"Sanity Will Prevail"

Last week one of the most influential voices in Britain spoke out against trying to build a Maginot Line of the air. Arthur William, Lord Tedder, Britain's top air strategist in World War II, deputy commander of SHAEF under Eisenhower and now vice chairman of the BBC, said that any reliance on passive defense (meaning a huge complex of radar screens, interceptor planes and antiaircraft weapons) would not "provide a deterrent to aggression [but would] bankrupt the free world and hand it over to Communism and chaos without a blow."

Speaking to the Air League of the British Empire, scholarly, pipe-puffing Air Marshal Tedder said: "I am one of those who believe that for some four or five years after . . . 1945, aggression was averted by the U.S. atomic bomber force. I do not think that the fact that the Russians have now developed their own atomic weapons really lessens that deterrent effect; the fearful counterthreat is still there . . . Provided that the free nations make it clear without a shadow of a doubt or vestige of bluff that they are ready and able to deliver the atomic weapon and face that ultimate issue, I believe that sanity will prevail."

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