DEFENSE: The Drying Wood

In the midst of the uproar over atomic energy and the TVA one day last week, Missouri’s Democratic Senator Stuart Symington rose on the Senate floor to change the subject. The first Secretary of the Air Force (1947-50) and today the Senate’s most informed man on air power, Symington brought up a problem which hardly anyone else was thinking about: intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“Each day that goes by,” said Symington, “sees the relative military strength of the U.S. and its allies becoming weaker as against the growing strength of the Communists.” For example: “The incredible destructive power of hydrogen warheads makes it possible to destroy a nation by launching a hail of ballistic missiles against it … The most ominous aspect of this new weapon is that once launched, there is no defense against it. Such a missile does not depend upon electronic guidance as it approaches its targets, and therefore it cannot be thrown off course by electronic jamming . . . Will the Communists have [them] before we do? There are many reasons to believe they will.”

Waiting. “Some six years ago . . . Winston Churchill prophesied: ‘Nothing stands between Europe today and complete subjugation to Communist tyranny but the atomic bomb in American possession. The question is asked, what will happen when they [the Russians] get the atomic bomb themselves and have accumulated a large store? You can judge yourselves what will happen then by what is happening now. If these things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry? If they can continue month after month disturbing and tormenting the world . . . what will they do when they themselves have large quantities of atomic bombs? No one in his senses can believe we have a limitless period of time before us. We ought to bring matters to a head and make a final settlement. We ought not to go jogging along, improvident, incompetent, waiting for something to turn up—by which I mean waiting for something bad to turn up’ “

We Must Build. “But,” continued Symington, “we have gone ‘jogging along, improvident, incompetent, waiting for something to turn up.’ … All of us know now that we have failed to stand our ground when we should stand, and are failing to build our strength while we still may have the time to build it … God has given us the opportunity to defend [our] way of life through adequate military strength. The sooner we attain that strength, the sooner we can halt the present drift towards a helplessness which can only result in the loss of the free world.”

Symington’s conclusion: “Our military appropriations do not face up to the evergrowing peril.”