Closing the Ranks

Made cautious and cannier by previous backfires, Harry Truman last week showed what he could do to bring the Army & Navy together on the merger issue. By good generalship, unwonted tact and better tactics he brought his warring legions into line.

Secretaries Patterson and Forrestal, General Eisenhower and Admiral Nimitz, working under presidential pressure, had reached agreement on eight disputed points, remained deadlocked over four which Truman himself undertook to adjudicate. In forming a common front on the eight points, the Army had done most of the giving, the Navy most of the taking. There would be no Chief of Staff of all the armed forces (who, it had been feared, might become "a man on horseback"); the Joint Chiefs would remain the top military directors; there would be a Council of Common Defense and a National Security Resources Board, as proposed in Ferdinand Eberstadt's Navy plan.

Army, 3; Navy, 1. The four outstanding issues were closely linked with each service's individual fight for survival. Ex-artilleryman Truman decided three in favor of the Army. He proposed that:

P: A single Department of National Defense, headed by a Secretary of Cabinet rank, be established.

P: Each of the three coordinate branches of Army, Navy and an Air Force be headed by a Secretary without Cabinet rank (forcing budget disputes to the top Secretary and Joint Chiefs for settlement).

P: The Navy and Marine Corps be stripped of all but close-support and utility aircraft, thus giving to the Air Force the jobs of reconnaissance and antisubmarine patrol (which the Air Force says it can do, and the Navy says it can do better).

Truman's one concession to the Navy was to let it keep the Marine Corps big enough to "conduct such limited land operations as are essential to . . . a naval campaign."

The President's greatest achievement was in winning the agreement of Forrestal and Nimitz to support the proposals he had arbitrated. A major obstacle remained in the entrenched chairmen of the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees, fearful of losing power & patronage. Public and military pressure would have to reduce these last political pillboxes.

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