"Army in Being"

Last week Secretary of War Harry Hines Woodring addressed the nation on the subject of Moral Rearmament. He approved it. This surprised only those who think of the Secretary of War as a warlike character. Mr. Woodring is in fact a gentle character who asks only to be left at peace in his job. Said he last week in a speech over a coast-to-coast radio network: "Nations, like men, are their own worst enemies. The menacing might of human selfishness in every country is mankind's chief danger. It is because the war to end selfishness has never been fought that the war to end wars has never been won. Our goal should be a new civilization, built not on the quicksands of personal and national self-interest but on the bedrock of personal wellbeing, national security and international peace and good will."

These sentiments did credit to Dr. Frank Buchman, who first interested Mr. Woodring (and many another Washington politico) in moral reformation last spring. But, said Harry Woodring after he had finished his speech: "I'm really not a Buchmanite. I think Moral Rearmament is a great, tremendous influence for good, and it ought to be encouraged. I'm very strong for it. But I'm not a convert." Uplifted by a pile of commendatory messages and cablegrams from as far off as Ireland, Mr. Woodring then went back to his business of rearming the U. S. Army. The Secretary:

> Sent his annual report to the President. This document told remarkably little about the Army. But Secretary Woodring did get at the main difference between the U. S. Army as it traditionally has been in peacetime, and the Army as Commander in Chief Roosevelt wants it to be from now on. The old Army was a feeble amoeba, unfit even for its theoretical role as the core of a fighting force to be raised after war starts. What is now wanted is an Initial Protective Force (Regular Army plus National Guard), manned, equipped and ready to fight at the drop of an enemy's hat.

Said Secretary Woodring in his report: "Whatever is the decision as to the size of our Army--our Initial Protective Force--450,000, 500,000 or 600,000, I must urgently insist that that force decided upon be complete as to personnel, as to materiel, and that it be 100% efficient as to training. Our Military Establishment must be an 'Army in Being!' " *

> Announced that seven Air Corps observation squadrons, 260 of the Army's 500 tanks would join the 50,000 Regulars receiving winter training in the south and southwest. This is the largest concentration of U. S. tanks, just ten more than the number of Russian tanks the Finns have destroyed in three weeks' fighting (see p. 20).

> Announced the formation of a new Air Corps unit, concentrating all defensive aircraft (such as pursuit ships to drive off enemy bombers), anti-aircraft batteries, ground warning systems, in a single, centralized command. Hitherto these defensive functions have been scattered among Coast Artillery, Signal Corps, the Air Corps's General Headquarters Air Force. Now GHQ Air Force can be solely what it was intended to be--a powerful, offensive striking arm for attack on enemy centres.

* To Mr. Woodring's Army in Being, upwards of 750,000 volunteers and conscripts would be added after war begins.

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