Ike Speaking

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, and to the world:

"You give me a small army of a dozen divisions, for example, and there is no Russian army in the world, short of some catastrophe I couldn't possibly foresee, that could destroy them before we could do something about it ... evacuate them or go back to a place where they were safe. For example, you could put a dozen American divisions in the Breton peninsula [in France], where they can be covered by our own sea and air power, and the Russians couldn't touch them to save their souls.

"Our 150 million enlightened people can still whip 190 million backward people ... If they [the Russians] declare war now, they are really fools. They cannot win on the global picture instantly and quickly by a complete knockout. They would face a long, bitter struggle of attrition against the United States, and [the American] people--when they are united under an attack--are still the most powerful force on this earth under the Almighty himself . . .

"Use of the atomic bomb would be on this basis: Does it advantage me, or does it not, when I get into a war? Now, if I felt that the material destruction that I was going to accomplish was not equal to some moral or great reaction otherwise to this act, then I would abstain. If I thought the net was on my side I would use it instantly . . . The United States is not going to declare war or conduct an aggressive campaign. It is merely going to defend itself, and if someone, in spite of its peaceful purposes, jumps on it, I believe in using what we have in defending ourselves."

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