this particular commission needed to be widened out to embrace other phases of national security as well as purely military.

As it stands now the Board includes the Secretary of State, the National Resources Board Chairman, and I forget the technical title of the other the four members from the forces. It would seem to me that certain fundamentals of economics ought to be represented on that Commission, because the Nation is in as much jeopardy from economic overstrain as it is from military destruction. I was in hopes that the composition of the Council would be widened out; with more representation for the economics side.

Senator GURNEY. The old bill gave the President wider authority, and gave him powers at his option to place any Secretary, any member of the Cabinet, on the Board or on the Council, or the Research and Development Board man or the Munitions Board man-they are civilians.

I am very much concerned. My idea of the Security Council was that it meant when we got in trouble that Council should be composed of men that could defend the United States, just as we have a police force in every city, and to let them know what was coming. We provided that the Secretary of State should be the top man of the Boardnot the top man, but he should be there and sort of advise the military what they were up against, and then, not just the military men either; we wanted the Council completely advised by the Resources Board on manpower, industrial capacity, agricultural capacity, if you pleasewhat is necessary in controlling our price structures in wartime, but evidently your recommendations are that there should be more civilians and less military on that Security Council. Is that correct?

Mr. HOOVER. That is correct. I have the feeling that we are discussing problems here that are constantly intermixed ones-one is economic capacity and others are preparedness and action in war. take it that a large part of this legislation might go by the board in case of war.

Senator GURNEY. What?

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Mr. HOOVER. The whole of this legislation may be amended if we should actually get into a war. You might find the circumstances such that this legislation would not apply. This legislation in my view is fundamentally preparedness legislation, and that the probabilities are if we get into a war the whole administration picture may change, the National Security Council might need to be extended to take in a number of civilians who have had no portfolios in the Government whatever. You cannot anticipate everything.

Senator GURNEY. You mean, in wartime, you would put in more civilians rather than cut down civilians?

Mr. HOOVER. That is my view because in war, we would certainly concentrate the military power in action.

There was one of the most successful agencies we had in the first war, named the "War Council," which was a form of council made up of 10 men. It contained no military men. In the Second World War the picture entirely changed. In other words, if we come to war, we must meet the situation that then exists. If the President had more latitude in choice he probably could come forward and meet the problems then presented by appointment of special men.

Senator GURNEY. In other words, you would feel that the National Security Council as set up here would not be actively engaged in the

progress of the war but would be more an advisory group to the President and the military?

Mr. HOOVER. Well, I think it is more of an advisory group on preparedness than it is a group on the actual conduct of war.

Senator GURNEY. All right, and would you go so far as to say that the same conclusion on the Resources Board applied; in other words, these groups set up here to study manpower and pricing should not

Mr. HOOVER. No; I wouldn't suggest any changes in those. They should be systematized to plan advantageously

Senator GURNEY. To have plans ready.

Mr. HOOVER. Yes, to plan.

Senator GURNEY. And not to conduct those activities in wartime. Mr. HOOVER. Not to operate.

Senator GURNEY. An operating department like OPA would have to be set up right during wartime; is that right?

Mr. HOOVER. Yes, and you will find a different need, and a need for a different set-up for every war, probably.

Senator GURNEY. Coming down to one detail, or possibly two, I am much concerned about the economies that we want to effect in the Military Establishment. Do you feel that the purchasing of supplies for the Military Establishment has best been solved by the assigning to different departments of the purchase of a single item, like petroleum for the Navy, foods for the Quartermaster Corps, or do you believe there should be a purchasing department for everything to be set up?

Mr. HOOVER. I cannot say definitely. We need some experimental try-outs. There has been a great deal of study and thought put into that matter, which came to this general conclusion. That articles of common use of all departments and all phases of the Government ought to be bought in one place and distributed from one organization; that articles involving specialized knowledge and special purposes of the different departments should be procured by those departments. We were proposing, in procurement in general, to set up a procure-' ment agency that would handle all of the articles of common use and then delegate procurement for the different agencies for special materials. The specialized materials, such as petroleum, and in some other special materials, it may prove advantageous to have them bought by some one agency of the armed forces. I am not sure how this will work out. In any event, all of the problems would be enormously simplified if we separated the purchase of articles of common use and specialized materials used by the different agencies.

