"Our Firm Intentions"

Taking a ten-day Thanksgiving holiday in Indian-summery Augusta, Ga., President Eisenhower spent his working hours in the plain little second-floor office set up for him above the golf pro's shop at the Augusta National course. Into the office flowed messages updating the President on the twists and turns of a new crisis: the Russian push to end four-power occupation of Berlin (see FOREIGN NEWS). Whatever the Russian maneuvers meant, there was only one course for the U.S.: to stand steady. Announced President Eisenhower through Press Secretary James Hagerty: "Our firm intentions in West Berlin remain unchanged."

Against the background of Russian rumblings and from behind closed Government doors came the news that the Administration has dedicated itself to the task of trying to balance the fiscal-1960 budget, which the President will submit to the new Congress in January. It is a goal that might have to be discarded as irrelevant if the U.S. has to use force to preserve the West's outpost of freedom in Berlin. But meanwhile, the aim of combatting inflation and governmental bloat by balancing the budget is highly relevant to a challenge that confronts the U.S. in the middle of the 20th century: remaining loyal to sound governmental goals and principles while having to cope for years on end with a chronic crisis that is neither war nor peace.

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