But if you are going to subordinate the three to one super-Secretary, one man with the powers as set forth here, then, to safeguard the individual services, I think we have got to write definite restrictions.

I think when this committee gets down to the approach, Mr. Chairman, you can either take one course of action or the other.

I am ready and willing for unification to take place. As Senator Tydings has said, I am not for a merger, but I am for unification. I have not found out yet what each of them stands for, and I have asked all of the top military authorities of the country each day as they appeared here.

No one has told me, exactly.

But you must either adopt one approach or the other. You should have, at least, Mr. Chairman, a change made whereby you would eliminate the super-Secretary and put the general administration in a top board of three, which will coordinate all these activities, and then we can give way on many of these minor matters.

But if you are going to keep that, which I am not in favor of doing, then I want to personally see as many restrictions and safeguards written into this bill as possible, to protect the country against what are not merely possibilities, but probabilities, which may destroy the effectiveness of our armed services.

Senator TYDINGS. I think it is wise that we write every restriction we can to see that each one of the three services is protected, so that it will have its full say, and so that no one can short-circuit it.

I am fully in accord with that.

It may even be wise to eliminate the Secretary of National Defense. But outside of that civilian phase of it, I do not see how anyone can object to the unification of the services in the general form in which it is proposed here.

I think if we could get that behind us and dwell on the point in controversy, we would make real progress.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the purpose of these hearings: to find out just how the services should be unified.

Senator ROBERTSON. Is there not in existence today what is known as the Committee of Three, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, who are supposed to meet once a week and exchange views whereby the Armed Forces are kept in constant touch with the international situation?

Admiral SHERMAN. Yes, sir.

At the risk of answering a question which has not been asked me directly, I would like to give my understanding of the word "unification," and the word "merger."

Senator BRIDGES. I would be delighted to have you do that.

Admiral SHERMAN. "Merger" to me means a single department; which, as I said yesterday, I would not agree to. And "unification," means getting the services together as closely as possible, while maintaining the autonomy and integrity of the Navy Department; which I believe in.

The CHAIRMAN. Maintaining the autonomy not only of the Navy Department, but of the other two services?

Admiral SHERMAN. Yes, sir.

Ethically, you have to give all three the same status.

Senator BRIDGES. I believe in unification as you have defined it there. But if we could agree here, and then have the thing headed

up by an equal representation of the Air Force and the Navy and the Army, I think we might get somewhere.

Senator TYDINGS. To what extent could you unify the services withcut the Secretary of National Defense? Would it be a feasible operation from a civilian standpoint as well as from a military standpoint to unify these three services in the fashion we have done in this bill, without the superstructure of the civilian Secretary of National Defense?

Admiral SHERMAN. I think, sir, to accomplish that, it would necessitate the President of the United States, who would then be the only common superior, giving a very large amount of time to these problems. Because he then would be the only common superior.

Senator BRIDGES. Let me ask you two or three things right in that connection, Admiral.

My first one is that I agree with you on unification, but I say that in this bill you do not have unification, because when you have your top Secretary, your super-Secretary, you put one man over it all, and you immediately have a merger.

If you still, when you get to the top, have equal authority, you have unification.

But when you put the top man in authority over all three, then I think you step into the merger field.

Now, I am perfectly willing for the President of the United States, in connection with this top council of national defense, to have a deputy, who can sit in at the meetings and be the personal representative of the President. I think that would be perfectly proper.

What I object to is the super-Secretary and the tremendous powers that he has over the three.

I think that if we had an over-all discussion here, Mr. Chairman, some day, among the committee and among the people who are closely concerned, we might be able to iron out our differences fairly effectively.

The CHAIRMAN. That opportunity will come, of course.

In the meantime, I think it is a good idea to get in as much evidence as possible.

Senator Tydings?

