Enter Old Ironsides

Into the shot and shell over the defense budget sailed Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, whose battle banner many an eye has danced to see. To port lay the lusty economizers of the House Appropriations Committee, who had just brought down 7% of Charlie's defense budget with one savage $2.5 billion cut. To starboard, scudding elusively above and below the horizon, lay sleeker seamen such as Scientist Vannevar Bush, an old Pentagon hand, and Distinguished Citizen Nelson A. Rockefeller; they thought that Wilson ought to save money and step up efficiency by making some sort of single service out of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Astern of Wilson even the signals from the flagship were unclear after Dwight Eisenhower said that tighter interservice unification perhaps could produce "considerable" savings, even though the present budget was "a bare minimum."

Concentration of Stupidity. But Charlie Wilson was ready for the lot. He was against a single-service setup because, as he told a news conference, he learned when he was president of General Motors that overcentralization does not make sense.

"About every three years some one would raise the question wouldn't we save money in General Motors if we centralized the thing and did all the buying in one big place, pointing out that the Buick company paid a few cents more a thousand for some nuts or bolts or screws or something. We would look it over again and decide no, that it wasn't the right way to do it. Our big problem was to decentralize the thing and clarify the policy, simplify the administration and promote efficiency and avoid the concentration of stupidity. That is what I have been working on down here, too, the same way." The hearing room hushed expectantly when Wilson arrived at the Capitol to appear before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, for the Congress that used to bait him now knows him as Washington's saltiest character. The House's proposed 7% cut would "amount to gam bling unwisely with the security of the nation," he told the subcommittee, and if the House votes that cut this week the Senate ought to restore at least $1.2 billion of the cut to avoid "an immediate impact on our defense program." Fitting Old Shoes. "I don't see why we should cut the defense budget at all," said Wilson. "It mystifies me. I don't think the Russians are five feet tall now any more than I thought they were ten feet tall last year" (when Congress pressed on him an unrequested $900 million for enlargement of the Air Force). Virginia's stately Willis Robertson suggested that Wilson apologize for having said a year ago that Congress was "playing politics" in voting the extra Air Force money. Retorted Wilson: "I didn't say you were playing politics last year. I just threw out an old shoe that happened to fit some feet."

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