AMERICA'S POWER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23490, 30 October 1939, Page 2

AMERICA'S POWER

DEFENCES INADEQUATE

A GLOOMY PICTURE FACING ALL CONTINGENCIES [from our own correspondent] NEW YOEK, Sept. 28 A gloomy picture of the defences of the United States was painted by Mr. Bernard Barucli, a capitalist who was Director of War Industries in the Great War, and is expected to occupy the same post again. After conferring with President .Roosevelt, ho urged the United States to create immediately an army, navy and air forco, so strong that no Power or possible combination of Powers would risk attacking the country. "There is a definite possibility," ho said, "which we must prepare against, that a combination of Powers might attack us on one or both oceans in the not distant future. God help the United States if they ever get by our oneocean navv! They have what seem to them reasonable inducements. They might try to take our vast resources from us. Our army, as General Pershing and the present Commander-in-Chief, General Drum, said recently, is, to put it mildly, very deficient, and unable to put up any real defence against a strong invasion. The tragedy is that everyone knows it except the? people of the United States. Every foreign Power knows it. Defensive Deficiency "This is no reflection on the personnel of our army, but it is pitifully small, untrained, and lacks modern arms and up-to-date munitions. Up to the present time, our whole system of national defence has been based on maintaining a navy, good enough and strong enough to delay an enemy Power landing on our shores until wo could raise, train and equip an adequate army, which would take a year, at least. For the first time, that is no longer sufficient defence. We have a good, one-ocean navy. But recent political realignments in Europe and Asia have opened up the possibility—let us pray it is not a probability—that a combination of Powers could attack us on both oceans, simultaneously, without interference from the British Navy. "In the last war," he added, "it took us more than a year of costly effort to create an army, and there was greater waste of life and money' because of its meagre training and equipment. We have still not taken farreaching steps to ogranise an adequate national defence against all possible contingencies." While declining to go into details, ho said that plans for preparedness, thus far initiated in Washington, although large, were inadequate in scale, both as to industrial mobilisation and tho creation of defence manpower. Latin American Trade How to keep tho United States out of the war, which is the prevailing topic from Maine to California, from the Great Lakes to tho .Rio Grande, presents no problem to Mr. Baruch. Foreign trade should be concentrated, lie said, "as much as possible, in Latin America. United States producers and exporters must exercise self-discipline to keep export prices to Latin America* down to a level which would make it enduring and keep competitors out of the Western Hemisphere. Tho United States could destroy tho barter system introduced by Germany by keeping prices so low that the Latin Americans would always want to trade with the United States. "Our policy," he concluded, "should bo 'justice/ backed with might.' Neutrality will bo just what the United States makes it. The Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, has announced that wo will stand on our rights under international law, and 1 have unlimited confidence that he will make that policy a just one. But, realistically, those rights will be what we make them. Both the Germans and the English will hesitate to risk trouble with us by interfering with our foreign commereo, if we are right, backed with might. I believe this would be a great step toward keeping us out of war."