Nod

Full of rearmament plans but temporarily checked by what the law schools term a "conflict of law," the Army has been impatiently marking time. All dressed up, it had no place to go. For President Roosevelt, while authorized to spend more than Congress has appropriated for Army pay, food, clothing for new recruits, was prohibited by law from doing the same for housing, hospitalization and transportation. And without funds the Army could not move men, had to shelve temporarily its plans for improved living quarters and medical facilities at numerous bases in the U. S. and her territories.

But last week, after a bracing yachting trip on the Potomac with Associate Justices Felix Frankfurter and Harlan F. Stone, the President made an announcement which sent the General Staff into a glad quickstep. His limited emergency proclamation last month gave him clear authority to increase the enlisted strength of Army, Navy, Marine Corps and National Guard, said the President; therefore he had the implied authority to spend the necessary money, and he intended to go ahead, ask Congress afterwards for its o.k.

Secretary Woodring therefore ordered 67,500 troops into Southern States this winter for a long period of intensive training--largest peacetime concentration in history of the regular army. Officers will be able to whip newly streamlined, mobile divisions* into coordinated units educated to the new theories of combat.

*Infantry divisions, once consisting of 13,500 men, have been revamped into smaller ones of 8,500, including three infantry and two field artillery regiments.

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