ARMY & NAVY
(See front cover)
The month of Mars, 1935, could be set down positively last week by historians as the moment when the Great Powers frankly abandoned all the hopes and pretenses of the post-War peace period and openly squared away to rearm. With only two exceptions, "national defense" is each government's official reason for rearming, but that does not alter the exciting spectacle of seven major nations simultaneously girding themselves to fight, on land as well as at sea.
¶ Japan's and Italy's military expansions are least exciting because their motives are most obvious. Their plans for Manchuria and Abyssinia have been accepted by the world as their own respective businesses.
¶ Red Russia has practically doubled her world's largest standing Army from a half-million to nearly a million men (TIME, Feb.11).
¶ France's 1935 defense budget of $792,000,000 is the hugest peacetime appropriation in her history. And last week the Chamber of Deputies upped the Army conscript period from 12 to 18 and 24 months for the next five years while the lean "War Baby" classes are being called to the colors.
¶ England made her rearmament move, after long reluctance, in last fortnight's determined White Paper (see p. 21).
¶ And last week Adolf Hitler, casting to the winds his last semblance of obedience to the Treaty of Versailles, calling for a German conscript Army of half a million men (see p. 20), set all Europe seething with the most real war talk in 21 years.
$755,000,000, U. S. citizens could know for sure last week what their Government is going to do about Rearmament. With several minor alterations, the Senate passed the House's bill of appropriations for the War Department and the bill went to conference, whence it would soon emerge for final passage and the President's signature. Carrying some $400,000,000, all but $50,000,000 for the Army, it is the biggest U. S. armaments expenditure since 1921. And, barring the possibility of the passage of an amendment sponsored by Senator Borah prohibiting the use of work relief money for rearmament, coupled to it will be some $405,000,000 from the Public Works Administration, to be spent in 36 states on Army buildings, repairs, Air Corps, mechanization and motorization. As in the case of England, most of these vast expenditures will represent the rehabilitation of war machinery that was allowed to run down during the peace-tuned 1920's. To the man responsible for obtaining such big figures, and for spending the money when voted, the 1935 Army budget represents a personal triumph and a national insurance policy.
Holdover Chief. Every year since he became Chief of Staff in 1930, General Douglas MacArthur had vainly pleaded for funds to build the military establishment up to what he considered minimum requirements. Just as success seemed about to come to him, his four-year tour of duty, fixed by law, ran out last November. By an unprecedented executive order, President Roosevelt continued General MacArthur in office indefinitely to help Secretary of War Dern press the Army's "modernization" plans before Congress.