Time to Relax?

Winston Churchill last week told the world that in his opinion "the prospect of war is remote and receding. Atomic warfare is too horrible for either side to contemplate, reasoned Churchill. "The quarrel might continue for an indefinite period, but after the first month it would be a broken-back war in which no great armies could be moved over long distances. Governments, dependent upon long-distance communications by land, might well find that they had quite soon lost their power to dominate events."

It was not that the Old Warrior believed that the "mortal danger" of Soviet aggression had in any way diminished. Earnestly, he warned "all the nations who would rather die than submit to Communist rule" that "hard sacrifice and constant toil" are still urgently necessary if the free world is to preserve its "right to live." But Churchill's warning was less dramatic than his optimistic forecast, and in war-weary Europe, his speech was taken to mean what too many Europeans wanted it to mean: that the time has come to relax.

Relaxation there was--and it was spreading from limb to limb and country to country in Western Europe. The new phrase, Cold Peace (TIME, Oct. 20)--the notion that Europe can trust the Kremlin to live dangerously, but without going to war--is seized upon avidly by Frenchmen seeking new excuses to obstruct German rearmament, by Britons who fear that rearmament is the road to bankruptcy, by Germans anxious to reopen trade between the Ruhr and Russia. French Elder Statesman Edouard Herriot last week thought the time ripe to try to scuttle the European Army (see below). In Britain, Emanuel Shinwell, former Laborite Minister of Defense, cheerfully proposed that Britain's draft period could be safely relaxed from two years to 18 months.

Against this false optimism, the West's military men tried to set the sobering facts of life, but only managed to sound like anxious schoolmarms trying to restore order after the cry of "School's Out" has sounded. Replying to Winston Churchill's toast at a dinner given in his honor by the Anglo-American Pilgrim Society, NATO Supreme Commander General Matthew B. Ridgway last week said that the massive Red army could still pluck Europe like an overripe plum. The Cold Peace boys assume that because an equilibrium between East & West is planned, it is already here. The fact is, said Ridgway, that NATO's strength in Europe is woefully below "minimum military requirements." Everybody seemed to assume that of course a SHAPE general had to scold like that.

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