from lodge. I can’t word it just the to be sold legally or illegally...whether the way you did.” community is going to get needed taxes for “Sure thing, Tim. Here’s what I told him, schools, hospitals, and the like, or whether Charlie. There’s no such thing as votin’ a this money is going to go to gangsters and nation, a state, a county, or even a com- bootleggers. That’s the answer, boys... munity dry. We had proof enough of that simple as A-B-C.” Copyright, 1942, Conference of Alcoholic Beverage Industries, Inc., N.Y.C. TRIANGLE PLAIN OR IODIZED TABLE SALT ■■■■“- 3* NEW-TREAT SALAD DRESSING 2 27* GEORGIA DESSERT PEACHES - 15* LAND O’ LAKES AMERICAN CHEESE - 33* TRIPLE-FRESH OUR PRIDE BREAD 2 • 15* ► TA 7 AT TA CAm rei/ATtM a rr irri/in * M. v/.rx X X A. 1/ u I V ii STOKELY 22* /y Meats of Merit f SIRLOIN STEAK lb. tk Center CHUCK ROAST lb. lit SKINLESS FRANKS lb. Ik BONELESS VEAL ROAST lb. 33; Long Island DUCKS 29c lb. Dressed AND Drawn HENS 45c lb. Young Hen Turkeys 43c lb. MEDIUM L OYSTERSpL42c CRAB NEAT Claw 52c SHRIMP lb. 35c HONEY-NUT MARGARINE 2Ub' Ctns. Crackers 10* Stewing Figs 2 Z 37* Knox-Jell rr 3 - 17* Bisquick 2Z 31* Sterling Salt 2 13* •* I large crisp I LETTUCE 2 for 19c l THIN SKIN FLORIDA I Grapefruit 3 tor 10c 1 ID4HO BAKING 1 POTATOES £ I FANCY JERSEY . . I Cranberries lb. 19c | I careen fresh 2Lb..de siring Beans FM «5c I fancy savoy 2 Lbs. 4 r f, I F°r * ^ Colonial Tomato CATSUP i4-o*.Bot. He Lang’s Sour PICKLES . Qt Jar 15c Sunshine Hi-Ho CRACKERS i-Lb. Box 20c Colonial Facial TISSUES Pkg. of 500 17c Triple-Fresh Sandwich BREAD2 20-Oz. Loaves 19c Popular Brands Bahg FOODS 3 4|-0z. Cans 20c Triangle BUTTER i-Lb. Ron 51c Triangle BUTTER i-Lb. cube 53c Sioux Bee HONEY . 5-Lb. Glass 93c Excell Soda CRACKERS i-Lb. Box 10c Del Monte Seedless RAISINS 15-Oz. Pkg. 11c Kellogg's Corn FLAKES 6-0z. Pkg. 5c Hunt Club Dog FOOD . 2Hb. Pkg. 25c Mother’s Salad DRESSING Qt Jar 33c Triangle Sweet Mix PICKLES . Qt. Jar 23c Virginia Maid Peanut BUTTER ■ i-Lb. jar 27c French’s MUSTARD 6-Oz. Jar 8c Safe Home MATCHES Big Box 4c Piet sweet No. 4 Sieve PEAS 2 No. 2 Cans 27c Nucoa MARGARINE u> 25c Waxtex Lunch PAPER . 40-Ft. Roll 5c Argo STARCH 8-Oz. Pkg. 4c Cleanser SUNBRITE . Can 5c Fleecy White Laundry BLEACH ■ Qt. Bot. 13c Pillsbury Flour 12-Lb- fid0 4 v b“9 vt y alaga syrup UMA beams-' PINTO BEANS ■ molasses m • __ Pitlsburys C^E FLOUR s~si'«" WlNDEX lifebuoy ~ fairy soap silver DUST SWAN SOAP SWAN SOAP hruit (Jnko 31nt«>rieils Glace Whole Red CHERRIES . . Lb 48c Glace Pieces Red CHERRIES . . Lb 38c Glace Natural PINEAPPLE . Lb 48c Glace Broken Nature! PINEAPPLE . Lb 41c Glace Drained Halves CITRON ... Lb 46c Glace Orange or Lemon PEEL . 3 3-Oz. Tins 25c CURRANTS * - :: @e AMBER Sweet Figs 2 p^' 2 / ’ OLD DUTCH j Cleanser | 2 c,n, is* | RI N S 0 Med. Pkg. Large Pkg A(
Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.)
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Nov. 13, 1942, edition 1
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