RASS hats are taking

over the federal govern”
ment of the United
States step by step. Generals
and admirals are also moving
into the directorates of Amér~
ican corporations in a big
_ way. The fusion of the army and
navy with political government
and with high finance is taking
Place in the United States as
it took place in Germany.

The state department has al-
ready been considerably militar-
ized by General Marshall. Gold
Stars are displacing diplomatic

striped pants. Whole echelons of
army and navy bigwigs operate

ines

key “state” posts at home and
. abroad. ;
The brass is: also edging out

Civilians in the department of
-hational defense, and is moving
into commerce as well.

_. The America of Jefferson and
_ Uincoln and Roosevelt is buried
under this thick layer of brass,
as Wall Street sets out to con-
quer the world. _

The brass plating is especially

thick on the facé that America
turns to the world overseas.
Thus in Germany, a lieutenant
Seneral, Lucius D. Clay, a grand-
80n of Georgia slave owners, runs
the American zone with the bene-
fit of as little trade unionism and
8S much nazism as possible.
_ In Japan-a full General of the
Armies, Douglas MacArthur (five
Stars), helps the Emperor and
the Zaibatsu. industrialists against
he toling people. _

In Korea wholesale arrests of
Organized workers are carried

tary atmosphere” of Marshall's
department.
The boast yas pretty hollow,

Dillon, Read banking house to-
gether. :
Secretary of the Army Ken-

4 group of Wall Street men, is
very frank on this point.
“. .. We talk a great deal about

iy, however. He soon turned up
in Vermont as head of the state

R, Hodges,
S0vernor.
In Greece the Truman

coming in,

the Soviet Union as
_ Stances permit.

_Soldier—not a diplomat.

that.

mits,

Russia” policy.

out by Lieutenant General John
America’s military

Drogram is run by army and navy
Personnel, while the guns keep

And in Moscow old Lieut. Gen-
®ral Walter B. (“Beetle”) Smith,
the envoy of the militarized state
department, gets as tough with
circum-

- General Smith was picked for
the Moscow embassy job as

Army and Navy Journal concedes
The General’s “Acquaint-
Meeship with dinlomatic chan-
_ ‘celileries is slight,” the semi-official
regan of the armed services ad-

Brass hat advisers of President
Truman (such as Five-Star Ad-
miral William D. Leahy, his chief
of staff, are constantly fanning
the fires of the’ “cet tough with

Leahy used to flaunt his pro-
fascist sentiments as ambassador

police.

Generals and admirals in the
diplomatic service are symbols
of America’s mailed fist. Thus
Lieut. General Albert C. Wede-
meyer took time out from his
regular army duties recently to
maneuver against the Commun-
ist-led forces in China in General
Marshall’s behalf.

Wedemeyer’s mere presence in
China was a token of the guns
to follow.*

eS

HE duties of other military

ambassadors are also not pri-
marily “diplomatic.”

The presence of General Frank
T. Hines in the American em-
bassy in Panama, for instance,

is a warning to the little Ameri-

can Republic not to _ protest
against US peace-time retention
of war-time bases. aa

The presence of Admiral Al
Kirk -in the American embassy
in Brussels is also hint to the
Belgians that American navies
are not far away.

And the assignment of that
tough, old Leatherneck, General

Holcomb, the former

however. Brig. General Lovett’s
title was a war baby decoration.
He won it when he left his desk
as a partner in Brown Bros.,
Harriman & Company for an
assistant sercretaryship of war
some years ago. :

The brass is pretty tinny also
in- the case of “General” Charles
Salzman, the assistant secretary
of state in charge of occupied
countries. Salzman’s brass was
stuck on when he left the vice-
presidency of the New. York.
Stock Exchange.

Washington has been full of
these “generals” and “admirals”
and “colonels” who won their
rank like the Pinafore lord of
the ‘admiralty who said, “Stay

close to your desk, never go to

sea, and you'll be the ruler of
the Queen’s Navy.”

Shoulder stars were won in
that way by Maj. General William
N. Draper, the present under-
sercretary of the army, who help-
ed the present secretary of de-
fense James V. Forrestal finance
German industry in the days
when they were partners in the

neth Royall, the North Carolina
banker-lawyer, is another desk
“general.”

But the present intensely mili-
tarist trend in government does
not come ‘from this kind of
titular brass.

It comes when old-time Army
and Navy career men take over
civilian jobs.

It comes when the driving seats
in a democracy are taken over
by men whose minds were mould-
ed in the autocratic atmosphere
of the officers’ caste.

Let’s have no illusions. A life-
time in the officers’ caste is the
worst possible training for a
leader of a republic, which must
be kept democratic if peace and
security are to prevail.

When the army comes in de-
mocracy goes out. a.

Whatever merits the army has
—democracy isn’t among them.

ENERAL WHisenhower, whose
candidacy for the presidency

is being pushed by former govy-
ernor Alf Landon of Kansas and

democratizing the army,” said
Eisenhower last January in an
address to a mayors’ conference
in Washington. “Now you do
not mean just that, because the
ultimate purpose of the army is
to provide a body at a particular
spot that can take an objective —
in the face of the most cruel
kind of danger. ‘
“In that situation,” the general —
‘continued, “you need an auto-
cratic government that is as
fierce and solid as any govern-
ment this world has ever known.”
That’s the US army as Eisen- —
hower sees it. It’s the army that
he spoke of last January before
his boom got under way, when

he said: “I belong to the army, _

and I intend to stay in the Army.”
This is the army in which the |
character of General Marshall ©

“was molded as well.

