Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A General's Alarm Signal MAXWELL D. TAYLOR, who retired as Army Chief of Staff last year after 37 years of service, is probably as well-rounded a...
...To implement his doctrine of flexible response he would like to see the Army built up to a million in manpower, equipped with the most modern weapons and assured of prompt air transportation to any trouble center...
...The bleak prospect for the years immediately ahead is that we will be inferior to the Soviet Union in the number of available ballistic weapons...
...Even then he possessed a reputation for linguistic prowess, mastering the very difficult Japanese and Chinese languages in much less than normal time...
...Preparation for what General Taylor thinks is a far more probable type of clash—a limited conflict, fought with conventional or tactical atomic weapons—has been skimped and, in some respects, it has been outrageously neglected...
...In his opinion, the present "committee system" for the conduct of modern operations would break down within a few hours or days if war should take place...
...This, like many of his other recommendations, was not accepted...
...Before long his name was cropping up in headlines, first for a daring dash into Rome to discuss preliminaries of the Italian surrender while the city was still under German occupation, and later as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, one of the first units to land in France...
...The heart of his criticism is that America has prepared itself almost too thoroughly to fight the kind of war that will probably never be fought—an all-out nuclear war...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A General's Alarm Signal MAXWELL D. TAYLOR, who retired as Army Chief of Staff last year after 37 years of service, is probably as well-rounded a soldier-scholar-diplomat-athlete as the United States armed forces have produced...
...He points out that in Korea, for political perhaps rather than military reasons, nuclear weapons were not used and that our big battleships were almost wasted for lack of serious targets...
...He advocates the abolition of the present Joint Chiefs of Staff arrangement and the appointment of a single Defense Chief of Staff, responsible to the President and the Secretary of Defense...
...We rely today mainly on manned bombers to carry our nuclear warheads...
...I got acquainted with him when he was a Captain on the military attache's staff in Tokyo in the late '30s...
...After the end of the war Taylor held a remarkable assortment of responsible posts: Superintendent of West Point, Chief of Staff of the American forces in Germany, Commandant of Berlin (where there is still a Taylorstrasse near the American Headquarters), Assistant Army Chief of Staff, and finally Chief of Staff...
...It would be an admirable take-off point for a thorough Congressional investigation of the subject...
...His retirement enables him to put to the public the case which he had been long urging, with little success, on his colleagues in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, through the Secretary of Defense, on the Administration...
...General Taylor would like to replace exclusive reliance on massive retaliation with a national program of what he calls "flexible response," placing the U.S...
...in a position to fight effectively small wars as well as big...
...He would like to see the Army get back its Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missile from the Air Force...
...And, even though on paper the United States has an overkill capacity, General Taylor is not altogether happy about our position in the field of nuclear warfare...
...In 1957 he recommended a $6-billion crash program for the development of the Zeus-Hercules, which he considers the most promising anti-missile missile...
...he was also a commander in Korea and headed the Far Eastern armed forces...
...When a man of Taylor's background, judgment and ability is seriously alarmed over the stale of our national defenses it seems to be time to take heed and consider carefully both his criticisms and his suggestions for reform, clearly put forward in his newly published book, The Uncertain Trumpet (Harper, $4.00...
...Written in a courteous and temperate tone, but firm in its convictions and alarming in some of its revelations and implications, this book is a contribution of first importance on the subject of America's national defense position...
...One felt that Taylor would rise rapidly in the challenge and opportunity of the War...
...But he warns that if Soviet air defense missiles are as good as ours and their numbers continue to increase, very shortly our bombers will have to pay a "prohibitive price of admission to attack them...
...General Taylor believes America has developed an "overkill" capacity in its preparations for inflicting nuclear devastation on the Soviet Union, while starving or neglecting the means of reacting to the nibbling type of aggression which, as he thinks, is more probable...
...The military doctrine of massive retaliation might well have served to keep the peace if the United States had been able to maintain a monopoly of nuclear weapons, which, of course, it was not...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 5