Senator TYDINGS. The main fear, as I understand it, as to the three services operating under a single Secretary of National Defense stems from the fact that financial matters, particularly will be involved. That, of course, is something which is essential to operation of an efficient Army, Navy, or Air Force: They must have money.

Therefore, one budget might be cut to the advantage of some other branch of the service. And in order to circumvent that very proper objection, provision is made here so that access to the President can be had when it is appropriate.

Very frankly, there is much in what Senator Bridges says that I agree with. I would feel, if I were the Secretary of the Navy, for example, and the Secretary of National Defense did something that was adverse to the Navy, a tremendous reluctance in more or less going over his head, even if the law gave me the right to go to the President directly and say, "If you do what is proposed here, you are going to throw our whole balance of fleet operations out of line; we will have more battleships than we need for the number of destroyers, and less destroyers than we need for the number of battleships."

That is just an example of what might happen.

But there does not seem to be any perfect solution for that that I have been able to find, and I want to ask you this question:

Do you know of any better way that we can unify these services and at the same time protect the three services against what might be called top discrimination from the Secretary of National Defense, than the way we tried it, the way we attempted to do it in this bill? What are other alternatives, if any? Let us put it that way.

Admiral SHERMAN. Well, there has been the suggestion as to the Presidential Deputy. I heard the suggestion at one time that the Vice President should take the job on. But others have said that the Vice President has other things to do.

Then there was the thought, as it was proposed at one point last year, that there be a coordinator, who would be the servant of the council instead of the director of the council.

I personally felt that he would be in rather an impossible situation. This thing has been talked over rather extensively, and I think that the agreement that was finally reached between the Secretary of the Navy and Mr. Symington, who was acting for the Secretary of War at that time, was to have a Secretary of National Defense, whose powers, to describe him loosely, would be powers of the President, powers now belonging to the President, which would be exercised by this official, under the direction of the President, but with full time in which to do it. And that has been my concept throughout; that this Secretary of National Defense was, in effect, a deputy to the President who, under the direction of the President, and with these safeguards would carry on work which the President does not have the time to do adequately under peacetime conditions.

Senator TYDINGS. Was it assumed that if you did not have this top man over the three Departments, so to speak, the unification would not be complete?

Admiral SHERMAN. Well, we felt that we would not have anyone who could terminate disagreements, who could, when a controversy over a particular question developed, bring about the end of the controversy.

And when three Departments are concerned, we have to have some. one who will resolve differences so that they will not drag on and build up.

A disagreement settled early in the game usually is inconsequential. It is a disegreement which lasts many months which becomes significant.

Senator TYDINGS. I take it, then, from your answer, that the alternative was, if you did not have this umpire, so to speak, at the top, that a great deal of the spirit of the whole unification process would not be accomplished, because there would be a time of disagreement between the three services which would go on and fester and build up; and that, therefore, it would be better to have an over-all man, with certain safeguards, so that you could have access to the President to settle these disputes, rather than to keep the three Departments as they were, without the over-all supervision.

Admiral SHERMAN. To digress for a moment, the Research and Development Board, which is a very important Board at this time, is headed by Dr. Bush.

Now, Dr. Bush has been given power of decision as between the services in that field. It has been delegated to him by the two Secretaries.

Since they could not settle these matters themselves, he is given the power of decision, as long as he holds that office.

A similar arrangement exists with respect to Mr. Deupree, who heads the Army and Navy Munitions Board.

So, in those two instances there was recognized the fact that there had to be some civilian who was neutral in order to make decisions and get on with business.

Senator BRIDGES. As to Senator Tydings' question here, he says to use the word "umpire."

Now, if we had an umpire at the top over these three services, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, I would have no quarrel. But, instead of that, we have a czar.

Senator TYDINGS. An umpire is a czar.

Senator BRIDGES. Well, an umpire may be that, but he does not have over-all supervision to run the departments.

