On December 11, Hanson Baldwin, military analyst of the New York Times, noted in his column reports of the reputed eagerness of certain members of the Congress to do away with the Information and Education program of the nation's armed forces, in the name of economy. It is no secret that several of the legislators have long considered the program dangerously liberal and subversive, ever since, back in 1945, the Orientation Branch of the I & E Division published Orientation Fact Sheet No. 64 on Fascism, which included a section on 'how can we identify native American fascists at work?" The fact-sheet stated that "in the United States, native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti-foreign-born." And, just a month or so ago, an elementary text, "Economics: Principles and Problems," used in an I & E United States Armed Forces Institute course and regarded as harmless and valuable by a dozen large U.S. universities, was denounced as Communistic propaganda by Capitol Hill critics. Opponents of the Information and Education Division regard the current drive for budgetary reductions as an excellent opportunity to eliminate the program root and branch.

As Baldwin points out, however, the Information and Education Division turned in a generally excellent performance during World War II. It operated under the assumption that an informed soldier is a better soldier, that a man who had a sense of the why and wherefore was of greater use to the Army. And, through its troop Information Program and its Orientation Branch, it labored to give the American soldier facts about his country, his service and his allies, as well as his enemies. The I & E program brought education to the American GI through its USAFI branch, gave his news in I & E-edited overseas newspapers, broadcast him radio entertainment programs, and provided him with some of the finest film features produced by this country. Some critics of the program found it oft-times wanting in forceful and inspired leadership at the unit level, but lack of interest by local commanders was usually more responsible than any organic defects of the program.

The Information and Education Program performed its most valuable function in keeping the Army of the United States a citizen-army. Now that Berlin and Tokio have been conquered, it is required more than ever to teach an ever-younger American soldier why he is needed for occupation duty, what he can do in the interests of world peace, and how he can return to his community to become an informed and useful citizen. In an Army still fumbling with the recommendations of the Doolittle Board and with reformation of the courts-martial system, I & E stands out as a happy experiment. There are much better ways to save the taxpayer's dollar.