how many people do you actually have engaged in maintenance and operation of these graveyards? I notice in your Paris office alone you have in the neighborhood of 60 people under both programs. What in the world could you do with 60 people in your Paris office? Certainly none of those 60 are engaged in the maintenance of cemeteries.

General NORTH. We have this work of maintaining records of graves for both programs, 125,000 graves. As I recall it, there are three girls doing that and part of the time of one of our men employees.

In order to do maintenance and repairs, we have to do it by contract. Those contracts have to be prepared in two languages, one for the Comptroller General's office and one for the contractors. That takes time. In addition, they have to prepare payrolls; they have to handle the social-security legislation of France. The finance work is a terrific burden on us. And from time to time we have to render reports of automobiles, and recently we filled out a thing half an inch thick on our methods of procuring personnel for one of the congressional committees. Just making out reports takes a lot of our time.

Mr. THOMAS. That is a lot of people 60 people.

General NORTH. Yes, sir; but what you have here is construction. Mr. THOMAS. Thirty of them are on construction-26.1 of them are on what you denominate as regular salaries and expenses. Under the construction program, you have an officer in charge, four-tenths of 1; then you have 4.5 United States Army assistants; you have a man called an architect, another man called an architect, an engineering aide, an accounting clerk and 2 engineering aides, an assistant supply clerk, a draftsman, and 18 others. That is only the construction program. And this is all in your Paris office, where you have 60 people.

General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. THOMAS. There you have an officer in charge and 2.5 United States Army assistants. There is a Chief, Maintenance and Records; an administrative assistant; a supply clerk; an account clerk; an architect; an inspector; 2 clerk-stenographers; a planting expert; an assistant accounting clerk; a file clerk; a draftsman; and others which you lump in here, 11 others. Those are in your Paris office.

MEUSE-ARGONNE CEMETERY

Still talking about maintenance, at your Meuse-Argonne Cemetery you have 1 superintendent; 2 assistant superintendents; and 26 laborers.

General NORTH. We cut them down to 26, sir.

OISE-AISNE CEMETERY

Mr. THOMAS. At the Oise-Aisne Cemetery you have 1 superintendent, 1 assistant superintendent, and 12 laborers.

SUPERVISORY PERSONNEL

What part of that entire personnel of 566 here is actually labor doing the work of maintenance and care and operation of your

cemeteries? At each one of your cemeteries you have a superintendent and an assistant superintendent. Those superintendents have a very difficult job. I imagine the assistant has a very difficult job, too. General NORTH. May I answer that one question first, sir?

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, sir.

General NORTH. Visitors to the cemetery require, or at least they imply a requirement, that the person meeting them shall be an American. By the Congress' own action they are on a 40-hour week. I have done my best to try to get those people to realize that they should not be on a 40-hour week, but that is the law. There is nothing I can do about it. We have to have one replacing the other over the week end. There is the requirement for two although actually in our World War I cemeteries we do not have two superintendents except for about three of these cemeteries. The same thing goes for the labor. They are on a 44-hour week, I believe.

Mr. PHILLIPS. What is the ordinary workweek in France?
General NORTH. The French is 44 hours, sir.

The superintendent's job in the World War I cemetery is the supervision of this labor. We have to keep the places clean, the headstones washed, the lawns cut and raked. We have to maintain those structures in an immaculate condition.

As I say, in response to this recent cut last fall we have cut the maintenance on the World War II cemeteries. We cut it on all of them.

PARIS OFFICE

Mr. THOMAS. General, you have about 60 people in your Paris office, and yet your total employment in that area is quite small. General NORTH. Sir, nothing is closer to my heart than keeping down our overhead. I myself have gone into that thoroughly.

Mr. THOMAS. You have a supervisory force, putting it at a minimum, of 12% to 15 percent. That is considerably out of line. General NORTH. For construction, sir?

Mr. THOMAS. I am talking about the Paris office. You have about 60 there. You have 30.9 for construction and 26.1 for maintenance and operation. You have a total employment, the biggest figure, including the District of Columbia, of 566. Despite that you have 6 people in your Paris office over there, which figures out almost 15 percent supervisory personnel.

In addition to that, each one of your cemeteries has two managers or superintendents. It looks to me like you are top heavy on supersion and management. Could you not consolidate your Paris peranel here? Just because you are carrying on two operations is no Pason in the world why those people could not commingle their forts and cut down the Paris operations about 50 percent.

General NORTH. Mr. Chairman, they are as a matter of fact doubng their efforts, but in order to prepare a statement for you we make war estimate of who does what. Many of them are working on both Construction and maintenance.

It is my considered opinion, based upon long experience, that this overhead in Paris is not excessive, sir; it is low.

Mr. THOMAS. General, we are going to have to disagree with you. We respect your opinion, but that is out of line. There is no business on earth which conducts its affairs like this.

You have less than 400 people over there. How many people doe this Paris office supervise, anyway, for construction and maintenance General NORTH. Well, it supervises the imposed ceiling of 450 less that number.

Mr. THOMAS. You mean, this is your big office? It covers all you operations?

General NORTH. No, sir. It supervises less than that. It super vises three hundred odd.

Mr. THOMAS. Three-hundred-odd. How many?

General NORTH. Plus 30 or 40 or 50 contractors.

Mr. THOMAS. Let us say 350, then?

General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. THOMAS. You have 60 people doing the supervising. What do your 19 or 20 people in the District of Columbia do? General NORTH. Several of them, sir, are preparing the data to g on headstones, and other things.