Senator TYDINGS. I do not think he has here. Certainly I would not want to give him over-all supervision over these three departments. As I visualize the operation of this bill, Admiral, the Secretary of the Navy would go ahead and run the Navy pretty much as he does now, and the Air Force the same, and the Army the same.

After a while, it might be found that one of the three branches is pursuing a policy that is contrary to the policy pursued by the other two.

Now, your resort, under present law, would be to go to the President, take his time, explain the dispute, and ask him to give you a decision.

Under the new set-up, you would all run these departments just as you are doing now, but you would go first to the Secretary of National Defense, or he would anticipate it, and say, "Cut out this, Navy," or "Cut out this, Army," or "Do it this way, Navy," or "Do it this way, Army."

Now, if you felt that the Secretary of National Defense, in cutting out any one of the procedures that had been followed by a department, was acting inimically to the welfare of the service, over all, and particularly the branch that was discriminated against, let us say, then the Secretary of the Navy would go to the President. And he would say, "Look here; we have been doing so-and-so. The Army and the Air Force have been doing the opposite. We have just got the order not to do that any more. Well, if we do not do that, such-and-such a thing will happen. And we would like to appeal this matter from the Secretary of National Defense to you, because we believe we are right. But, of course, whatever you decide will be final."

So you have really got two umpires. You have got a preliminary umpire, whose decision stands provided that the big umpire does not overrule him. But you have always got, as you have now, the same access to the big umpire.

Is that a fair statement?

Admiral SHERMAN. That is a fair statement, added to which-and very important to me, because I have taken part in the presentation of some of these matters to the President a Secretary of National

Defense on an important matter might be able to give you two or three consecutive days to really go over it.

The President of the United States has a great many other problems. That is the difficulty.

Senator BRIDGES. The other main trouble with Senator Tydings' argument is that when the first umpire acted, if you disputed the first umpire's decision two or three times, you would be out of the game before you got up to the top.

Senator TYDINGS. I do not know about that. I might put the umpire out of the game, if I found him wrong. I would say, "Mr. President, you had better get another umpire. He will ruin the situation. I think such-and-such a situation should be viewed with tremendous gravity."

And the President might say, "I am sorry, Bill. I think you had better go back to Keokuk, Iowa, or wherever it was, and rest a while, and let me put another man in there."

Senator BRIDGES. There is no sense in predicting, but I would venture to say that if you adopt such a bill as this one here, and you go into any serious situation, the identity of the Secretary of the Air Force, the Secretary of the Army, or the Secretary of the Navy will be tremendously subordinated to this top man. He will be the whole show, and if they buck him, they will be out on their ears. That is what I am afraid of. And the chairman, and every member of this committee, I know, want to do the right thing.

We may approach it a little differently. But I want to safeguard these services, and I do not want someone to ruin them. You have to trust somebody and I will trust, as far as possible, the President of the United States, because he is Commander in Chief in time of emergency.

The CHAIRMAN. We have gotten far afield from the Munitions Board, and I would like to get back to that.

If we can conclude the teestimony of the Admiral this morning, it will be quite a step in getting along with the bill.

Senator HILL. As for the Munitions Board, the Eberstadt Report recommended that this chairman be given the power of decision. I think that is true.

Admiral SHERMAN. Although the percentage and dollar savings on some items may be small in time of peace, in time of great spending during war, these small percentage savings will add up to important dollar savings.

Important savings are made now by procurement procedures such as the purchase of nearly all food by the Army, nearly all small arms, field guns, and their ammunition by the Army, and almost all of the oil by the Navy.

You will notice the provisions for the pay of the Chairman of the Munitions Board is to be $50 a day, and not to exceed a top figure of $14,000 a year. We wanted that arrangement so that it would be possible for the Chairman to be a business executive and with outside interests, who might not be able to give full time to this duty in time of

peace.

Section 114 continues the existing Joint Research and Development Board, formerly called the Office of Scientific Research and Development, with one major difference. The Secretaries of War and Navy