St. Louis Woman

An editorial writer for the St. Louis Star-Times answered his telephone. "Can you spare a minute?" a woman's voice asked. "I've seen loved ones hurt or killed now in two world wars. I've got two boys who stand to be drawn into this one. You write editorials, you hear what's going on. Can't you give me some hope? Can't you tell me what we should do?"

Across the U.S., men & women grappled with the same questions. Their search for an answer had set off a great debate, which filled the air waves and packed the letters-to-the-editor columns. Herbert Hoover had touched it off with his Gibraltarism speech (TIME, Jan. 1), in which he said that Europe must first build its own "sure dam against the Red flood" before the U.S. gave it any more aid, and argued that Europe was not vital anyway to defending the Gibraltar of the Western Hemisphere. It was not alone the size of the match that 76-year-old Herbert Hoover struck that made the blast so big; it was also the amount of explosive in the air.

Different Issue. The great debate of 1951 was more than just a bigger, louder version of the old issue labeled isolationism. The issue was not whether to acknowledge an enemy, but where and how best to confront a threat that everyone recognized and none minimized. It was a question of where U.S. frontiers should be, whether there was time only to batten down the hatches, or still time to win, friends and stand against Russia.

"I think Hoover for the first time has had some appeal in Texas," said a newspaper editor. Added a Kansas City newsman: "I've talked to several persons who say Hoover hit the old nail right on the head. But when questioned, they have only the vaguest idea what he said. They only know he stands for something other than what the Administration is supporting." Said an Atlanta salesman: "I wish to God we could follow the Hoover plan, but I know we can't afford to." The New York Herald Tribune, aware that isolationism was not the word for the Hoover Doctrine, decided to call it "retreatism."

New York's Senators reported an avalanche of mail in Hoover's favor, but this was unusual; other Congressmen found their mail much more evenly divided. People on both sides of the argument tried to claim Hoover as their own. Actually, what seemed to strike home in Hoover's argument was not that the U.S. should abandon its search for allies, but that its allies must do more to defend themselves.

In Washington, where its outcome would ultimately be decided, the great debate was barely under way. Ohio's Robert Taft planted his flag close to Herbert Hoover's, said the nation should limit itself to an army of 1,500,000 because it wouldn't be able to afford more, and added unhelpfully: "I have no great confidence" in the judgment of our military leaders in the Pentagon.

Pause & Pass On. President Truman stepped briefly but emphatically into the debate at his weekly press conference. The Hoover proposals were nothing else but isolationism, said the President, and the nation was not going back to it. Added Dean Acheson: "To abandon our allies would gratify the Kremlin. To do so would be appeasement on a gigantic scale." The President and his State Department seemed to be taking their cue from a Harvard law professor who, having presented arguments against his own conclusions in a legal case, remarked: "These considerations give me pause, but having paused, I pass on." Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a leader in the Republican Party's international wing, expressed an uneasiness about overcommitment that was frequently heard: "I don't want to stand on the Himalayas, nor do I want to fight on Cape Cod. We've got to pick the spots our force will bear."

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