"The Long Haul"

On the eve of the Geneva Conference came a noisy new debate on the size and strength of the U.S. Armed Forces, and their needs for the years of cold peace.

Out of the Pentagon leaked General Matthew Ridgway's farewell message as Army Chief of Staff, a restatement of his familiar thesis that the U.S. should have more foot soldiers, an Army view that President Eisenhower called "in a sense, parochial." Old Paratrooper Ridgway termed U.S. forces "inadequate in strength and improperly proportioned"; the U.S. had placed too much emphasis upon the atom and the Air Force, and this was insufficient answer to the Communist tactic of nibbling with conventional arms at the free world's boundaries. Said Ridgway: "In view of the free world's appreciable manpower superiority over the Communist bloc ... it is my view that the free world has ample resources to confront the Soviet bloc enemy in whatever form of aggression the Soviets choose."

There was no indication, however, that Ridgway's views were going to detcur the present U.S. concentration on air power. The U.S. is developing and diversifying tactical A-bombs to reduce the need for Ridgway's big land armies, and is disengaging U.S. ground troops wherever possible from the Communist frontiers. Last week, at the annual work-and-play conference of 170 military and civilian defense leaders at Quantico, Va., Defense Secretary Charles Wilson characteristically brushed off Ridgway's message as "not very important," and announced that he was planning to pull out one of the three U.S. divisions in the Far East before next June 30; Wilson further proclaimed that he did not propose to spend an extra $46 million voted him by Congress to provide 22,000 more marines (215,000 in all) than the President wanted. He added, however, that the armed forces of the U.S. would have to be expanded if Congress did not give him an adequate Reserve force.

All week, the Pentagon stars, including Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced the expert questioning of Georgia's Senator Richard Russell on the Senate's Reserve bill. There was haggling between the Pentagon, the Senate and the House of Representatives on the technical details. But at week's end it seemed probable that the U.S. would soon get a law providing for a "ready reserve" of about 2,900,000 men.

The Eisenhower policy is that manpower and defense expenditures should be geared for years of cold peace. Last week Secretary Wilson happily read out a letter to this effect from the President: "We have incorporated new weapons of unprecedented tactical and strategic importance . . . We now have a sounder organization administratively . . . We have oriented our forces for the long haul."

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