Mr. THOMAS. In other words, if you include these you have abou 18 to 19 percent pure supervision in your Paris office. Your super visory force is at least 18 or 19 percent, and in addition there are two supervisors at each one of your cemeteries in that area. When you add it all up, you have actual supervision in the Paris area of around 22 or 23 percent of your total employment.

General NORTH. We do not have two superintendents at each cemetery, sir, but only in part of them do we have two superintendents In general, that is true, sir; but I believe I have not made clear that they are supervising not only the maintenance of what I have already described as a scale reduced to below that which we believe is desirable, but also supervising construction going on at 15 different places At one of those places alone we had 21 contractors working simultaneously; and at other places the number is going up to the same level. Those fellows are supervising the spending of the funds which you appropriate to us. If they neglect it the Government loses.

Mr. THOMAS. Yes; that is true, but I am still saying that your supervisory personnel is far in excess of what it ought to be. You are spending most of your money here for salaries and expenses and not for the maintenance and operation of graveyards. You are spending it for supervisory personnel.

BREAKDOWN OF PERSONNEL

What part of this Paris personnel is French and what part is American, in both programs?

Colonel SHAW. Ten out of the twenty-six maintenance personnel in the Paris office, sir, are Americans.

USE OF COUNTERPART FUNDS

Mr. PHILLIPS. I have wanted to ask you if we have ever explored, or if there has ever been any discussion at all, about the use of counterpart funds for these memorials.

General NORTH. Yes, sir. We have explored it first on our own initiative; secondly, at the suggestion of Senator Maybank; and, thirdly, at the suggestion of General Marshall; and we find that we get just nowhere with it.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Is it resistance on the part of the French, or is it sistance on the part of the ECA?

General NORTH. It is discouragement on the part of the ECA and he State Department, to whom we have also gone for opinion. I Bave also been to the Treasury Department for opinion.

Mr. PHILLIPS. I would just say in passing that it would seem to me to be equally as good an object for the expenditure of our money as to bild a very large and expensive office building and then rent it back to the ECA to live in, at a cost of the American taxpayers' dollars. I would think that this sort of use would certainly be as desirable as what we are spending the money for now.

General NORTH. I have made that point, sir.

CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM

Mr. PHILLIPS. We have spoken about this question of delay, in connection with the chairman's question. Do you want to expand That statement at all as to our present difficulties in getting con

tractors?

General NORTH. No, sir; except to repeat what I have said: That the situation is now easing. We have no trouble in getting contractors to bid on our work now.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Knowing the situation abroad, do you consider that those prices and bids are good bids, and advantageous to us?

General NORTH. Yes, sir. I will even elaborate on that. Time and again I throw them out if I do not think they are good for the Government; which in part explains some of our delay. I will not let the Government be cheated if I can help it.

Mr. PHILLIPS. I can confirm that from watching your investigaons of material.

TURN-OVER OF PERSONNEL

What is the present turn-over in your general force? I refer to your American employees and not the French nationals.

Colonel SHAW. I have no figures on it, but there is very little turnover among our Americans.

General NORTH. I do not recall of anyone this year, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Let me ask you this: Have you had any turn-over r. these superintendents at the cemeteries?

General NORTH. In the current year, no, sir.

Colonel SHAW. I recall only one change since the end of the war. Mr. PHILLIPS. Have you any men in training on what I would call apprentice system, which you had? Have you any men in trainP now; or have you completed that?

General NORTH. At this moment, sir, we have none to my knowl

RESPONSIBILITY FOR CARE OF CEMETERIES

Mr. PHILLIPS. I would like to come back to a question we discussed year; and that refers to the time when you acquired responsibility the cemeteries. I still feel that that is a matter which the legislaWe committee of this Congress should take cognizance of.

You acquire responsibility long after a war is ended, and only when "- Army Quartermaster turns the cemeteries over to you?

93850-52-pt. 1-2

General NORTH. That is right, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. He does not do it as long as there is any chance o moving a body in a cemetery. That means that you now have super vision over all of them?

General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. But how long has it been since you acquired super vision over the last of the lot?

General NORTH. Seven months, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Only 7 months ago?
General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Which is almost 6 years after the end of the war?
General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. That is the first time that you have had responsi bility over all the cemeteries?

General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. I think this committee could perhaps well recommend that something be done about that, if we are headed for another war

WAGE DIFFERENTIAL IN FOREIGN SERVICE

As to your wage differential, between nationals of the countries in which we have the memorials and Americans working in those countries, do you pay the nationals on the basis of the wage scales of our country, or of their country?

General NORTH. So far as labor is concerned, sir, it is on the basis of the wage scales of their country. So far as office personnel is concerned, we pay them a little higher, enough to attract them to us, but nowhere near the pay which is given to Americans. By that, I am referring to similar people working side by side. A foreign clerk may get no more than one-half of what the American would get.

REDUCTION MADE UNDER SECTION 1214

Mr. PHILLIPS. You mention in your justification a reduction which applies to you, of approximately 15 percent as compared to an average of approximately 10 percent in the general reduction made by this Appropriations Committee-not this subcommittee but the general Appropriations Committee. Why did you get a greater reduction than the average?

General NORTH. That was the application of this ceiling of 450 oversea employees, sir, which is an arbitrary figure. It just hurt us. Mr. PHILLIPS. An arbitrary figure in our bill?

General NORTH. Yes, sir.

Colonel SHAW. I beg your pardon, sir. That went in the supplemental bill.

Mr. PHILLIPS. That is why I did not identify it when I read your justification.

Colonel SHAW. Yes, sir.

Mr. PHILLIPS. I did not remember that we had made an arbitrary figure like that.

Colonel SHAW. No, sir; you had not done that, sir.