News of the Week

Industry crowded Washington with outstretched hands, begging for juicy contracts; labor leadels talked their heads off trying to organize every new plant in sight; Congress voted itself a fat bonus; Mrs. Roosevelt was handing out OCD jobs to her entertaining friends; Harvard undergraduates were kicking because they didn't get enough milk to drink; students of draft age were trying to move heaven and earth to escape the draft, come out with a commission, get a degree, or a combination of the three. That was the news of last week--and of all the weeks before, going right back to December 8, 1941.

Everybody is fighting everything but the war. Nobody seems to realize that we're very close to losing it. What does it matter whether the government or the employers pay unemployment benefits to the Boston fishermen, as long as the army gets the fish? What does it matter whether the AF of L or the CIO organizes the Budd Manufacturing Company, so long as MacArthur gets the tanks? If the defense effort keep on going the way it is going now, Mrs. Roosevelt will be hanging from the nearest oak tree, John L. Lewis will be dangling right next to her, and Henry Ford won't know what hit him.

Of course each of these disputes has its merits. You can't just tell Little Steel to go jump in the lake, or ask Labor to overlook excessive profits piled up by the war manufacturers. But we can't hope to have even a fighting chance against two nations like Germany and Japan,--who know what they want in material terms and are sacrificing anything and everything to get it--and fill our own horns with fruits and nuts at the same time. Pearl Harbor got us sore about fighting every local enemy within the town limits. Unless the government takes a stronger hand in directing the total energy of the country toward winning the war and preparing for a less cockeyed world after the war, it will be too late no matter what we do.