Mobilizing the Mobilizers

President Eisenhower's recently announced plan to merge the Office of Defense Mobilization with the Office of Civilian Defense Mobilization is one more step in the direction of an efficient and coordinated military structure. Up until now, the ODM has been a small unit with a $3.5 million budget and 240 employees. A holdover from Truman's War Mobilization Board, it has been mainly concerned with standby plans for industry and, to a small extent, with stockpiling.

The Office of Civilian Defense Mobilization, in contrast, has been a $63 million sprawling network with some twelve hundred employees and little co-ordination between municipal, state, and national programs. Part of its trouble has been lack of integration with other military branches in the National Security Council. In any case, its past operations have been characterized by unrealistic programs met by public apathy. At the same time its budgets have exceeded necessity, and Congress has slashed them by as much as half. In 1956, for example, the OCDM asked for $35 million to build air-raid shelters which the hydrogen bomb had largely outdated. And plans for mass evacuation of cities before atomic or hydrogen attack have ranged from the impractical to the absurd.

In the one area in which it could be most effective, training civilians in personal survival techniques, the OCDM has failed to arouse much interest. If Eisenhower's merger is completed, energy and funds should be channeled in this direction, rather than into areas of unrealistic military strategy. Eisenhower will pick one director, subject to Congressional approval, for the merged organization. With one director and one budget, the OCDM will be able to carry on its stockpiling of medical supplies in conjunction with the ODM's industrial program. Both economy and realistic thinking should result from the move.