WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THE PEOPLE?

From TIME'S Louisville correspondent, Michael Griffin, came this appraisal of U.S. morale last week.

There is no question about the boomtown aspects of the U.S. You see it everywhere, particularly in Louisville, which has been a boom town for two years. If the war ended today with a victory for us, the mass of folks here could truthfully say that the war was the best thing to happen in their lives. They have more of everything and they are getting more every day.

The store windows are full of bargains and all day long radio announcers chant of good buys. Bars are booming. Bookies are coining money. Streets are literally packed, mostly with women who obviously have seen much worse times, leading two or three kids and all of them loaded down with packages.

Now, does all of this mean that the people are not aware of any danger, that they don't know what it is all about? I don't think so. I think they are pretty much aware of their danger; they are willing to do anything to win this war. They are not apathetic and dumb.

What is the matter with them, then?

They are full of doubts about their leadership. People have been cynical about officeholders for years, but in peacetime they merely talked about it casually; after all, it didn't make a great deal of difference. They always believed that when the chips were down the leaders would quit playing politics and get in there and pitch. But the chips are down now and the shenanigans continue, from high places on down. So the people say: "The hell with it. I'm going to get mine while the getting is good."

If this country gets whipsawed into a spot where it can't win this war, because there hasn't been a mass effort, it will mean that the democratic system has failed. Not the people. The system. Not the leaders, either, although they may be directly to blame. It will be the system because the people are ready for the mass effort. The trouble seems to be they can't convince their leaders of that fact.

Some examples of what's wrong:

> I stopped at a restaurant in a tiny Indiana town. A soldier was in the place, a nice-looking boy. He told me he operated the place, but was drafted. He said: "It's all right. I'll leave all of this [it was just one room] because I think it is my duty. Of course. I found out after I was drafted that a man can get out of it if he has the money."

I know that you can't buy your way out, but the point is, he thought you could.

There has been a great increase in the discussion of religion in letters to the editor of the Courier-Journal and Times. Why? Is it the war alone? I don't think so; I think a big reason is that people, some people, find comfort in turning to God when they feel they aren't getting lay leadership. And just the other day Walter Lippmann, discussing that professor who wrote the piece in Collier's about cutting and assembling a new democratic world, said "he [the professor] is the product of an academic system in which the study of moral wisdom has been abandoned." I, as a fairly normal American, agree wholeheartedly.

> When I was in New York there was a big crowd one day in Times Square. They were being told to buy war bonds. Who was the master of ceremonies? Jimmy Walker. I can remember twelve years ago when the whole nation breathed a sigh of relief when the then Governor Roosevelt of New York State had the courage to put on the pressure and oust Walker as mayor. And now Walker is telling me and several thousand others to buy war bonds. Out of 7,000,000 people they have to pick him.

> A big, husky Kentuckian said to me yesterday: "I'm getting concerned about the future of this country. And I'm worrying because I'm not doing anything about it. I've been telling myself to pick up rubber around the house or to gather up the scrap metal I know is around my place, but I don't do it. And the folks around me aren't doing much either. But damn it, a man doesn't know which way to turn."

Yet that fellow will do anything his Government asks him to do. He'll cut in two what he eats for breakfast. So will all the other common men. They want somebody in Washington, preferably Roosevelt, to outline a program for everyone and apply it. They want Roosevelt, whom most of them still like 100%, to quit suggesting that drastic steps may have to be taken, and actually to take those drastic steps --to tell Phil Murray, William Green, the spokesmen for the farm groups and all the other minority outfits, to go to the devil.

The people want Washington to quit treating them as if they were children subject to tantrums --to give them the truth, tell them the chips are down and that from now on it's guns. Not guns and butter, just guns.

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