Ranging the Field

The world still likes to know what Eisenhower thinks, and apparently he still thinks about everything that is going on--and some things that are history. Last week on CBS's Eisenhower on the Presidency, he ranged the field:

. ON RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS. "Anybody that wants to go back to eliminating the income tax from our laws, and the rights of people to unionize, who is advocating some form of dictatorship, that is the kind of person that I label extremist. Possibly their motivation is an avid desire for distinction. They attack people of good repute and who are proved patriots, to get their names in the headlines. I don't think the U.S. needs superpatriots. We need patriotism, honestly practiced by all of us, and we don't need these people that are more patriotic than anybody else. That's just rot, if you'll excuse the word."

. ON MILITARY OFFICERS. "I do believe that our officers, when they receive recruits, have the need for making certain that these men are loyal people, understanding that they are defending the U.S. and the things for which she stands. I do not believe they should try to do this in terms of partisan politics whatsoever. When I was a young officer, I never heard of any Army officer being put under oath, testifying before the Congress. Now, since some of these odd investigations, this has become a practice. And if an officer is asked for his personal opinion and it happens to disagree with his President's, well, he has to express it. It's bad practice--very bad."

. ON THE FALL OF DIENBIENPHU. "Now the French command made a very bad military mistake and should not have made it but they did. At the last minute they said this commander wanted American air force to come in there and intervene. Well, I couldn't think of anything probably less effective than in a great big jungle area and with a besieged fortress, trying to relieve it with air force. I just can't see how this could have been done unless you were willing to use weapons that could have destroyed the jungles all around the area for miles and that would have probably destroyed Dienbienphu itself, and that would have been that."

. ON U.S. INTERVENTION IN HUNGARY. "You couldn't have jumped over Germany, Austria or France, or any other direction, and gone in there, because it would not have been allowed. I don't believe that we had the support of the United Nations to go in and make this a full-out war. The thing started in such a way that everybody was a little bit fooled, and when suddenly the Soviets came in in strength with their tank divisions and it was a fait accompli, it was a great tragedy and disaster."

. ON U.S. SUEZ POLICY. "It was very difficult because here were our very finest friends involved. I had many communications with Mr. Eden, who was then Prime Minister, and I said, 'We're not going to destroy the United Nations, and the United Nations says that these types of arguments must be solved peacefully.' But our action was misunderstood. The British press said that we had let them down. We hadn't, because we told the government exactly what we would do, but that was not publicized there. I think in the long run it has turned out to be a very fine decision."

. ON QUEMOY AND MATSU. "Now I said to them [the Chinese Nationalists], as my military advice, not political advice, 'You would be much stronger to keep your major portion of your reserves in Formosa and the Pescadores, and make Quemoy and Matsu two real outpost fortresses. That is, have as few as possible troops, but heavily armed, and make them difficult to take.' Because remember, our doctrine did not say that the U.S. was committed to the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. It said that if the President determined that any attack on Quemoy and Matsu was a mere preliminary to an attack on the Pescadores and Formosa, then you could go ahead and do whatever you thought was militarily sound. But the thing that always made the decision easy, in anticipation, at least, was the Red Chinese constantly said, 'We are not interested in Quemoy and Matsu. We're going to take Formosa.' "

. ON THE BERLIN WALL. "I always refused to be a second-guesser, but I do say this, that the staffs, military and diplomatic, had been going over and concocting every kind of counterplan to anything that they might see occurring that was damaging to us. I think this is one they may not have thought of. At least, I had never thought of it. Once it was started and you accepted, I think there wasn't much you could do about it."

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