Crossfire

In the midst of the defense battle, Dwight Eisenhower last week stood under some of the sharpest crossfire of personal attack since he stepped into the presidency. Congressional investigators prodded generals and admirals into admitting that they wanted more money than Ike's $41 billion military budget allows. Democrats accused the President of gambling with the nation's security; Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, a presidential hopeful, even threatened to publish top-secret U.S. intelligence estimates if the Administration denies that Soviet might has "increased considerably." (Grumped Ike to his staff: "We may have to take another look at what we give these people.") Columnist Joseph Alsop called the Eisenhower determination to preserve fiscal responsibility in Government an "obsession" and a "mania." Pundit Walter Lippmann, himself past 70, likened Ike to "a tired old man who has lost touch with the springs of our national vitality."

Imperturbably at midweek the President flew to Florida for a tour of the Cape Canaveral missile-test center. For 3 1/4 hours he was led through a forest of gantries for the liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan, the solid-fueled Polaris and Pershing. He praised the base's "minimum of extravagance and maximum of efficiency," said, "I came back with a much better feeling than I had before I went down there."

Next day, at his 180th press conference, Eisenhower, his blue eyes snapping, fired back at the snipers. In his answers his foes could find many of the things for which they jeer Ike: sprawling syntaxes and turbulent tenses, and a tendency to state his decisions as gospel without citing the reasons behind them. But his friends could also easily detect Eisenhower's sense of purpose and unflagging concern for the nation's wellbeing. Items:

On His Decisions: "I have been in the military service a long time. I am obviously running for nothing. I want only my country to be strong, to be safe, and to have a feeling of confidence among its people so they can go about their business. In the decisions that I have to make, I have heard all the arguments, pro and con, and I have done the best I can, and I am doing it with one idea in mind only--America."

On His Critics: "I am trying to keep my statements outside the partisan field. I think we should be big enough not to seek headlines. I think we should be big enough to put our heads together and see if we can get a real solution."

On His Budget Policy: " Now if anyone, by any kind of hysterical argument . . . can prove that you can continue to go deeper and deeper and deeper into debt without finally paying a very great cost in the nation's security, I'd like to see how they prove their case. Now that does not mean that any budget I've ever put up has been put together on the basis of just achieving a balanced budget. I have tried to calculate and form judgments about the needs of the United States, and I try to put need above pressure--group inducement,before local argument. I don't believe in putting luxury and extravagance ahead of need. But having satisfied the need, I believe we should go ahead with such policies and programs that the U.S. believes will be helpful, and at the same time get this fiscal business into such control that we can have prosperity in the future."

On His Role: "I hope that I am helping to establish a pattern for solving these problems in the manner of reasonable men, never giving away to the so-called ultra-liberal that has no other purpose than to give your money away for some pet theory of his own and, on the other hand, to repudiate reaction like you would the Devil and his works."

In the echo of the President's words, congressional Democrats were cranking up a new drive to boost the 1961 defense budget from $41 billion to $42 or even $44 billion. To do that with impunity, they would first have to be sure of a mandate from the people. They do not seem to have it. To many Americans, now enjoying the liberal dividends of a half-trillion-dollar economy, the vagaries of the defense debate seem remote and the danger of a Soviet attack even more remote. Last week the Wall Street Journal buttonholed 300 people across the land, reported that most trusted the military judgment of Dwight Eisenhower, mistrusted his generals as incurable pleaders for more for their own services. Well-understood by most of the tax-pressed 300: Ike's plain-spoken doctrine of old-fashioned fiscal responsibility.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.