A New Course

Wherever jet planes crisscross the skies, the U.S. is acknowledged to be strong. Wherever dollars go, it is acknowledged to be rich. No lucky by-blows of fortune, this strength and wealth are products of a national character. In recent decades, the national character has not been so plain as its products. That is why the U.S., more than it is understood, is feared for its strength and courted for its money.

All heads of state have a primary, supraconstitutional duty to express the national character so that foreigners and, even more importantly, the state's own citizens will understand it. Seldom has this function been better performed than in Dwight Eisenhower's second State of the Union message--the first since he developed the new, firm grasp on his formidable job (TIME, Dec. 28).

The message is specific, pragmatic and programmatic--as befits a business nation. The President invented no new goals, avoided argument with the concepts of his predecessors, rang no alarms, voiced no threats.

Through the departmentalized details of his proposals runs a clear, consistent thread, joining each fact and each measure with all the others. The thread is the general good. He has not thrown together a hodgepodge of group interests. Every proposal--especially the well-defined new stragetic program and the sections on the domestic economy--seems to have been tested by the standard of the whole nation's interest.

It is a waste of time to try to judge this message by how closely it conforms to the Roosevelt and Truman policies, or how far it departs from them. Eisenhower is not trying to expunge the New Deal, or to project it. He is taking off from the facts of life as they are in the U.S., A.D. 1954, and going on from there to outline, in a new tone of confidence, a new course.

For all its strength and all its wealth, the U.S. has been reacting skittishly to internal pressures and external alarms. It has not been moving on a path consciously and deliberately chosen. The President notes that, in the international struggle, the initiative is coming into U.S. hands. That is no accident. Initiative is a bird that can-be snared only by a firm purpose. It will never roost for those--however strong or rich or right--who do not know what they want to do with it.

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