The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A Hearing On Defense On the morning that I strolled into Room 457 of the Senate Office Building, the caretaker seemed glad to see me. The poor fellow must have...
...You could not shake off the notion that he had been coached and costumed and made up to play the part on the stage...
...In the meantime, the official person— the President or Cabinet member— gives out vague statements and gets the citizens deeper and deeper into puzzlement...
...It was written by a group of men who had clear heads and were no cowards...
...I took pages and pages of penciled notes...
...Thus they announced to visitors beginning to trickle in that we were soon to be honored by the presence of Senators Johnson, Flanders, Stennis, Bridges, Symington, Bush, Margaret Smith and other members of the Preparedness Committee of the Senate Armed Services Committee...
...The Admiral and the General who were giving testimony were praised as men who had done much to save their country during the Second World War...
...My general impression through the day was that the man most in the minds of all of us was President Eisenhower...
...He had no rockets to face...
...But he had no money, he had practically no army, and the world was ready to engulf his weak little government before it ever got on its feet...
...When the military and naval officers began to arrive and the two glaring Klieg lights were turned on, the atmosphere began to take on something of the stern air of an official occasion...
...I was proud to hear Admiral Nimitz go back to the Constitution...
...A great, good-natured, lumbering policeman added the finishing touch...
...As I lingered about that committee room, I got the impression that people are alive to this matter of responsibility...
...If the Defense Department has been badly organized or improperly directed, to whom must the fault be assigned if not to the gentle and rather forgetful Chief Executive...
...we've seen all this over and over again...
...People can't see how to get hold of it and shift it according to their will...
...When danger arose and the citizens were threatened, he did not appoint an advisory committee...
...The poor fellow must have felt lonesome in the big, empty, echoing place...
...They appoint advisers, great industrialists or famous experts...
...The Klieg lights gleamed, moving-picture reels buzzed, photographers' bulbs flashed, radio and television outfits were turned on...
...This notion that it is the President who has made great blunders which have kept us behind the Russians was implied in the questions and remarks of the Republicans as definitely as in those of the Democrats...
...But within a few minutes things woke up...
...I can't help thinking of the two terms of President George Washington...
...Experienced men like Nimitz and Spaatz want to have the military part of our great machine revised so that the citizens will know exactly who is responsible...
...The committee counsel and most of the Senators put questions to the Admiral and to General Carl Spaatz who followed him...
...Then, while discussion goes on, decisions are postponed and things get worse...
...In fact, Admiral Nimitz came out bluntly with the statement that the Constitution imposes on the Commander-in-Chief—and not upon Congress—the responsibility for military decisions...
...Yet no one mentioned his name...
...I left the hearing with a feeling that the American people are now doing some heavy thinking about their government...
...It was as if all of these people and things had been electrically powered and had been set into motion by the touching of a button...
...A bevy of pretty girls breezed in with the names of Senators printed in big, black letters on white cards and arranged these identifying tags about the great circular table on the platform at one end of the room...
...Whenever something is to be done, they seek to divide authority...
...Before long I caught myself calling him Adam just as did all the others...
...They all acted as if they owned the place...
...The newspaper chaps lounged about with that peculiarly superior sort of air that seems to say: "You can't fool us...
...The examining Senators were, of course, taking for granted that everything done in the past by Congress has been well-nigh perfect...
...They are looking for a man —not someone who will lower taxes or balance the budget, but a man who will stand on his own feet and make his own decisions about national defense...
...As the threats have become more terrible, our elected officials have become more timid rather than more courageous...
...Photographers, moving-picture men, television and radio men were next...
...He did what had to be done himself...
...Within a short time, the Senators named on the placards formed a half-circle on the platform, the chairman's gavel rang out and the business of the day was in progress...
...Then followed men bearing tables and chairs for the witnesses, reporters and others...
...Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, calm, gray and dignified, took his place at the focus of the glaring lights directly before the dark, rather austere and sharply engraved face of Lyndon Johnson...
...The thing has become too big, too clumsy, too complicated...
Vol. 41 • February 1958 • No. 5
