The Good War

Hope could be more than a straw. It was possible last week to catch the sound of confident, reassuring voices in the Western World. One of them said:

"The cold war is a good war. It is the only war in history where the question of destruction doesn't enter into it at all. Everything we are doing is building up. We have rebuilt Europe, not destroyed it."

The voice was that of Paul Hoffman, head of ECA. He spoke in Washington to a group of businessmen. His words were for the impatient, the decriers, the calamity howlers. "If the Marshall Plan had not been in effect you would have had part of Western Europe at least under the domination of the Kremlin and we would have spent much more for increased defense than we have spent for the Marshall Plan. Now, if we carry on a smart, resourceful cold war, the kind of war free people can carry on, Russia will be contained."

As Hoffman spoke, the twelve foreign ministers of the Atlantic Treaty nations were meeting in London. France's dramatic offer to pool her coal and steel industries with those of Germany could mean the beginning of the end of a primary cause of age-old hatreds in the West. Last week's announcements from London--of a permanent Atlantic Treaty strategy committee, of the Atlantic nations' aim to build toward a balanced, collective military force (see INTERNATIONAL)--meant that free men were no longer sitting on their feet and wringing their hands, but moving along a steady road.

For the U.S., the London decisions meant also the abandonment of a once-cherished concept of balance among its own Army, Navy and Air Force. The Armed Forces Day parade in Washington, marching past Harry Truman and other dignitaries (see cut), perhaps marked the last time the three services would be roughly equal in strength and cost. From now on, the U.S. Navy and Air Force would expand, and the Army would likely get less, as the U.S. fitted its needs and skills into the common pool of Western defense.

The London decisions meant the acceptance by the U.S. of new obligations, the surrender of some self-sufficiency. They were also an indication of U.S. belief in the integrity and determination of the whole Atlantic community.

"All we have to do," said Hoffman to the businessmen, "is carry on intelligently, and at extremely low cost, the political, economic, military and informational measures already under way. Then, with luck, all of us in this room will live to see freedom on the march again."

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