Senator GURNEY. From what information I can gather, and according to the testimony so far, 85 percent of the dollars that have been spent have been spent through a single purchasing agency, but I am concerned about the allocation of the responsibility for the purchases. Food, by the Quartermaster General, seems right; petroleum, by the Navy, seems right; machine guns, by the Ordnance Department of the Army, seems right, but there are a few cases where it is wrong. I think we have all heard of some of them. I think that road-building machinery should not be purchased by the Navy, where it is presently assigned. I think there has to be a better job of assigning to the various departments the purchasing job of materials that they should know most about.

One other question, Mr. President: Did your studies include or allow you to come up with any conclusion on the medical part of the three branches?

Mr. HOOVER. We came up with a very revolutionary proposal. The subject involved is very long; too long, I am afraid, for discussion on this occasion. In general, we proposed that there should be a unification of all of the Government hospitals, medical research, and public health services of the United States (with some exceptions), under a United States Medical Service; that it should be presided over by a director, and it should have an advisory board to determine its policies, representing the heads of the medical services, veterans, and the three services of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, through their Surgeons General and the Surgeon General of the Public Health, and some of civilians. It should be an independent establishment, and it should not take over the medical services of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It would take over the hospitalization of their men. It was not proposed that it should control the medical services of the armed forces themselves.

The purpose of that was to save a tremendous sum and increase the efficiency of hospital care.

Hospital care in Army and Navy and veterans' hospitals, in certain cases, is bad. It can only be brought to a general level of excellence, in our view, if the whole were to be united as a hospital service for all. There would be tremendous savings in the number of beds to maintain and all that sort of thing. The savings in property construction alone ran into probably $500,000,000 in the next 12 months. It is rather a long subject, and the Military Establishment is unduly agitated, because they do not understand that we do not propose to take over their medical services to hospitalize their men, and even then they have a part to play.

Senator GURNEY. I know what your recommendations about what to do with the man after he is hospitalized are. My question was directed to what is going to be done so that the three services do not compete with one another for the medical talent that is available. In other words, I think that if we can combine it before the man is hospitalized, to take care of him while he is sick and in the service on active duty-did you go into that phase of it?

Mr. HOOVER. The fundamental difficulty there is the shortage of medical help in the country, and it has created a very great embarrassment for the armed services, and also for every hospital and public service institution in the country. The remedy lies in a larger number of available doctors. In other words, the friction going on in the military services at the moment over that problem is one that cannot be solved, directly or indirectly, at the moment.

We propose the United Medical Services undertake this problem on behalf of everybody by the creation of facilities for training and thus adding to the amount of medical help in the country.

Senator GURNEY. I think, because of the shortage of medical talent, it might be perhaps the responsibility of this committee to find a solution so we won't have the three services competing. Do you think it would be the responsibility of one medical agency to work out this medical problem?

Mr. HOOVER. There ought to be a great deal more coordination in this matter, and that is one of the reasons for our proposals.

Now, their procurement is one that could be immediately improved. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Morse.

Senator MORSE. I have one or two questions.

On the question of procurement, your comment saying they need to have the goods in common use purchased through one office, has your Commission found a greater need for standardization of goods in common use?

Mr. HOOVER. Standardization and specification are the first steps in economy of procurement.

We own something like $27,000,000,000 worth of personal property and supplies. Nobody knows how much we have. We might live on our fat for sometime if we knew what we had.

Senator MORSE. All of the services at the present time allege that 85 percent of the purchases are really coming through the central purchasing procedure, which is a matter that I want to go into later, but is it your opinion that, in order to have a greater saving, goods in common use, such as shoes-I think an investigation will show that just the slight differences between the Navy and the Army shoes have resulted in pretty bad practices in the purchasing, in times gone by-is it your opinion that such goods in common use could be better purchased and handled through a central purchasing office and that would be productive, in turn, of great standardization.

