Defending Defense

...Therefore, finally the thing blazes out into so-called hot war...

...The military rebellion has been stirring uneasily for six years...

...At the request of President Roosevelt, he was placed on the House Naval Affairs Committee as a young Congressman...

...If you begin to think in long terms, then the world cannot carry these great and burdensome armaments forever without developing a situation that is far more acute than even the one we face today...

...The second cause for the military is far from united...

...Like Philotas and the Macedonian nobles who plotted against Alexander the Great on the march to Bactria, the Pentagon lords decided the time had come to take the defense budget and military strategy into their own hands...

...The military preparation for war itself—the attempt to secure our military safety through arms alone—is a very futile thing...

...The Republican party and General Eisenhower won the elections of 1952 and 1956 in part by labeling the Democrats "the war party," and private polls still show peace as the greatest concern of the voting public...

...There must be a healthy economy...

...He listened sympathetically to their complaints about the way the military were hogging billions...

...He did not gain many converts...

...So when we talk about our security, let us remember that the first thing that is necessary is to retain a very strong and healthy economy...

...Vinson and Johnson are picking up allies with reminders that military installations and contracts may be cancelled by a budget cut...

...The most caustic criticism of President Eisenhower has been heard in the sixth-floor stag dining room of the Army-Navy Club on Farragut Square...

...To destroy or badly weaken our economy would be as great a victory for any potential enemy as he would possible hope to obtain in a war...

...I believed we could work out an effective defense at that level...

...Do you know what they expect me to do in this job—to raise money...

...But all agree that General Eisenhower has not done his homework on modern weapons or tactics...

...At the same time, Dr...

...It is simply that Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief, is infuriated by an insurrection of his generals...

...The General was called back before the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 13, 1950, to explain a speech at Columbia which apparently took him off the economy bandwagon...

...He is an old military buff, whose entire Congressional career has specialized in this field...

...This is not based on profound geopolitics and military strategy, but on one simple fact: Any attack on the United States and its allies will single out the strategic air command bases and virtually nullify a counter-blow...

...Rebellion broke out almost immediately...

...When this knight failed, Louis Johnson, who raised the funds for President Harry S. Truman's campaign that year, began to receive unsolicited donations from industrialists who had just "forgotten" to mail their checks before November 4. Johnson, a big, strapping West Virginia and Washington attorney and American Legion "king maker," was also told solemnly how the high defense expenditures were leading the nation to ruin...

...Edwin G. Nourse, a gentle and courtly economist with a conservative flavor, began to articulate this theory inside the Administration...

...His famous temper, held in check for months, is much in evidence again...

...This move to seize power, and it has been helped by the Berlin crisis, stung General Eisenhower...

...The White House staffer scowled and growled, "Khrushchev...

...What has awakened the tired old soldier...

...He came jauntily to the Senate Caucus Room dressed in his best uniform with rows of ribbons on his chest, and departed a sick man...

...This revolt and the President's determined drive to stamp it out are like a maelstrom...

...Thomas E. Dewey, in 1948...

...He testified, "Now, I did not say that I thought we had destroyed our defenses, and I should like to point out that in every appearance I have ever made I have first of all decried hysteria...

...War, as we know, has become allinclusive...

...You know a lot of rich men, Joe...

...The retired generals and admirals will remind the listener that General Eisenhower deserted his mates in a historic struggle in 1949 and 1950...

...It is composed of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all they command, the large military contractors, veterans organizations, publicists, a number of respected academic minds and a loyal squadron on Capitol Hill...

...They have been trying patiently to grope toward a foreign policy which seeks world disarmament and nuclear test bans...

...At the same time, the mail to Congress reflects a sentiment that can be summed up this way: "After all, Mr...

...Thus far, it would appear that President Eisenhower is losing control of the battle on Capitol Hill but is winning in public opinion...

...Johnson patently is not the least interested in disarmament and regards foreign policy somewhat contemptuously as the source of a lot of useless speeches in the Senate...

...the former Ambassador to Moscow, and plaintively complained...

...A cold air of authority has replaced the rather wistful and childlike look that stared out of newspaper photographs...

...and Senator Stuart Symington (D.-Mo...

...Now, there is another consideration that comes into this discussion...

...Pulled into it are foreign policy, national politics, the economy and even education and flood-control...

...He did not forget these lec tures when he became Secretary of Defense...

