Respectable Posture

It was the time for reading Washington's Farewell Address. In each House of Congress and in many a schoolhouse across the land, audiences dozed. Only the wakeful few noted that the nation's present dilemma was accurately outlined in his phrases.

Washington had said: We must take "care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture. . . ."

Who could say, in the second year of the atomic age, what "establishments" were suitable? The War Department said a suitable Army must have a million men (including an Air Force), to cost $6.8 billion a year. The Navy wanted half a million men, to cost $4.5 billion. The State Department said occupation forces must spend half a billion to feed starving ex-enemies. (Months ago, General MacArthur had wired: "Either food or soldiers must be brought to Japan.")

Nobody seriously expected the U.S. to have to defend itself in the next fiscal year. But at the international poker table the red chips are armored divisions and the blue are heavy-bomber groups; the atomic bomb is equal to the pot limit. Secretary of State Marshall was going to Moscow soon. With steely eyes, Stalin would be counting Marshall's chips. Instead of the world's greatest citizen army, he would see a hollow shell. The U.S. had blitzed its own Army; it was now over-deployed and undertrained. Its occupation troops were largely fuzzy-cheeked boys. Drafted for 18 months, at a cost of $5,000 each, they spent little more than half a year as effectives overseas.

Too Many Soldiers. Washington had also said: "Overgrown military establishments . . . are inauspicious to liberty, and . . . particularly hostile to republican liberty."

The U.S. Army establishment was now four times as great as it had ever been (in proportion to population) two years after a major war. It was no danger to liberty, because it was still a citizen army. But neither was it of much value to protect liberty from foreign attack.

U.S. military planners had to look beyond the next fiscal year to a time when attack might be imminent. Before the transition to "pushbutton war" is complete, there would be a period in which industry might be converted in time--provided research, design and plant-tooling were kept up to date. But it would take too long to convert manpower from peace to war unless the men were prefabricated soldiers. To make such soldiers, the War Department decided last week to press Congress for universal military training of every 18-year-old boy.

Congress, conscious of votes and mothers, would be hard to persuade. But the Army had a test-tube experiment in which U.M.T. was apparently working well. From its youngest recruits it had drawn a battalion, made them U.M.T. guinea pigs at Fort Knox. The "beardless wonders" or "one-shave-a-month" boys got eight weeks of basic and 16 weeks of advanced training. (Under proposed U.M.T. schedules this would be followed by six months of more advanced training, or joining the regular forces or the organized reserve.)

At Fort Knox the experimental "Umtees" were treated as human beings. The old idea of breaking the rookie's spirit and then trying to mold the debris into an automaton was out.

In deciding to plump for U.M.T. and forget the draft (now due to expire March 31), the Army was taking a moderately long-range view. In the hope of filling a future reservoir of radar-eyed jet-propelled minutemen, it would leave its 1947-48 manpower problem to solve itself. But neither Army nor Navy was taking a truly long-range view. If they had to save money, they were prepared to skimp on research for the future rather than on rifles of the past.

Too Few Dollars. Said the Farewell Address with perfect timeliness: "Timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it. . . ."

How big should a timely disbursement be? Republican congressional leaders thought they could cut $2 1/4 billion out of the War & Navy budget without hurting national defense. Cried Georgia's Eugene Cox, usually a hound for economy: "Here on the very eve of [Marshall's] departure we take the edge off his sword."

Opinion polls showed that the people wanted economy, but not to endanger security. They wanted peace, and according to Gallup, 72% were ready to defend it by submitting their sons to universal military training.

At Princeton, N.J. last week, George Marshall decried the "business as usual, politics as usual, pleasure as usual" state of the U.S. mind. In that state of mind the people would have to help Congress decide what a respectably defensive posture is. The keenness of George Marshall's-- and the nation's-- sword depended on that decision.

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