NEW TYPE GERMAN SOLDIER MUST BE CRATED

KURT LINDE, a major general in the German army during World War II and executive director of the German Veterans' Association, writing in the monthly magazine Der Monat:

THE call for the German soldier as a co-defender of the free world did not come from us. But now Germany is again to bear arms, integrated and built into a European defense system. The new German soldier must be different from the German G.I. of World War II, not only in outward appearance. His future status within the state will distinguish him from the former isolation of a special status. He will be and should be : a soldier amidst the people. The new soldier stands in the middle of the political community. The military unit must never be an end in itself but rather a means to an end in the hands of the politician. His education as a citizen will in future not stop at the barracks gate. The new soldier must not feel himself a member of an exclusive body outside the community or as a member with a "preference status." He must feel himself to be one part of a whole body, a link in the chain which interlocks his people and with it the entire free world.

ARMY SHOULD NOT TRY BRAINWASHED PRISONERS

THE LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL, on the trials of former prisoners of war accused of helping the Communists:

THERE is, to many people, an essential injustice in bringing these men, who suffered bitterly, to trial. The injustice is compounded by the fact that no general instructions cover or could cover the behavior of men who are made captives by barbarians. Warfare in Korea brought the new hazard of capture by men who do not recognize international codes for the treatment of prisoners and who permitted no Red Cross inspection or interference.

This, it seems to us, is where the Army of the United States has set foot on a difficult and dangerous road. What in effect is the army saying to men who may be captured in the future? Is it not forcing them to consider two impossible choices: one of a standard of conduct impossibly noble under the terrible circumstances of capture, or the other of death in battle rather than the risk of failing to measure up to such a standard? Such a choice as this is not only hard on morale. It is an immoral one to put up to men facing death or disaster. We are expecting men to rise to standards not one civilian in a million will ever be called upon to meet.

ATTLEE SACRIFICING MORALITY FOR POLITICS

THE FAIR DEALING NEW YORK POST, staunch supporter of both the Truman-Acheson foreign policy and the British Labor Party:

CLEMENT Attlee at the British Labor Party Conference at Scarborough [was] certainly vulnerable to the charge of playing internal politics with great world issues. Attlee's reflections on his recent visits to Russia and China added nothing new to his previously published accounts. What was new--and startling--was his proposal that Formosa be turned over to the Chinese Communists (after Chiang Kai-shek and his entourage are deposited in some safe place). The only charitable explanation we can think of for Attlee's abrupt shift is that, like Dulles on so many other days of the week, he was looking to his own backyard. Attlee was apparently willing to sacrifice all considerations of morality and wisdom in the Far East in order to win his point in Europe. He apparently thought that by appeasing the nostalgic left-wing sentimentality of some of his followers, who seem to look upon the Chinese Communists as they once, in 1917, looked upon the Russian Bolsheviks, he could buy votes for his European policy.

Whatever his immediate motives, Attlee's Formosa proposal is utterly indefensible. Surrendering Formosa would be of vast strategic advantage to the Chinese Reds. Politically it would greatly enhance their prestige in Asia. And morally it is intolerable. It would involve handing over several million people to a totalitarian dictatorship and exposing to ruthless persecution those who decline to be slaves.

U.S. IS READY FOR RED AGGRESSION

ADMIRAL ARTHUR RADFORD, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before Detroit's Economic Club:

TO meet the continuing Communist threat, two basic decisions were made. The first decision was to base our defense program on "preparations for the long pull." The second was to maintain "a great capacity" to retaliate by means and at places of our choosing. The first decision about "preparations for the long pull" meant that our Government felt it could not have a sound military establishment if the Armed Services were to be "princes today and paupers tomorrow." The second decision about "a great capacity" signified that in our defense planning, we would regard it as important to have a capacity to retaliate at the proper place by whatever military means are best suited to the situation at the time.

If confronted by hostile aggression, we do not intend to let the enemy pick only those battle conditions which are best suited to him. This policy still stands. It is not a policy that commits us to instant atomic retaliation against all forms of aggression. This is far from being the case. We do not depend exclusively upon any one weapon, or any one service, nor do we anticipate one kind of a war. Instead, we depend upon the combined and varied capabilities of all the Armed Services. The policy is one of having a persuasive power to help preserve the peace, and to make the costs of aggression exceed any potential gains.

PRESIDENT ALONE MUST MAKE DECISIONS

DEAN ACHESON, former Secretary of State, in the Yale Review:

THE final responsibility for decision A [in foreign policy] lies with the President. Sometimes we hear it said that the National Security Council has made some important decision. One reads from time to time that at some meeting with "leaders on the Hill" [a] matter of foreign policy was "decided." This involves a misconception. The responsibility for deciding whether or how to go ahead rests with the President. No good comes from attempts to invade [his] authority and responsibility. This occurs under weak Presidents. The President [is] the pivotal point, the critical element in reaching decisions on foreign policy. Now the capacity to decide is not a common attribute of mankind. It becomes increasingly rare as the difficulty of the problems increases. The choice becomes one between courses all of which are hard and dangerous. The "right" one, if there is a right one, is quite apt to be the most immediately difficult one. There are always persuasive advocates of opposing courses. "On the one hand" balances "on the other." The problem itself becomes the enemy.

The inescapable result is drift. And it is drift away from the association of free nations which cannot exist without us, and without which we cannot exist as [a] nation. We come back to where we started--to the President. The decisions are his. Helped by his advisers, ultimately he must decide. The volume of work which should be done is appalling. It cannot be got through by listening to oral presentations, or "briefings," or reading one-page memoranda. It has to be sweated out. The facts have to be mastered, the choices and their consequences understood--so far as consequences can be understood, and then, upon "judgments and intuitions more subtle than any articulate major premise," the decision made.

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