Debasing the Kudos?

"Blimey, wotta army!" exclaimed a wizened British corporal, just back from the Middle East, as he looked at bemedaled U.S. soldiers in London's streets, "Every bloomin' one of 'em an 'ero."

Last week Prime Minister Churchill, in parliamentary and much, much more tactful language, made a similar comment. He talked the House of Commons out of extending two overseas decorations to home services, declaring that he declined to "expand, inflate or dilute the currency" of Britain's medals. Leave that to the Germans, he said, who created 80 decorations in the last war and diluted the Iron Cross until it had little value except to "Herr Hitler, who, it is alleged, gave it to himself some time later." Tactfully Mr. Churchill refrained from mentioning the U.S.

In the European Theater of Operations the U.S. Army has bestowed 89,477 medals--82,280 of them in the Eighth Air Force. Altogether, in all theaters, the U.S. Army has passed out approximately 175,000 medals in World War II. The U.S. Navy, more frugal with its awards (and with about one-third the Army's personnel): 8,166.

In contrast to the lavish U.S. handout of tinsel and ribbon, the British Army, which has been more than two years longer in the war, has given only 10,896 medals; the British Navy, 6,570; the R.A.F., 9,685.

Nowadays, U.S. troops in England even kid one another about their medals. (A standing wisecrack: "He got that medal for preventing rape; he changed his mind.") But the U.S. is not the only reputable army with a lot on its chest. Russian officials joyfully announced last week that over 2,000,000 decorations had been bestowed on Soviet heroes. The Rus-sian Army has seen a lot more fighting than the U.S. Army, but in proportion to estimated size, this is at least eight times as much kudos as the U.S. Army has distributed.

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