Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

iN THE EVENT OF WAR
Europe, Asia, and Africa, shall not come to America. We will not partici-
* pate in foreign wars. *
Even as 'fear rose with the collapse of France and apprehension over
the spectacle of beleaguered Britain, the isolationist temper prevailed.
Preparations for national defense moved slowly, consistent with plans to
supply and support Britain, without upsetting the commitment to the electorate.
In June 1940, without fanfare, the President approved the mobilization
of science through the creation of the National Defense Research
Committee. Over violent protests, Congress enacted the Selective Service
Act on September 16, 1940, drafting 1.2 million men for a year of defensive
training—an act whose extension just 6 months before Pearl Harbor was to
pass by a single vote. The Office of Production Management, set up on
December 20, 1940, offered to provide counsel, but little more, for the
mobilization of industry.
• In the spring of 1941 the President's Office of Price Administration
established rationing, to control the rising cost of living. Volunteers man-
ning 5,600 price and rationing boards began measuring out allowances of
canned goods, coffee, sugar, meat, butter, cheese, shoes, tires, gasoline, and
fuel oil. The nation's undeclared war, marked by Lend-Lease, the President's
declaration in May 1941 of an unlimited national emergency, and the arming
of our merchant ships, ended with Pearl Harbor.
The reluctance that delayed educational orders to industry for weap-
ons production was reflected in a Bureau letter of February 1940. In reply
to an inquiry from Military Intelligence, Dr. Briggs reported that the Bureau
was conducting "very few projects * * * for the War Department." In
the decade before the war Congress had appropriated every dollar requested
by the military for research and development, yet as war neared the Nation
remained pathetically unprepared from the standpoint of new weapons.
Taking the initiative at the instigation of a few key scientists, the Council of
National Defense, with the approval of the President, set up NDRC on June 27,
Quoted in Edgar E. Robinson, The Roosevelt Leadership, 1933—1945 (Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott, 1955), p. 257.
In his annual message in January 1940, Roosevelt requested almost $2 billion for na-
tional defense. In May he asked for a program of 50,000 planes a year, and with the
fall of France imminent requested an additional $1.28 billion for accelerating the devel-
opment of military and naval requirements. In July the President approved a bill
authorizing a two-ocean navy and construction of 200 warships.
Letter, LJB to Assistant CofS, Military Intelligence Division, WD, Feb. 29. 1940 (NBS
Box 442, AG).
367