Walk, Do Not Hop

General Omar N. Bradley, the. Army's calm, sober and battle-weathered Chief of Staff, is worried less about the imminence of war than by America's jitters--that sometimes take the form of fatalistic apathy--about war.* Last week General Bradley told Chicago's Economic Club:

"While the danger of war is vivid, partly because of these crises, I am certain we shall stand by our arms. But if this cold war becomes a war of boredom where the danger is shrewdly concealed, then our resolution may be tested by our willingness to maintain arms. If we fall victim to boredom and risk curtailment of our armed strength, we shall destroy the world's only sturdy barricade against the danger of aggression.

"There is, happily, a vast difference between the possibility and the probability of war. Between the two lies a twilight of tension . . . that might last a generation and in the end mean peace or war . . . However, if this Army is to prevent war, it must be made part of a stable long-range military policy--a policy as prolonged as the period of tension ... If we are to hop, skip and jump every time a paper is rustled east of the Elbe, we shall place ourselves supinely and helplessly at [the Russians'] feet while they call the tune."

*Or sometimes simple fuzzy-mindedness, as in Eleanor Roosevelt's dictum in a recent column: "There is one great truth that will have to be accepted everywhere before the people will be at peace. That is that it will have to be established that there is to be no war."

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