The Pittsburgh Press (May 16, 1941)
WE ARE DOING HITLER’S JOB FOR HIM
American boys may soon be called on to die so that American goods can reach England.
Secretary of Navy Frank Knox told the nation a few weeks ago:
We cannot allow our goods to be sunk. Having gone thus far, we can only go on. Hitler cannot allow our war supplies and food to reach England – he will be defeated if they do. We cannot allow our goods to be sunk in the Atlantic – we shall be beaten if they are.
But they ARE being sunk, steadily and in vast and growing quantities – not in the Atlantic, but within our own borders.
While fleets of them are being sunk, not by Germans but by Americans.
They are being sunk by strikes called during a national emergency. They are not going to the British; neither are they going to the boys training in our Army camps or preparing for the likely duty of battling German submarines and bombers to get our goods across the seas. If war comes, many of those boys will die without a chance because they lack the weapons that have been torpedoed on American soil.
The time has come to face this strike situation squarely – and to tell England and our own people the truth. If present conditions are allowed to continue, then that truth is that we cannot give England the aid we have promised nor can we properly equip the boys we have drafted, because strikes won’t permit it. Whether these strikes are due to union leaders or employers is beside the point.
Figures compiled by Edward F. McGrady, labor consultant of the War Department, show that more than 1,700,000 man-days have been lost this year through strikes in plants producing for the Army. Based on typical government estimates, these man-days would have produced 40,000 Garand rifles, 1,000 completely-armed light tanks, 200 Curtiss-Wright pursuit planes, 100 training planes, 3,000 50-caliber machine guns, 500 75-millimeter gun carriages and 30,000 anti-aircraft shells.
The April coal strike reduced steel production by an estimated 370,000 tins of ingots – enough to build 12 battleships or 8,000 medium tanks – and now a new coal trike is threatened.
Suppose a fleet carrying those supplies had just been sunk off our shores. Is there any doubt that such an act would cause those npw flirting with the idea of convoys to drop their camouflage and go all-out for the use of our navy to protect future shipments?
But they have been sunk on American soil, yet those who wouldn’t risk boys’ lives to guard them will not risk the anger of a few labor politicians.
If Britain falls, whether or not we enter the war, Hitler will dominate Europe, Asia and Africa – and perhaps South America. The slave labor of three-quarters of the globe will be turned to the task of beating American industry and labor.
If Hitler succeeds in his dream of world empire, what will happen to American unions then?
If you have any doubt, ask the labor leaders of France – who indulged in the luxury of strikes when their country was trying to arm. Ask the workers of England, who are toiling seven days a week, 10 and 12 hours a day, to make the weapons that weren’t made when there was time.
Union men and their sons – thousands upon thousands of them – are in the camps today, training for war. Ask them if they have enough rifles, enough machine guns, enough tanks, enough anti-tank guns, enough anti-aircraft guns, enough ammunition to practice shooting – enough of anything.
Infantrymen are still drilling without rifles. Only a few boys have the new Garand rifle; most of them have weapons declared obsolete. Old World War 75’s are being fired in artillery practice – if there is enough ammunition on hand for practice. Our camps are without anti-aircraft guns and virtually without tanks. We haven’t enough planes even to train an air force of the size we have been talking about – let alone fighters and bombers. If by some miracle, we got those much-discussed 50,000 planes overnight, we wouldn’t have enough pilots to fly them, not enough facilities to train the pilots, not enough airfields on which to land them.
This is our situation as we stand on the brink of war – was against the greatest mechanized power the world ever saw.
Those boys on our ships and in our camps will die – without a chance – as boys died on the beaches at Dunkirk and on the plains of Holland and on the mountainsides of Greece and Norway, if Hitler attacks us and we do not have equipment to match his.
Equipment that is being torpedoed on American soil.
Mr. President, why take us to task for not appreciating the gravity of the situation – while this goes on? Why warn that we are not doing enough for Britain – while this lasts?
It doesn’t require a torpedo or a bomb to sink American supplies. A defense strike can don it just as effectively and with less noise.