...President Eisenhower's reaction to each new event in the chain of foreign policy crises is related directly to its probable effect on his budget...

...General Eisenhower himself suffered personal humiliation in a gruelling appearance before Congressional committees...

...The Army, as its Chief of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, said before he was not reappointed, believes in a land force big enough to halt conventional land rushes and put out brush fires...

...Moreover, when I say that the world will finally exhaust itself if it does not get a little more reasonable about this armament business, I had in mind this: If we are trusting on force to defend ourselves, we tend to become a little more tense and a little more fearful, and therefore we tend to build up those expenditures and to devote a greater portion of our resources to that kind of thing...

...Eisenhower did command the victorious armies in Europe, and he knows what he is talking about...

...The Air Force is generally credited with a hit-first theory...

...He went before the Joint Chiefs of Staff on January 24, 1949 and, as he remarked later, "Out of my personal regard for the economy of the country, I strongly urged that that figure [$15 billion] not be exceeded...

...He was furious with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for his truculent speech, because it gave Lyndon Johnson just the excuse he wanted to reopen his Preparedness Committee investigation and to win over more Senators against the budget ceiling...

...As he has pointedly told his press conferences, he considers himself the most competent judge of military problems, and he regards any minority views as rank insubordination...

...He would rather have the time to push through key bills...

...There, he became the pet protege of Carl Vinson, and a call from the old man is like a message from Valhalla...

...And in the Army, insubordination is pretty close to treason and high heresy...

...One day he called up his old friend, Joseph E. Davies...

...He was forced to retire to Key West to recover from a serious stomach illness...

...It has no one leader, but the man who has done more to steer military policy firmly and quietly behind the scenes for two decades is Representative Carl Vinson...

...This philosophy expressed nine years ago led President Eisenhower to attempt to put a ceiling on the defense budget when poor old Charlie Wilson was Secretary of Defense, and again this year to limit guns to $40 billion...

...I decry excessive fright...

...The Navy, on the other hand, believes in the theory of peace by mutual terror...

...The military is a vast and complex machine which, like a hugh missile standing in phallic splendor at Cape Canaveral, has its own fuel and guidance system...

...Davies did not undertake this mission, but Eisenhower did begin to meet and cultivate a great many men of wealth...

...He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Truman liked him...

...has the ability to strike strong counter-blows from aircraft carriers or missile ships...

...They say, in private, that he has taken a course of considerable political risk, that he has involved the whole Democratic party but has consulted only those he knew would agree with him...

...Its roar dominates Washington...

...Can you get them all in one room, and let me come and speak to them...

...Large aircraft plants are in Texas, and when the Administration withheld funds a year ago from Air Force procurement, Johnson was one of the first to protest loudly and sharply...

...Nourse was supported within the Cabinet by both Secretary Johnson and Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder, and the economist was invited to indoctrinate the military with this philosophy in a series of lectures in the Pentagon...

...They were joined by such powerful barons as Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (D.-Tex...

...There is also criticism that Johnson has kicked the props out from under Democratic Senators Mike Mansfield of Montana, William Fulbright of Arkansas and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota...

...The Air Force, too, has a strong hold on Johnson...

...During this period, retired General Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University...

...This Georgia Democrat, who looks like a fierce old eagle with bright eyes and sharp beak, is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee...

...There is a sharp bite in his deep voice...

...At least in public, Lyndon Johnson has become the leader of the insurrection...

...It was suggested to Secretary Johnson that General Eisenhower was just the man to sell the $15- billion budget ceiling on defenses, and he was brought to Washington in 1949...

...The Pentagon professionals were particularly upset by the President's derision of Soviet missile successes and his rather mild early statements on the Berlin crisis...

...Any attempt to secure complete safety through excessive expenditures, so excessive as to begin to destroy our economy, cannot fail to be playing exactly into the hands of the enemy...

...Congressman Vinson called military leaders before his Committee, and one after the other they bitterly complained they were being hand-tied...

...that is, that the U.S...

...A drastic cut in the Federal budget, with corresponding tax reductions for business, was jubilantly awaited with the expected election of New York's Republican Governor...

...At this time, a Washington correspondent saw aji intimate associate of the President at a party and asked him what he thought of Khrushchev's latest moves...

...Particularly do I decry forgetting how strong we are in our potential and actual strength...

...Many Democrats are restless over Johnson's zeal in going to bat for the military...