Defense on Land

In Luxembourg's somber, gothic Chamber of Deputies last week, defense ministers of the five Western Union ("Brussels Pact") nations met to make further plans for unified arms production and service supply. They decided to try for:

P: An increase of Western Europe's arms production without upping the total military budgets of the five nations. This could be done by assigning the bulk of certain standardized items to those nations which can make them most cheaply--for example, small arms to Belgium.

P: A bigger output of equipment for land armies and army-support aviation, as opposed to naval and long-range bomber construction.

The ministers' decisions at Luxembourg were a source of considerable satisfaction to France's General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, commander in chief of Western Union's land forces. General de Lattre has long believed and argued that Western Union's land forces would have to bear the first brunt of any attack from the East, must have the appropriate priorities. He also believes that Western Union's land-defense program must eventually be fitted into a larger plan for all the Atlantic pact signatories. Not much can be done with this larger plan until the U.S. Congress decides how much (if any) arms aid it is willing to give to Western Europe.

De Lattre and the defense ministers, however, are proceeding on the assumption that naval and bomber strength are primarily a U.S., not a Western Union, responsibility.

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