SIZE OF AMERICAN ARMY.

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 242, 14 October 1942, Page 3

SIZE OF AMERICAN ARMY.

PRODUCTION MANPOWER PROBLEM.

P.A. Gable.

NEW YORK, Oct. 11.

America's man-power situation has reached the point where a decision must soon be made about the sizs of the fighting army, said Mr Donald Nelson, head of the War Production Board, at a Press conference. He declined to discuss the probable maximum strength, but said that an' army of 10,000,000 men was not out of the picture. He added : " We can equip 10,000,000 men and keep them supplied with food, munitions, and replacements." The New York Times Washington correspondent says that the size of the United States Army is undetermined, but that if it is 10,000,000 or 13,000,000, both of which figures have been mentioned, then a very great diminuation of the outward flow of lend and lease supplies is inevitable. There is a limit to American capacity to produce. "Now that the British have reached what may be saturation point in manpower and the United States must provide the remainder required for the final victories on land," says the correspondent, ''there has arisen at home the problem of equipment, the solution of which is equally vital to the Allies and ourselves." Asserting that he had not a shadow of doubt about the outcome of the war, Mr Summer Welles, UnderSecretary of State, said at Boston that the surest way to ensure the defeat of Hitler was to assist Russia at the earliest possible moment, whether by arms and equipment, "or by means of a diversion of the German armies through creating a new theatre of operations." Mr Welles said the havoc and devastation caused by the R.A.F. raids on Germany were crippling war plant, munition factories, shipyards, and railways.- The raids have gravely hampered the German effort to maintain earlier levels of war production.