I Shall Vote for Eisenhower

by ROBERT CUTLER

1

WE HAVE nothing to lose; we can only gain. . . . Our enemies have men who are below average. . . . Our enemies are little worms. ... I saw them in Munich.”

My these words Adolf Hitler, speaking to his military commanders at Berchtesgaden on August 22, 1939, made his decisive calculation that the British people as a nation lacked the spirit to fight.

At that time, in Nazi Germany, a decision by the Fuehrer was final and incontrovertible. Nine days later the Nazi Wehrmacht overran Poland and the point of no return was passed.

This cruel miscalculation by one absolute ruler plunged the Earth into World War II, killed millions of people, and tore much of the world’s economy to shreds.

Thus, history reminds you and me that our fate may t urn not only on what we are but also on what to other eyes and ears we may appear to be.

In our modern thermonuclear age, everything that we say, everything that we do, everything that we omit to say and do, bears an enhanced significance. Today, a hostile miscalculation of our words and actions can draw over the Earth, like a pall, a new Dark Age.

I have a personal judgment of how to minimize the risk of a hostile miscalculation. What I write has no official imprimatur. I speak my own personal thoughts as one American citizen speaking to fellow Americans. Other judgments may differ. As long as they are made in search for the same objective — the security, peace, and well-being of the American people and of the world — we should be glad to know and consider them.

In writing what I think, I purposely use a broad brush. Unless one is in continuous touch with the complex, shifting sea of intelligence that comes flooding daily into Washington, he finds it impossible to deal in detail. And the solution which we are seeking will, I think, be less readily found by looking down to details than by looking up to principles.

Dispassion in our search will also make the finding easier. In the miasma of Election Year people are apt to wax pretty warm. A backward look at history sometimes serves to sober down those who think to have discovered in their time a peril which is new to the world.

As specifics for dispassion, I prescribe the rereading of those paragraphs which were written over one hundred years ago: —

Harper’s Magazine, 1854: In France, the political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty; Russia hangs as usual like a cloud . . . upon the horizon of Europe; while all the energies, resources and influences of the British Empire are sorely tried, and are yet to be tried more sorely, in coping with the vast and deadly disturbed relations in India and China.

The Marquis de Custine, writing in 1839 a comparison between Russia and the If Western World: Our newspapers warn the Russians of everything that happens and everything that is contemplated in our countries. Instead of disguising our weaknesses with prudence, we reveal them with vehemence every morning; whereas the Russians’ Byzantine policy, working in the shadow, carefully conceals from us all that is thought, done and feared in their country.

IT is my own belief that the basic national security policy developed by the Eisenhower Administration shows us the road away from a risk of nuclear collision and toward a stable balance of honorable peace.

This national security policy rests upon twin pillars. One: the United States must have in instant readiness a military force capable, together with its allies, of effectively deterring Communist aggression. Second, and equally important, our national economy must be sufficiently strong and expanding to support this military strength and to aid in supporting the military strength of the Free World, as well as to counter any further spread of Communist influence. Such a national economy must derive from the play of free enterprise and not from a regimented state; in short, it must be a civilian, and not a garrison, economy.

To sustain over the long run in times of peace the necessary military capability, our economy should be safeguarded against inflation by a fiscal policy which can regularly provide for defense out of current tax receipts. Moreover, the defense burden should be supportable by taxes which do not stunt the economy’s healthy growth.

To me, these aspects of the President’s national security policy state the essentials. Of course, there are many other facets, such as: our continuing support and active participation in the United Nations; the complex fabric of our wide-spreading and interrelated mutual assistance treaties; the establishment of defensive military bases overseas; our vigorously enhanced programs for the defense of the continental United States; our broad measures for assistance to other nations of the Free World; our annual Federal expenditures of over $2 billion for research and development; our advance in the use of atomic energy in peaceful, as well as military, fields. But to me, however mighty the quality and quantity of these other factors may be, they are incidents of and support the two basic concepts.

Because I praise this policy, I do not imply that it is immutable or static. Every policy decision by the President requires constant review in the light of changing times and events.

The outstanding achievement of the Eisenhower Administration has been to change the emphasis and direction of our national security policy by recognizing positively a different concept. That concept is: for the safety and survival of the Republic in the years that lie ahead, the possession of military might alone is not enough; of equal importance is the maintenance of a free and healthy civilian economy, strong enough to support the demands not only of military defense but also of industrial growth and progress.

I believe this policy to be sound. I believe this policy to be suited to the genius of a free people. I believe that this policy diminishes the risk of hostile misapprehension and miscalculation of what is America’s true intent and thus points to the road of honorable peace.

For these reasons, the Eisenhower Administration which created the emphasis and direction of this policy should be returned to office in the November elections.

