Confidence & Strength

After months of indecision, confusion and delay, the U.S. could sense a new feeling of quickening confidence and growing strength. There were still the usual creakings, complaints and outraged squawks from a many-jointed democracy trying to pull itself together for a united effort. But there could no longer be any doubt that the U.S. was settling down to the job of rearmament and making real progress.

Some of the clearest signs of progress showed in the Pentagon. A few months ago George Marshall and his assistant, Robert Lovett, had moved in to take over an establishment crippled by the false economies of Louis Johnson, glum with its own inadequacy. They had moved slowly at first, clearing up past mistakes, charting the new course. Now they could report health, optimism and a steadily accelerating pace of accomplishment. Last week their charts showed:

P: Defense contracts going out at the rate of $5 billion a month (compared to a rate of less than $3 billion a year last November), and steadily increasing.

P: Mobilization machinery moving to provide 24 divisions which would be virtually ready to fight by summer.

P: The entire organized Air Force Reserve already mobilized.

P: Rapid progress being made on an atomic submarine.

P: Navy strength doubled (now 1,052 ships) since Korea.

There were other reassuring reports of the nation's budding power. U.S. troops were fighting effectively in Korea. A Senate committee unanimously voted out the draft bill almost exactly as the Pentagon had asked for it. The Great Debate had ended as the nation found itself with a foreign policy after all. In spite of lapses and fumbles, the U.S. was unmistakably showing its true strength and its ability to face the necessities of war.

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