A Choice of Specters

The U.S. was shown a specter of Russian armed might last week. On the say-so of U.S. military men, the Russians have:

P: More 6-293 than the U.S.--built from U.S. models which landed in Russia during the war and which the Russians seized.

P: An aircraft industry which, in military aircraft, is outbuilding the U.S. 12 to 1.

P: Air bases in northeast Siberia across the Bering Strait from Alaska, from which they could bomb any city in the U.S.

P: From 260 to 300 submarines, some of them of the deadliest German type, against which the U.S. as yet has no effective defense.

P: Some 265 divisions (including 95 satellite divisions) which could be expanded to 400 divisions in 60 days.

P: The "scientific knowledge and the technical procedure," but not the industrial capacity, to build the atomic bomb. (This testimony came from Defense Secretary James V. Forrestal, who said he was quoting Dr. Vannevar Bush, chairman of the Research and Development Board. When Russia would have the capacity, Forrestal was not prepared to say.)

Popular Cause. Some of this information, spread before Congress last week, was new; some was old. But lumped together it made a haunting specter. There was no question of the puniness of present U.S. strength (outside of the Bomb) alongside the picture of Russian power.

Congress listened and immediately began a new debate over the size and shape of the military establishment. The debate centered on Secretary Forrestal's plan for a 55-group Air Force to be kept in "balance" with Army and Navy strength. Air Secretary W. Stuart Symington, exploiting a popular cause, renewed his plea for a 70-group force, and although he knew full well the desperate manpower needs of the ground forces, upped the Air Force demand for men from 400,000 to 502,000.

With that, handsome, fast-talking Stu Symington, who had already incurred the Navy's rage for assailing its theories of strategic bombing, had drawn down on himself the wrath of the ground forces. At the end of the week he was a little rueful, feeling that he had overreached himself. He had certainly made it clear that the ideas of the armed services had not been "merged."

But Congressmen were impressed, however. They could see the necessity of getting some kind of aircraft program started immediately. Some of them still saw a big Air Force as a substitute for the generally unpalatable universal military training bill, and wondered whether it wasn't possible to stiffen U.S. defenses with machinery instead of men, particularly in an election year.

A Package from Texas. The Army's Chief of Staff, General Omar Bradley, tried to disabuse them on that score. The question of U.M.T., he said, bore no relation to the fight over air groups. The U.M.T. decision lay between a modest-size standing army of 932,000 men supplemented by a U.M.T.-fed National Guard--or a much bigger Army than anyone wanted to contemplate. He estimated that without U.M.T., for "the barest type of security," the Army would have to be raised to at least 1,500,000.

Some Congressmen were so impressed by all the arguments that they were willing to give all the services everything they asked for. If each of the military experts was right, then Congressman Lyndon Johnson, of Texas, had the right answer. He said: "We should have a complete program in one package and that package should include the European Recovery Program, a 70-group Air Force, the stopgap selective draft, and universal military training."

Some Said "Whoa." That was the problem. Congressmen, who now found themselves in the position of having to write military strategy, had two courses open to them. They could either decide to keep the military establishment within certain budgetary limits, decide which expert they believed, and write the program along those lines; or they could take the lid off military expenditures and, as Johnson suggested, give everybody everything.

But what would happen to the country's economy then? Such expenditures might require a return to allocation of scarce materials, possibly even rationing, wage and price control. Alarmed at the volatile state of the economy, Harry Truman once again sent out his call last week for consumer controls. Worst of all, the specter of deficit Government spending reared its head. Congress might even have to reconsider the income-tax cut.

Weighing all these matters, some Congressmen reared back. Even as the House, with its mind's eye on jet bombers, overwhelmingly voted $3,198 million for aircraft procurement,* more cautious Senators called "Whoa." They said they would not be "stampeded" by the House action. They wanted to look every specter right in the eye.

* To get the 70-group program started. The procurement program would cost many, many billions more before it was completed in the next four years.

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