THE NATION: A Feeling for the Situation

“Now I have a feeling for this situation,” said President-elect Dwight Eisenhower as he was leaving Korea last week. He had flown 10,836 miles to Seoul, spent three days appraising the Korean war with the world’s most practiced inspecting eye. He talked face to face, piling question on question, with the top U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force commanders in the Pacific, with Korea’s doughty President Rhee, with European allies, U.S. diplomats, young front-line officers and G.I.s. Then he went into retreat with his staff on the U.S.S. Helena in mid-Pacific to translate a feeling for the situation into a course of action.

While the Helena steamed toward Pearl Harbor, the U.S. began to sense the real effects of Eisenhower’s trip. By plane he dispatched his new Defense Secretary Charles Wilson and J.C.S. Chairman Omar Bradley to Pearl Harbor to preside over a series of conferences on the military aspects of the situation. By plane and helicopter he brought his new Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his close White House advisers to join him aboard the cruiser for high-policy discussions. By the time the two task forces joined in Hawaii, they would be able to match and mesh their potentialities and plans. Somewhere after that, the President-elect of the U.S. would make his decisions.

The whole process was no surprise to those who knew Ike’s methods in Europe. It was a surprise only to those at home who, since the end of World War II, never have seen the U.S. tackle its basic problems with a method designed to produce definitive answers. What Ike would decide about Korea, and when he would announce it, would be part of that process. But until he spoke out, perhaps the most important result of his trip was the fact that the U.S. itself was happily beginning to get the feeling for a new situation in its high councils.