Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Retrospect And Prospect THE BEGINNING of a new year is the occasion for taking stock of what has passed and for looking ahead to the future. And...
...The most serious charge against Eisenhower is that he permitted United States military striking power to fall behind that of the Soviet Union...
...The Korean war represented America's last opportunity to use nuclear weapons without risking reprisals in kind...
...Perhaps the Presidential campaign of 1960 will be a curtain-raiser, spelling out issues and foreshadowing political combat lines for future years...
...But it is my guess that, if the Constitution and his health permitted, Ike would be the nation's choice for a third term...
...Whether the present nuclear balance of terror has become dangerously tilted in favor of the Soviet Union will most probably become clearer in 1960, when negotiations between East and West at various levels will certainly take place...
...One safe prediction for 1960 is that the Eisenhower era will come to an end...
...And 1960 is not only a new year...
...The beginning of his Administration coincided with the death of Stalin and the decision of Stalin's political heirs to wind up the costly and frustrating stalemated war in Korea...
...Whatever judgment historians may pass on Eisenhower's policies at home and abroad, they will almost certainly concur in the fact that he is one of the most popular Presidents who ever sat in the White House...
...There is notably less bitterness in public life now than there was when Eisenhower took office, less wild talk about "20 years of treason," the Democrats as a "war party" and the Republicans as a little group of hard-faced reactionaries who are out to bring on another depression...
...He was a military hero who never posed on a pedestal...
...But, along with the element of good fortune, Eisenhower earned his popularity at home and abroad by his qualities as a man...
...Intellectuals may sneer at his syntax...
...Occasional war clouds lowered over the Formosa Strait, but, thanks largely to the firmness of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, there was peace without appeasement...
...Even the most explosive issue of all, the Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in public education, has been defused to a considerable extent, and without the widespread violence which, at first, there seemed some reason to fear...
...Given two inescapable facts—the reserve of Russian scientific and technical knowledge and the ability of the Soviet dictatorship to put on "crash" programs—the loss of our nuclear weapon monopoly and the creation of a stalemate of terror, in which each of the major powers seems to be in a position to inflict frightful devastation on the other, were inevitable...
...it ushers in a new decade...
...The Western powers, if they are concerned for survival, can pursue only one policy in these negotiations: a policy of unity, firmness and courage...
...Champions of bigger spending on arms and domestic improvements may wring their hands over his alleged lack of leadership...
...Part of Eisenhower's aura of popularity may be attributed to luck...
...As General and as President he was always "Ike," the hearty out-going human being who reflected the socially democratic spirit of the American Middle West, where social and economic differences are probably less than in any region of the United States...
...A new President will be elected in November...
...On the basis of this theory the '60s in the United States should be a more combative, less placid decade in American political life...
...Thanks in large measure to Eisenhower's own personality, the era of which he is a symbol and which will pass into history in 1960 was one of internal conciliation...
...and there are so many differences of opinion among experts, that one hesitates to pass a definitive judgment...
...And a great surge of prosperity went hand in hand with peace...
...there will be a new style in the handling of domestic and foreign affairs...
...Then it should become clear whether Nikita Khrushchev believes he is leading from strength or is really seeking an abatement of tension...
...His popularity is eminently personal, something that owes little or nothing to the Republican party...
...But the issues involved in the arms competition are so complex...
...On West Berlin, especially, our position should be that there is nothing to negotiate, not a reduction by one platoon of our forces of occupation, not a curtailment by one iota of freedom of speech and press and radio in West Berlin, not a single step toward recognition of the preposterous puppet regime that humorously calls itself the "German Democratic Republic...
...It has been a period of consolidation, when the differences between left and right of center tended to narrow, not to widen...
...Some observers believe that American history follows a pattern, with a period of social and economic change like Wilson's first Administration or the New Deal followed by a period of digestion and assimilation...
Vol. 43 • January 1960 • No. 1
