FOREIGN RELATIONS: As Day Follows Night

In his headquarters in the peaceful countryside near Paris, NATO’s retiring General Alfred M. Gruenther, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, smiled a bony smile. One big thing still needed to be said publicly to back up the week’s U.S. diplomacy. Now Gruenther, with specific White House authority, set about saying it in terms that no Communist geopolitician could misunderstand. “The main purpose and the guiding principle that we always have,” he began, “is to deter a war from taking place . . . Probably the outstanding element in the deterrent as of today, the 13th of November, 1956, is the fact that we have air units with an overwhelming capacity which could retaliate very significantly and very destructively in this area.” Gruenther turned toward one of his maps and pointed at the Soviet Union.

At the height of the Suez crisis, Russia’s Premier Bulganin had threatened to rocket-bomb London and Paris (TIME, Nov. 12), but now the U.S. was plainly warning him not to. Said Gruenther: “If those rockets, however, should be used, bear this in mind: they will not destroy our capacity to retaliate, and just as sure as day follows night, that retaliation would take place. And as of now the Soviet Union would be destroyed.” Gruenther pointed once more to the Soviet Union. “It is certainly a factor that people here must take into consideration before they would press the button to send those rockets … No nation is going to press that button if it means suicide.”