Mr. HOOVER. We found a good deal of difficulty in getting a workable link between the civilian department and military departments, even on articles of common use; so we proposed that, in articles of common use, we set up a competent agency in the Government in a different form from that in which it now is, and give to it a dominating voice in all articles of common use, and to link it to the Munitions Board, in order to make a connection with the Military Establishment. It was our view that articles of common use could be better obtained by a civilian agency than a military agency.

Senator MORSE. One other question, dealing with the matter of improved medical services: Has your Commission prepared a report in regard to the advisability or inadvisability of the Federal Government permitting young men to enlist or sign up, as they do now for Annapolis or West Point, for medical education, and then have the Federal Government subsidize their medical education and to some extent the medical schools to which they would be entered, as a means of increasing the number of Army and Navy and Air Force doctors?

Mr. HOOVER. I think you will find some recommendation of that general character in the report on the medical services. We had a very eminent committee of doctors and hospital men, and they were, of course, tremendously interested in the question of improving the number and availability of talent. To find a solution they considered precisely that problem you mention. Senator, it is a very important problem. The medical schools in this country are not able to turn out the numbers we need. They have neither the capital assets nor the income.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Knowland.

Senator KNOWLAND. Just two points, Mr. Chairman.

One, I want to commend Mr. Hoover for his suggestion on budgeting and accounting, and want to associate myself with Senator Byrd

in saying that, insofar as I am concerned, I shall not support a bill out of the committee unless it provides adequate accounting procedures and purchasing procedures in the armed services.

I would like to ask, Mr. Hoover, relative to this recommendation the Commission made which I understand he did not personally approve, of making the three services' Secretaries Under Secretaries.

As I understood, your chief objection was to the fact that their ceremonial duties, you might say-if such were involved, then they would not be in quite as good a position, being Under Secretaries, as they would be if they were Secretaries of the Air Force, the Navy, or the Army.

That was the primary objection?

Mr. HOOVER. Well, I think it goes a little further than that. Here we are dealing with a very critical job of trying to preserve the identity of the services, and at the same time get complete coordination, and we felt it left itself to the identity of the services, to dignify them with those titles.

This is an area of intangibles and imponderables-matters of judgment.

Senator KNOWLAND. I would like to direct your attention to the case of the Marine Corps and the Navy. As far as that military arm is concerned, historically, the Marine Corps has preserved its identity and yet, of course, it does not have a civilian Secretary at its head. I was wondering if it would not be possible to preserve the identities of the services and at the same time get the coordination which appears to be so necessary by having the Secretary of National Defense and three Under Secretaries, one for the Army, one for the Navy, and one for the Air Force. I am not sold on that idea by any manner of means, but I wanted to explore it with you a little, and see if we would necessarily lose the identity of the services by making the Secretaries Under Secretaries.

Mr. HOOVER. You might not. As I say, you are in an area of difficult judgment. There is another phase pertaining to the present titles, that is the difficulty in getting competent men to come to Washington at a great personal sacrifice, and that sometimes depends a little on the title and dignity attached to the office.

Senator KNOWLAND. Yet, we did get a man of the type of Mr. Lovett, the Under Secretary of State, and we have had over the years Mr. Patterson, who will be here today and who for a time served as Under Secretary of the Department of the Army, rather, the War Department at that time, so that that would not necessarily be an insurmountable obstacle, and I don't know whether you followed the hearing the other day, but the Secretary of the Air Force testified here, and at least my interpretation of his testimony was that he felt that since in fact the proposed amendment would practically make them Under Secretaries, he could see no objection to actually making them Under Secretaries, rather than Secretaries of the Departments.

Mr. HOOVER. Well, I think that you will find it is easier to obtain men of eminence in wartime who are willing to occupy junior positions in the Government than it is in peacetime.

Altogether, it is an area which is an area of opinion, not a matter on which you can have conclusive judgment.

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