U.S. At War: Total War Postponed

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Having put forth a greater national effort than in any previous war, people find it easy to believe that further efforts can be put off. A multitude of tough decisions are waiting—on unity of command, on coherent field strategy, on how much truth about the war should be told.

Black Markets? One war measure, postponed for four months when the House Ways & Means Committee last week completed its tax bill, was taxes that really would throttle inflation. Such taxes, for all practical purposes, mean sales taxes.

For although the new tax bill boosts income taxes to new heights to reach its $6 billion total, inflation cannot be prevented by making the "new poor" poorer. It can be prevented only by keeping the "new rich" from spending their new income.

The people were not responsible for this postponement. A recent Gallup poll reported that 54% of the people favor a 2% sales tax now. Neither was Congress responsible. Most Congressmen recognized that the argument against a sales tax in peacetime—that it restricts the living standards of the masses—is the strong argument for it now.

The postponement in this case lies at the door of Henry Morgenthau and Franklin Roosevelt. Were a sales tax imposed now, it might reduce Labor's support for the Administration in the election. But Humanitarians Morgenthau and Roosevelt are probably far more influenced by their peacetime thinking habits.

Off the Roads? Also postponed, although probably not for four months, is another urgent necessity: to conserve rubber by national gas rationing. Although rubber supplies necessary for the war are fast vanishing, three-quarters of the nation is still burning up rubber tires.

For this dangerous postponement the Administration was not responsible. The basic responsibility rested on the people, who did not want to give up the convenience of their cars.

Chances are that, after the scrap-rubber drive, conducted on a patriotic no-profit basis, fails to yield enough rubber to fight the war, the Administration may try to override the people's reluctance.

Fighting Youth? A third major postponement is the decision to draft 18- and 19-year-olds for war service. Both the sentimental and the humanitarian instincts of the nation are against sending such boys to the battlefields of World War II.

The realistic but ugly fact faced by the War Department—but by few other people in the nation—is that Hitler has some 300 divisions, plus innumerable non-divisional organizations, and that the U.S. cannot raise an army of comparable size without drafting boys of 18 and 19; that such boys make the best combat troops. They have the stamina to stand hardship. Drafting such boys produces the least possible dislocation of war production, because few have acquired skills or jobs.

Still it is repugnant to the U.S. to ask its children to fight. Neither the Administration nor Congress had the courage to ask the people—before the elections—to do anything so repugnant to peacetime thinking habits.