Fishwives & Red Herrings

The merger argument reached a shrill, fishwifely pitch last week. Everyone figured that the debate was in its final stage; almost everyone joined in.

Fleet Admiral King used his final report on his four-year stewardship* to labor his contention that unity of command in Washington would have done nothing to shorten the war.

Navymen presented colored charts which purported to show how superior was the Navy's "National Security" plan (TIME, Nov. 5, Dec. 10) to the Army plan for out-&-out service merger. Navy Secretary Forrestal added the ill-tempered charge that the Army had "muzzled" its officers, forbidding them to express their views frankly.

War Secretary Patterson ridiculed the charge, and the Navy charts (a "fancy brochure" . . . "diversionary effort"). On lower levels the shrill cries were re-echoed.

Jealous of their committee assignments and seniority, Congressmen fished up red herrings. Crusty Carl Vinson and Andrew May introduced legislation to set up a separate air force but drop the idea of a merger. It was a calculated effort. Where merger would cut in half the number of such committee places, the Vinson-May plan would increase them by half.

Solomonic Judgment? Whether the uniformed chiefs agreed or not, their diverse blueprints might yet be overlaid to make the plan of a structure which all would have to accept and support. As Senator Lister Hill (a merger advocate) told the Navy in a Solomonic judgment: "You could take that entire overall setup depicted in your chart and lay it over the Army plan without greatly disturbing either one." The Army would get the merger it has fought for; the Air Forces would get its equality; the Navy would get the overall coordination it has preached. Each would have to give up some things it had fought for.

At week's end the noise abated. Harry Truman, working out his solution, was getting ready at last to present it. Army-men, Navymen, Congressmen waited to see whether it, too, would be Solomonic--or a Missouri compromise.

* For which President Truman gave him a third Distinguished Service Medal, citing him for "extraordinary foresight, sound judgment, brilliant strategic genius."

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