Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin America Must Be Supreme in the Air The recent Congressional testimony of General LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, and General Partridge,...
...Now victory would be probable, but at heavy cost...
...Four or five years from now, if Soviet gains are continued, victory may no longer even be probable...
...The peasant feels immensely relieved...
...The local sage then instructs him to take in a goat...
...General LeMay recently testified that in 1950 the United States could have won a war with the Communist world with little danger of serious injury on its own soil...
...For what these men say, with all the responsibility of their high posts, is that within the next few years the United States will be outclassed in the air...
...Khrushchev and Bulganin have been playing adroitly on this psychology...
...The announced Soviet decision to demobilize 1.2 million men from the armed forces has created a "Go and do likewise" mood in the West, although this demobilization does not affect, and may even enhance, Soviet striking power in the air...
...Anglo-French military superiority over Germany at the beginning of this period was clear and indisputable...
...Then, when the peasant comes again in complete despair, the wise man tells him to remove the goat...
...Who can guarantee that some of the countries in which these bases are located would not develop a bad case of neutralist shivers and refuse further base facilities, thereby worsening our balance of strength vis-a-vis the Soviet Union still more...
...Every relaxation in the way of easier access to the Soviet Union, and more frequent contact with foreign diplomats and journalists, pays dividends because it is so different from the virtual prison regime imposed on foreigners in Moscow during the last years of the paranoid old tyrant...
...Air power second to none is an imperative for American national survival...
...The elimination of these bases is a primary objective of Soviet diplomacy...
...One is reminded of the old story of the Russian peasant who goes to the village wise man and complains that he is living in poverty and squalor...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin America Must Be Supreme in the Air The recent Congressional testimony of General LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, and General Partridge, in charge of defense against air attack, should jolt the American people...
...And it is sobering and startling to think that we may be in danger of losing that lead...
...They have made Stalin's incredible boorishness an asset...
...I make no claim to being a military expert, but the simple proposition that the United States must remain first in air power, at whatever cost, should be endorsed by all Americans...
...It is high time to take whatever steps are necessary to insure that we do not sink to the role of the second best air power...
...Far from slackening, Soviet military competition gives every sign of becoming more intense and more dangerous in the coming years...
...General LeMay estimates that by 1960 the Soviet Union will have more than twice as many long-range bombers as the United States...
...Even if the demobilization is carried out, the result, according to the best estimates, will be something close to parity in United States and Soviet ground forces...
...General Alfred M. Gruenther, in a talk at his NATO headquarters outside of Paris last autumn, stressed to me the significance of America's system of overseas air bases in Great Britain, France, Germany, North Africa, Arabia, Turkey, Okinawa and elsewhere...
...Unfortunately, the new soft line cultivated by Stalin's heirs is producing a dangerous soporific effect in the Western world...
...The peasant, puzzled, obeys and comes back a week later to say that his plight is worse than ever...
...But by 1939 Hitler had made so much progress that he entered the war, after immobilizing the Soviet Union, with the odds clearly in his favor...
...As the very least, Soviet superiority would be utilized for intensive blackmail of the weak links in the free-world system of collective defense...
...And when he is told to remove the pig he is overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, not realizing that he is right back where he started in the first place...
...General Partridge warns that present American jet interceptors are unable to cope with the long-range bomber, the Bison, which is coming off Soviet assembly lines in increasing quantities...
...If the Russians should acquire the predominance in nuclear weapons and in the means of delivering them which we had for five years after the war, there is no assurance that they would exercise the same forbearance we did...
...It is instructive to recall what happened in Western Europe between 1933 and 1939...
...It is a clear-cut, practical objective, well within America's technical and financial capacity...
...Suppose it became generally known that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in the race for air power...
...Maintaining a lead in air power is not something vague and speculative, like the question of who is winning the struggle for "the minds of men...
...There is, therefore, no justification whatever for further United States cuts...
...The wise man tells him to take a pig into his hut...
Vol. 39 • June 1956 • No. 24