By what I have written above I do not mean to imply that the great policy papers of earlier years did not refer to the desirability of a strong American economy. Of course, they did. But I am thinking here, not of references, but of emphasis and direction. Most people are glad to declare that they are against sin, that they are members of a church, that they support the local Community Fund. But it may have been your experience that the emphasis and direction put in carrying out these declarations is often a different story.

In the security policy of President Eisenhower, the economic base was conceived of as, and in practice has been, a foundation stone of the national defense.

2

I HAVE stated that a national security policy based on a strong and viable national economy is sound. Has not the application of this policy since January 20, 1953, adequately evidenced its soundness?

In the Eisenhower years, we Americans have seen the United States achieve a record total national income; a record of sustained high employment of our people; a remarkable stability in the level of the cost of living index (which rose 37.2 per cent between 1946 and 1953 under the prior Administration in contrast with 1.6 per cent in the three and a half years of the Eisenhower Administration through June, 1956).

Under the preceding Administrations of the Democratic Party, the Federal budget had been balanced only three times in twenty years. Until Fiscal Year 1956, the public debt had not been reduced since 1951. In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration brought Federal expenditures into balance with Federal income and made some reduction in the public debt, pushing back the specter of inflation.

All groups of our citizens benefit from this stability: not only those who draw fixed incomes from pensions, savings deposits, and insurance proceeds, but the school and college teacher and the wageearner in the plant, in the office, in the mine.

The real index of prosperity is not the number of dollars in your pocket, but what you can buy with them (after deducting income and Social Security taxes). Contrast the purchasing power of the factory worker’s average weekly wage under the inflationary spiral of the prior Administration and under the remarkably stable living costs of the Eisenhower years. Between 1944 and 1952 the production worker’s average weekly wage almost doubled in number of dollars; but even though he had twice as many dollars per week in 1952 as he had in 1944, his purchasing power was $1.88 a week less. In the Eisenhower years this penalizing trend was reversed. By December, 1955 — the end of Eisenhower’s third year — the purchasing power of the workingman’s weekly wage had increased by $6.19 a week over 1952. Thus, during these three years there was a dear gain in purchasing power, contrasted with a clear loss in purchasing power during the prior seven years.

The Eisenhower policy of positive and enhanced emphasis on the vitality of the national economy, an emphasis equal to that upon military defense, is no longer derided, as it was at first, as “trickledown.” The flow of strength through the national economy has become a Niagara of confidence. A climate has been created and exists today in the United States which is favorable to the vitality and expansion of private enterprise. There is general confidence in the air, among consumers and businessmen and among workers and investors. Confidence in the future is the prime stimulant to civilian business, and civilian business is the great employer of our citizens.

A collapse in America’s business system, so ardently anticipated by the Soviets, would have been for Moscow a major victory, possibly a victory that might have overcome the Free World. For the economies of the Free World countries are related necessarily and closely to the economy of the United States. But the collapse never came. The prosperous, upthrusting vitality of United States enterprise has generated a strength and a confidence in other peoples.

The soundness of the Eisenhower security policy has been demonstrated by its results both at home and abroad.

3

I HAVE stated that a national security policy that is rooted in a strong and growing civilian economy is suited to the genius of a free people.

By this statement I mean that, in striving to preserve our freedom as a democratic people by a defensive military program supported by heavy annual expenditures, we must be careful not to lose that freedom. In our concern for our safety, we must not change our desirable democracy into a garrison state — regimented, controlled, and made over into the image of the tyranny we seek to escape. The magic of our productivity would then be supplanted by economic mediocrity.

When the present Administration took office in January, 1953, the dark menace of Communism loomed in the Free World sky. It was plain that to meet so formidable a threat, without the scourge of general war, would require a long-term effort. The United States debt was then at record heights and headed higher. The Federal Government was operating in Fiscal Year 1953 at a deficit of $9.4 billion, and the operating deficit for Fiscal Year 1954 — based on programs of the prior Administration — was estimated to reach $9.9 billion. And an elaborate top-level study had just been completed by the outgoing Administration, which recommended that urgent consideration be given to enlarged national security expenditures, over and above what would be required in subsequent Fiscal Years by already approved programs.

It took courage and a deeply felt conviction to move against this violent running tide, to diminish governmental restraints and controls, to free natural incentives and forces, and to shift, from the improvisation of crisis and “crash” to the solidity of a “long-haul” program.

I have never thought, that this kind of thing was “putting the dollar sign on defense.” Nor do I think so today. The Eisenhower philosophy sought to put people to work; sought an expanding production; sought a stable living cost. It sought to move people out of government work into civilian jobs producing goods for the consuming public. These were goals consonant with freedom for the individual and with subordination of the state.

Some will no doubt say that the performance has been less perfect than the intent. But the performance has been good enough to show that free enterprise, rightly set free, is a better way for the American people than any deal by Government.

