Five Years of Soothing Syrup
MOWRER, EDGAR ANSEL
Five Years of Soothing Syrup By Edgar Ansel Mowrer If the U.S. Government drops five years of soothing-syrup treatment of the American people and decides to tell them the bitter truth, the...
...We shall, if we put aside our national arrogance and pool our efforts with those of our allies...
...And here we are...
...But he refused to save non-Communist China as he had Greece...
...Heroically, he saved South Korea but would not crush Red China...
...He saved Turkey and Greece, rescued Europe economically with the Marshall Plan, and proclaimed the immortal Truman Doctrine (renewed in the Middle East by Eisenhower) of helping countries threatened with Communist aggression or subversion...
...And they allowed the Russians to surpass us in all-important arms under the illusion that the free world did not need permanent military preponderance but only a sufficient "deterrent" force...
...His people talked bravely against Communism at home—and cut the defense forces, slowed down scientific experiment, only reluctantly embarked upon an inadequate missile program, underestimated their adversaries and, after the phony "summit" meeting of 1955, allowed themselves to believe they could negotiate with the Communists...
...If Americans respond to a clarion call to re-establish military and military-scientific supremacy over the Communists, then their shooting the satellite into space above the earth may turn out to be what Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia was for Britain in March 1939—the return to reality...
...The same cooperation could recover military security...
...Instead, they banked on a United Nations condemned to sterility by circumstances—a majority of weak, resentful, irresponsible member states and its own milk-and-water charter...
...Now the President is getting very busy calling conferences to speed programs that should have been speeded five years ago and never slowed...
...At the end of World War II, we had powerful forces in Europe and Asia and a monopoly of the A-bomb which could destroy any other country...
...It took the scientists of half a dozen Western countries to beat the Germans to the A-bomb...
...And we have since frittered this power away...
...During the last five years, while Defense Secretary Charles Wilson and Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey have been convincing our President that we could "not afford" to spend more money on armaments, the Soviets have produced in succession a jet motor with more thrust than any we have, an intercontinental guided missile, and now (after the satellite) plans for space platforms equipped with projectiles from which they could dominate the planet...
...At Suez, they intervened against our strongest allies—but feared even to try to save revolting Hungary...
...Alone we shall hardly make it...
...Inexperienced Harry S. Truman first demobilized...
...They let North Korea and North Vietnam go...
...Let us hope we still have time to recover supremacy...
...Then came Eisenhower...
...But when he understood the real nature of the adversary, he reversed his policy...
...It may be the challenge which, according to Arnold Toynbee, all civilizations need from time to time to snap them out of complacency and materialism...
...Government drops five years of soothing-syrup treatment of the American people and decides to tell them the bitter truth, the successful Soviet Sputnik may have saved the United States and world freedom...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 43
