Senator ROBERTSON. You would not give the Secretary of National Defense the preparation of the budget estimates of the departments and agencies? Mr. WILSON. No, sir; I would not. I do not see how he could do it. Senator HILL. The budgets would have to be prepared down in the departments originally under each department? Mr. WILSON. Oh, yes. Senator BYRD. I was not here when you first began your statement, Mr. Wilson, but I heard you say this was too much power or too much work for that one man. What did that refer to? Mr. WILSON. I mean if he were going to be the out and out administrator of these three branches of the service, I just do not think one man can do it. I think the job is tremendous. Maybe I am looking at it as it was during wartime. Maybe it will be so simplified in peacetime that one man could do it. Certainly when an emergency comes, I feel sure he will not; nor do I think that even in peacetime we can get the most out of it by depending on this one administrator rather than on the experts that you would put in at the head of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. I think those are all specialized services, in my judgment, requiring the most expert investigation of requirements, administration, and procurement. I think they are all so specialized in their requirements, that just to throw them into one pot is a hopeless task, in my judgment. Senator BYRD. Well, do you favor the bill as it is? Mr. WILSON. As the bill is now and as I have learned about its operation by inquiry here and there, I think it meets the requirements of the situation very well. Senator BYRD. Have you read it and studied it? Mr. WILSON. Yes; I have read it and have tried to come to an understanding of it as best I can. Senator ROBERTSON. With those qualifications you have made? The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson, in preparing a budget for the General The CHAIRMAN. Then you have an operating president or executive vice president, maybe, who it is I do not know, but these operators of the different plants bring in their budget, I suspect, once a year or more often. Mr. WILSON. Once a year. The CHAIRMAN. Do they sometimes come in for an emergency budget and ask for more money? Mr. WILSON. Yes, frequently, especially in these days. The CHAIRMAN. As much as nine times a year? Mr. WILSON. No; not quite as much as that. The CHAIRMAN. I think we had nine here in Congress last year. However, the flow of requests comes from these operating vice presidents or engineers to one man. Mr. WILSON. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. He presents them to a board of directors; is that right? Mr. WILSON. That is right. That is the way it is operated in our company. I should not even mention our company in connection with the magnitude of the job you are considering here. It has to do with only a billion and a quarter dollars' worth of business a year. That is not very much in comparison. Senator BYRD. This is only 10 times as much as your company. Mr. WILSON. Even 10 times would make the job that much more difficult. As president of the outfit, I may be able to handle a billion and a quarter dollars' worth of business to meet our requirements, but I would not be foolish enough to think Senator BYRD. You have got to sell your product to pay for that. Mr. WILSON. And try to make a profit on it, too. However, what I was going to say is, we find it necessary even in that pretty small sphere in which we operate to divide our business up into six departments of our business, just because we know that otherwise the magnitude is too great to have it operate efficiently and in a fast-moving world. We have a vice president in charge of each of those departments, and we hold him just as I would hold the Secretary of the Army or the Secretary of the Navy responsible, and give him the commensurate authority in the operation of each of these six businesses of ours. The same thing is true with our subsidiary companies where we have a president of each of the subsidiary companies, and we give them the authority and hold them responsible. They bring in their budgets to me, and it is my job to get them money or turn them down, whichever it happens to be, to operate. I think the magnitude of this dictates something at least as diversified and with an organizational set-up not dissimilar if it is going to be successful. Senator BYRD. These vice presidents are entirely responsible for the administration of these various departments? Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. Senator ROBERTSON. You have nothing to do with the administration. Mr. WILSON. I do not try to administer. I am responsible for the policy and the coordination of the whole thing. Senator HILL. You give them the policy, and then they administer under your policy? Mr. WILSON. That is right, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson, from a national security angle, you have been spending, as you said 6 months with this training problem as a member of the President's Commission. Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. So you are not without some late information on the whole over-all security problem. How do you value the necessity of setting up a board responsible for the stock piling of materials and minerals? Mr. WILSON. I think both from what I have heard of present conditions and from experience with the same subject during the war when we suffered greatly by not having done that prior to 1941, I would certainly recommend it most highly. The CHAIRMAN. And a research and development board along the same line? Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. You do not know it, but I was chairman of the committee that studied this question of research and development for the Army and Navy. I think it began in 1944, and it made certain recommendations which have not been adopted. The CHAIRMAN. The recommendations have not been adopted? Mr. WILSON. I think not, although I think the sort of a set-up you propose in your bill very closely parallels the recommendations that this committee that I had the pleasure of serving made to you. I think that that is almost a "must," sir, with the kind of wars that we may face in the future. It seems to me it is a "must" and it is an economy also that should not be lost sight of, because there is a vast duplication of research even today as between the services. I think great economies can be effected by having that sort of a group and parceling out the job in research and development in new weapons, and so on. I think that is a "must." The CHAIRMAN. Do you recall the membership of that Board that made this recommendation? Mr. WILSON. Yes. We had Army and Navy representatives, those men from the Army and Navy who were in charge of research. I am ashamed to tell you I cannot remember all the names. We had Dr. Compton and Dr. Jewett. It was a body of about 20 all together. There were a number of scientists who assisted in the considerations, and we finally came up with a recommendation not dissimilar at all to what you have in this bill. Senator ROBERTSON. In your own set-up, Mr. Wilson, do these vice presidents who are in charge of the various divisions act as directors? Mr. WILSON. No. Senator ROBERTSON. They do not sit in on your board of directors? Mr. WILSON. No; they do not. If you are interested, we believe in the scheme of a board of directors of our peers in our company, and we only have two employees of the company who are actually directors. We have other outside directors to get the benefit of their operational knowledge, but we have for practical purposes what constitutes two boards of directors from within the company. We have an operating.committee which is like the average board of directors in many companies. That operating committee is made up of the vice presidents who operate each of these big departments of our business. They draw in such assistance as they need from others, but they meet once a month just as a board of directors would. They direct the over-all operations of the company. Then we have an advisory committee which is made up of all the officers of the company, as well as these six operating vice presidents. They meet on a general consideration of the over-all problems of the company, finance and research all being represented on this over-all advisory body. These two bodies, the operating committee and the advisory committee, are the bodies that come up with the recommendations which, through the President, go to the board of directors monthly. Seantor HILL. How often does your top board meet? Mr. WILSON. Once a month. Senator HILL. It meets once a month, too? Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Áre there any further questions? If not, Mr. Wilson, we appreciate your coming down. Thank you for the time you have given us. The committee will stand in recess until tomorrow at 10 o'clock. (Thereupon, at 11:45 a. m., the committee recessed, to reconvene Wednesday, May 7, 1947, at 10 a. m.) UNIFICATION OF THE ARMED SERVICES WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1947 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10:15 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, in room 212, Senate Office Building, Senator Chan Gurney (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Gurney (chairman), Robertson of Wyoming, Saltonstall, Tydings, Byrd, and Hill.. Also present: Senators McCarthy and Lodge. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. There will first appear an editorial written in the New York Times of Tuesday, May 6. (The editorial is as follows): No clearer exposition of the case for unification of the armed services of the United States has been made than that by Henry L. Stimson in his letter to Senator Gurney, published in this newspaper Sunday. Although twice a Secrétary of War, Mr. Stimson's bona fides as a farsighted American are too well established to make possible the charge of partisanship in his case. He always did his own thinking as a Government official. He is not now a spokesman for the generals or for any other proponent or opponent of unification, but for himself-and also for the American people. Mr. Stimson punctures with logic many balloons of opposition. He correctly defines what is meant by the economy that unification would bring, the economy of effort, and not of dollars only. Dollars are relatively unimportant in war. Human and material resources are not. The $25,000,000 that the Navy spent to build on a bleak Aleutian island an airfield that duplicated Army facilities was picayune among the billions that the war cost. The effort of the men who labored there, however, was something else. The cost could not be counted in dollars of the misunderstandings that resulted because of divided tactical command of the Seventh and Third Fleets in the battle for Leyte Gulf-the one under MacArthur, the other under Nimitz. Had the Japanese taken advantage of the situation, it could have prolonged the war. The kernel of Mr. Stimson's argument for passage of the unification bill now before Congress is the quotation he gives from testimony 3 years ago to the select committee of Congress. "I would like to stress," Mr. Stimson said then, and restates now, "as a major point, the importance of considering this organization of the armed forces from the standpoint of fundamentals rather than details. If the basic plan of centralization can be determined upon, hundreds of vexing problems will fall into proper perspective. They will lose much of their controversial aspect and be decided as matters of specific planning rather than of primary policy." We would add our plea to that of Mr. Stimson, that Congress act promptly on this matter. We believe with him that "among the many large and difficult questions which face the Eightieth Congress I know of none that has a greater or more lasting significance than this issue of the organization of the armed services." The CHAIRMAN. We will also insert in the record at this point another editorial which appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, dated May 1. |