I have stated that the national security policy which I have described points to the road of honorable peace and to minimizing the risk of hostile misapprehension and miscalculation.

It seeks to build our military power on such a basis that the American people can and will be able to carry it for the long haul. It does not feed on “crash” or crisis, but on the far look ahead.

The Eisenhower policy is not directed toward a fixed D-Day. A security policy that strives for superior strength on a certain day necessarily tends to brush aside, as a less important consideration, the swift transitions of modern technology. Yet complex weapons and machines take so many months — even years — to design and produce that, if they are ordered in too great a quantity at one time, they may be obsolete before all can be delivered. A penalty of “crash” is obsolescence.

Furthermore, the attainment of a fixed goal date for maximum defense carries an inevitable and dangerous consequence: where do we go from here? Such a security policy carries the torch of war in its hand.

The Eisenhower policy is the converse of this dangerous fixed D-Day approach. It aims at continuing improvement and continuing readiness of forces and thus seeks to avoid those peaks and valleys of armed strength which conduce to war.

Because of this policy’s “de-hotting” approach, it tends to disarm hostile miscalculation.

There are some at home who mistake “dehotting” for penury or incapacity or weakness. These will include the special pleaders in the arsenal of war: those who want to restore 500,000 men to the Army; those who seek more funds than can be now effectively put to work for long-range missiles; those who demand more wings now for the Air Force. If Congress should give heed to each of these voices crying at its ear, America could easily appear to a suspicious far-off chancellery to be not. the Gloddess of Liberty but the Goddess of War.

Beware also of the boy-in-the-candy-store approach to the purchase of armaments. Military hardware is attractive and persuasive. Each Service has an eloquent proponent. And so it should, for the task of a Service is to be always alert and capable of achieving victory. But the boy who buys “one of each” before he leaves the store is going to have an economic bellyache by nightfall.

Turn for a moment to the air power of the United States. We are now spending on air power, including the Air Force and that one-half of the NavyMarine Corps budget which is wholly for air power, some $21 billion a year. Under a policy designed to preserve the world at peace, in time of peace, is this large sum enough?

Some able and devoted men are asserting that the United States should spend at least a billion more a year on air power. Whether this view is right or wrong is not susceptible of finite answer. At bottom, America has a judgment to make. That judgment does not turn only on whether the United States can profitably spend right now a billion more a year on aircraft and, if it can, on whether we should spend it on other types of aircraft or on more of the same type (which may soon be obsolete and require replacement by more advanced designs).

These questions, indeed, are very practical and worth while. But beyond them lies the great imponderable. To what extent, as we increase the race in armament designed for attack upon a far-distant land, do we “hot-up” the fears and risks of miscalculation by those who can absolutely sway the actions of that, land? May not America risk the security of our homeland as much by overbuilding as by underbuilding our armed power? Do not mistake me. I believe a strong man armed is safe in his house. In the time to come we Americans must be strong. I do not advocate weak-sisterliness, appeasement , neutralism, or blind acceptance of Soviet words that have no valid counterpart in deeds.

But the urgent need to be militarily strong does not at all imply a security policy for war. The policy of the Eisenhower Administration is one for peace and not for war. It eschews weakness on the one hand and “preventive war” on the other. It is a policy of keeping up our fighting strength in the air, at sea, on the land, It undertakes to dedicate a balanced and effective segment of resources each year for all aspects of national defense in order to keep that strength up, constantly changing and being renewed.

Such a national security policy does not accept any such concepts as these: —

1. That when and if the Soviets might surpass us in some element of military power, they will certainly attack us.

2. That possession by the Kremlin of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile will mean that the Free World can no longer defend itself; that the ICBM is the “ultimate weapon,”

3. That in order to survive, America must vastly increase its annual national defense expenditures over the present levels.

4. That World War III is inevitable.

The Eisenhower security policy, as I understand it, rejects these concepts as untenable because they look only to general war.

I happen to believe that the Communist leaders do not intend to wage a shooting war against the Free World as long as the Free World stays strong. It is reasonable to suppose that they think the subtler ways of subversion, neutralization, deception, and economic penetration are cheaper, and that, if these subtler ways take longer, they leave for Communism a far more desirable prize than a land ravaged by a shooting war. If this supposition is correct, then the United States’ concern for a free and peaceful world must be broader than the maintenance of military might to deter armed Communist aggression. The United States must also be genuinely concerned in political and economic coöperation with the other nations of the Free World, in order to counter the Kremlin’s nonaggressive steps to spread further the ideas and the influence of Communism.

4

WHO can be sure of the real intentions of the Russian leaders? Appalling though general thermonuclear war may be, it is credible to suppose that there are rulers in the world today who still consider aggressive war on a grand scale to be an instrument of national policy for attaining national objectives—rulers who might, and could, launch “preventive” nuclear war as a tactic of their supposed national defense.

