Defense on the Level

During most of his press conference last week, Dwight Eisenhower had the somber, preoccupied look of a very busy man straining hard to keep his mind off the piled-up papers and problems waiting for him back at the office. But toward the end of the 34-minute session, a question about defense policy sparked the President into a strong-voiced exposition of his thinking. Asked a reporter: Does the decision to stretch out NATO's defense build-up "represent a change in policy from the time that you were in command of NATO forces?" Replied the President, thumping the desk: There must be constant review of build-up plans. To defend themselves, nations must make a living, and the problem of making a living must be collated with the problem of security.

It is true, then, another reporter asked, that "the policy will be one of a slower, long-range, ten-year build-up?"

The President squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and made it clear that he had discarded the Truman Administration's concept of "the year of maximum exposure."* He had always insisted, he said, that for anybody on the defensive, strategically or tactically, to base his defense on his ability to predict the exact date of attack is crazy. It just didn't make sense to build up to a peak a definite number of years away--ten, twenty or one. On the defensive, we have to reach a level of defense that we can support, not build up to a maximum and then look around and say: What happens now?

Other presidential answers: The U.S. Defense Budget. It would be cut, but he would not predict the amount. The Far East. Whether other Far Eastern issues should be taken up in Korean armistice negotiations is a question of procedure and method; he had purposely left it flexible in his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors the week before (TIME, April 27). But in that speech he had said that there could be no real peace in Korea that ignores the broader problems in Asia.

Foreign-Trade Policy. He stood on his request for a one-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act, pending a combined legislative-executive study. From what he had heard of the Simpson bill [to "amend" the act by gutting it], there were some proposed amendments he couldn't possibly accept. Also, he had always felt that we should not have a rigid "Buy American Act."

Public Housing. In his own view, the House's refusal to appropriate any funds for public housing during the coming fiscal year was not the wisest course. He would have preferred to keep the program at present levels until the matter could be decided on an objective basis.

*In theory, the year in which the Soviet Union would have enough atomic bombs and long-range bombers to risk an attack on the U.S., hence, the year in which the U.S. ought to be at "maximum readiness." Most recent estimate: 1954.

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