The air these generals breathed :
in their decades of service was —
net the same air that expanded

the democratic personalities of

Jefferson and Lincoln and Roose-
velts in the government today.
Not generals. oo

fo. Marshall Petain’s government
in Vichy. He has now become
*Tuman’s constant companion in
Intimate satherines en the presi-

Thomas

Commandant of the U.S. Marines,
as minister general to the Union
of South Africe, was a notice

‘Army and Navy Journal.
America’s “diplomacy

& five-star general

Tun in the past.

itself, One general,

Me the new

ington”

Ways stood for.”

. a

‘tek military trend in the gov-
“ernment that followed the-
- Geath of President Roosevelt has
been freauently hailed by the

' 4rmed power” were united when
(George C.
arshall) became secretary of
State, the Journal exclaimed.
Other army and navy men fol-
lowed Marshall into this decis-
lve, policy-making department,
Which civilian leaders had always

Some protest rose in the army
in fact,
-“aused a small scandal when he
Tesigned from the Marines this
Summer with a statment attack-
“assumption
Power hy the military in Wash-

“It am a military man, and
Prond of it.” said Brig. Gereral
Merritt A. Rdson as he sent in
his resienation, “but when we
reach the point where the mili-
_ ty are directing, instead of
_ Supporting, our country’s policies,
‘4 © are far along the road to
Sing what this country has al-

General Edison didn’t separate
‘Aimself from government entire-

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1947

dential yacht and ashore. ‘that the U.S. had definite mili-

tary interests in that part of
the world.

_ The US Army’s interest in the
fabulously rich oil lands of Saudi
Arabia were also reflected in pre-
Marshall days by the selection
of a retired colonel of Marines
as American envoy.

The colonel, William A. Eddy,
has since been called back by
Marshall to head the state de-
partment’s intelligence (spy) ser-
vice. He resigned from that
post last month.

It is easy for a former GI
to feel he is still in the army if,

he tries to see the sercretary of
state. General Marshall’s ap-
pointments are handled bv an-
other general—General Carter.
Other generals taking orders
from the secretarv of state in-
clnde General J. K. Crane of the
Office of Occuvied Countries, and

General Conrad ™. Snow of the

Office of Legal Adviser,
A string of colonels and maiors
also t#ke care of many admin-

istrative and leral duties.

Army and Navy Journal
gleefully remarked not long
aco that the annointment of
Robert Abercrombie Lovett, the
panker-vereral, 98 unAersecre-
tary of state “adds to the millf-

‘

; ‘|

O-ops big
By HAROLD CLAYDEN
= —STOCKHOLM
OOPERATION undoubted-
ly plays a very vital part in
the economic life of the Swedish

people. ee
' Through its 800,000 members
the -cooperative movement is
closely associated with more than
ene family in three of the popu-

lation. :

K.F. (Kooperation Forundet)
the national organzation which

links together 675 local societies, |

is responsible for the wholesale
and production enterprises, and
also for organising educational
and propaganda work, and gener-
al leadership of the movement.

To cite one or two examples. of
the high technical standards and
modern methods of the coopera-
tive movement, the clothing fac-
tory here uses a high-frequency
electric welding machine for
making garments. from plastic
materials. It was the only mach-
ine of its kind in the whole of
Sweden. le

At the porcelain factory at
Gustavsberg, with its huge elec-
tric travelling ovens, nearly 1,000

factor in Swedish life

workers produce (from Cornish
clay) all kinds of household china
and sanitary ware, and also an
art pottery known as Argenta
Ware, \

This is one of their own crea-
tions which has become famous
in many parts of the world,
and one of its unique features
is that its decorations are done
in silver by a special process
developed in the factory. ‘

It is perhaps not surprising to
find that the Stockholm co-op has
the largest bakery. in Sweden,

but to discover that it also con-

trols one of the biggest and most

attractive department stores
came as a pleasant surprise.
e

HE Swedish movement ap-
pears to hae gone into pro-
duction with the avowed object
of breaking the power of the
combines and smashing the prices
bolstered up by monopolies.

Luma, their huge modern elec-
sible, ~ and

tric lamp factory, is a classic ex-
ample. Its advent into the lamp
industry brought prices tumbling
down, and it now claims to be
the determining factor in the
fixing of lamp prices in Sweden.

Other industries have been >
tackled in the same bold, enter-
prising manner; its giant fluur
mills, cash-register organisations,
margarine factory, and huge
vegetable-oil mills, etc., have done

much to prevent the exploitation | ae

of the consumers, and to cramp

.the style of the combines.

-In the same way the move

ment has recently launched ak

attack on the monopoly which
was making linoleum, and sell-
ing it at very high prices. The |
cooperative linoleum factory is
already producing the desired
effect. ‘ f ;
The sale of cooperative produc-
tions is not, of course, confined —
to the cooperatives; Gustavsberg _
china, for instance, is in use in —
many hotels and restaurante. _

High dividends are not a feat-

ure of the Swedish cooperatives. oe

In fact, the average “divi” is in

-the region of three percent.

Prices are kept as low as pos-

fairly substantial

amounts are placed to reserve. _
The latest available figures

show that the reserve funds of _

the movement are very consider-

ably larger than its share capital.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 11