We Americans can be sure that the United States under Eisenhower will never provoke or initiate an aggressive nuclear war. Waging a “preventive” war with nuclear weapons is not a possible alternative in the national policy of this Administration.

For the aggressor in nuclear attack, whatever might be the outcome of his ghastly act, would bear upon him forever, in the resulting twilight of the world, the brand of Cain — the burden of a punishment greater than man could endure and live with.

Yet the risk remains that the tenacious men in the Kremlin — who mean to dominate free men just as strongly as we mean to keep them free — may someday misapprehend what we Americans really do mean,

I do not think that the Russians are apprehensive for today, when they know we have a Chief Executive who is temperate and ardently devoting his great talents to bringing the world into an equilibrium of honorable peace. Rut they are apprehensive of the morrow. Tomorrow is going to see an increase in military might and thermonuclear destructive capabilities. It seems to me inevitable that they must be thinking to themselves: what, in that time, would happen to the Soviet Republics and their millions of people if the United States should be dominated by a War Party?

On such a line of thinking, what calculation will the men of the Kremlin be making of America’s possible course of action in the future? If in our highest councils in America our thoughts and our talk should come to dwell more and more upon armament and military alignment and fears of war, will the Kremlin calculate that America intends to launch, or may be frightened into launching, an attack upon the Soviet people — and, so miscalculating, decide to strike America first?

Dreadful miscalculations have been made before. Witness the miscalculation which Hitler made in 1939 of the British people.

The more the world “hots-up,” the closer it moves toward the risk of a mistake which, this time, can never be corrected.

The security policy which President Eisenhower has developed and the steps which he has caused to be taken in carrying it out, the relative moderation of the policy’s offensive accent and the policy’s bearing-down emphasis on America’s national economic strength, have tended to show clearly to the world that Uncle Sam is not the warmonger that the Communists once loudly claimed.

The world has seen this Administration, since Eisenhower took office, reduce its men under arms by over 20 per cent (some 700,000 men). It has seen our nation working toward a balance of forces and defensive armament that a free people is capable of sustaining and of affording to sustain over as long a peacetime period as the need continues for great military defense endeavors. Following the end of hostilities in Korea, it has seen the United States withdrawing its armed forces from the Far East.

In the long years ahead and under suitable circumstances, there may be further reduction in the number of our men standing under arms. As we progress with our defense, we can hope to substitute new weapons, mobility, speed, and modern means of delivering firepower, for men taken away from their homes and their constructive civilian labors.

One doubts if the peace of the world will be promoted in the long run by Uncle Sam, like a solitary Atlas, bearing forever all burdens of Free World security. The United States has provided substantial assistance to Free World nations in order that each shall in its own right become capable of coping with local insurrection, civil disturbance, and “little wars.” As these friendly powers grow stronger, each will tend to assume with its own national forces the responsibility for its own indigenous security and its own national defense.

As a plain matter of fact, the United States and its Free World allies cannot match with their relatively lesser populations the manpower resources of the totalitarian powers. Nonetheless, we can be sufficiently strong with mobile and elite forces, more centrally based, and with advanced skills and advanced weaponry. And in the years ahead such a course can encourage balance on the world stage and lessen the risk of a bipolarized collision.

This kind of national security policy intrinsically demonstrates that it is not fixed on constant alarms and fears of war. It is a policy that has a different approach, a different attitude, a different quality. Pulsing through it, and its administration, is the unshakable determination of the President to find for peoples everywhere the equilibrium of honorable peace. And it is this unshakable determination, so luminously apparent in him, that the world has learned to trust, as the real thing.

James Scott Reston of the New York Times in describing Candidate Eisenhower just before the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago made an appraisal that is hard to forget. He wrote that the General had a particular quality which might be the best thing for America at that time: he was a good man. His quality of goodness was genuine, with no shoddy in it.

Today, in 1956, the peoples of the world have learned that this quality of good is an integral part of Eisenhower; it is not a coat he puts on and takes off. From this fundamental of his character flows a spontaneous, radiant expectancy that things can and will turn out for the better. This attitude of mind is instinctive and affords to him a resource of strength in adversity, a calm confidence which in my long association with him was evidenced day in and day out. He brings to every undertaking the belief and conviction that free men can and will work out together a future that will not be futile or degrading, but a future that will be good.

It is this quality of spirit that has given to President Eisenhower, more than any other man I have known, conviction and assurance and capacity to make great command decisions. He has faith, and that faith sets him free.

The affection, the respect, and the confidence which world peoples have for President Eisenhower is a great asset of our country. The United States should use this asset to the full.

For these reasons, I shall vote to retain Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States.