The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY’S warning that 1954 will be the year of maximum danger stirred considerable reaction on Capitol Hill. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not suggesting a showdown. Rather, he noted that by 1954 Russia will have the maximum strength from her own aerial and atomic build-up. If this danger can be surmounted through 1954, then the planes the Soviet is now building will begin to become obsolete and there will be some prospect that the danger may recede.

General Bradley directed his warning particularly at the action of the House in not only cutting new military appropriations but also placing a ceiling on the amount of money from previous appropriations that could be spent this year. This was an election-year maneuver, made with the full knowledge that the Senate would have to rescue the situation. House members, however, could pose before the voters as champions of economy.

The Defense Department had planned to spend $52 billion during the fiscal year 1959, mostly from previous appropriations. The $46 billion limit under the Smith-Coudert amendment would have amounted to a cut in last year’s budget. The most serious effects would have been felt in air power.

Contrary to many published statements, the “balanced forces" theory never has assumed an equal division of funds between the services. It has meant simply that if the Air Force were given 126 combat wings, for example, the Navy would have enough destroyers to convoy the tankers necessary to carry the fuel for the Air Force planes. It is therefore inaccurate to say that the balanced forces concept has been abandoned, even though the Air Force is getting the largest share of the pie.

The $46 billion limit set by the House would have required the Defense Department to stretch out contracts for long lead-time items such as jet planes, already behind schedule. In the net it would have delayed the attainment of a fully modern Air Force from the beginning of 1956 to mid-1957, with comparable delays in other services. Military officials were united in their protests against this havoc-wreaking, which reflected a kind of irresponsibility among legislators hard to understand even in a political year.

General Ridgway to Europe

There is satisfaction in Washington over the appointment of General Matthew B. Ridgway as the new supreme commander of NATO. General Ridgway is a fine soldier, respected here for his command of the 82nd Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps in Europe during World War II as well as for his diplomatic work on the InterAmerican Defense Board and United Nations Military Staff Committee. Perhaps an even more significant achievement than his command of the first United Nations army in history was his revitalization of the Eighth Army into an effective fighting force after it had been thoroughly demoralized during the retreat from the Yalu River in Korea.

General Alfred M. Gruenther’s claim to the NATO job was that, as chief of staff to General Eisenhower, he had an intimate acquaintance with the niceties of pulling and prodding necessary to build a defense in Europe. Gruenther, who has a reputation as the Army’s most brilliant planner, was Eisenhower’s original choice and was popular with the NATO nations. An example of his breadth is the fact that he not only agreed to stay as Ridgway’s chief of staff but also, after he knew he had missed the top assignment, did one of the most persuasive jobs of his career in testifying on the foreign aid bill.

Actually, after the first few discussions there was no real disagreement in the Pentagon over the choice of Ridgway. General Bradley was adamant against naming Gruenther, because he had never had a major command. In some respects this was unfair to Gruenther, because his very efficiency as a planner has meant that he has been grabbed off for staff assignments. It is true, however, that he might have been handicapped by jealousies.

Truman and the MVA

President Truman has attempted to carry water on both shoulders in his plans for flood control along the Missouri River. The Army Engineers are firmly entrenched, and the President’s blasts at Congress for failure to grant all the funds he asked to build new dams made it appear as if Congressional economy were solely to blame for the recent flood. Actually, the lack of effective flood control results as much as anything from the absence of an integrated plan.

Part of the trouble lies in the polarizing of attitudes around the proposed Missouri Valley Authority, or MVA, and around the Pick-Sloan plan, The MVA is usually thought of as an instrument for valley-wide development, including flood control, power, irrigation, and navigation. But it is not a plan; it is a form of authority imposed from the top. The PickSloan approach, for all the objections, at least has the virtue of being a concrete plan.

It was to break the deadlock between the advocates of MVA and the proponents of Pick-Sloan that Mr. Truman some months ago appointed a Missouri Basin Survey Commission. This commission, with James E. Lawrence, editor of the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, as chairman and Senator Thomas C. Hennings of Missouri as vice-chairman, is to take a fresh look at the Missouri and come up with a new, nondoctrinaire approach. Even before the commission had begun to hold field hearings, however, Mr. Truman spanked Congress for not completing the Pick-Sloan plan undertaken halfheartedly in 1944.

This program has been described as a marriage of convenience between the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. It was devised by Lieut. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, now Chief of Army Engineers, and William R. Sloan, an official of the Bureau of Reclamation. Under it the Engineers were to handle flood control and navigation, whereas Reclamation was to deal with irrigation and power.

The Pick-Sloan plan did end the competition between the two agencies. In practice, however, it often has meant, not integration, but pressure for the pet projects of both agencies at the expense of the taxpayer. The Natural Resources Task Force of the Hoover Commission observed in 1949: “Analysis of that plan reveals the fact that it contains many projects which previously had been subjected to devastating criticism by one or the other agency.” An example is the effort to make the Missouri navigable as far up as Yankton, South Dakota, despite the overwhelming lack of commercial interest in navigation.

The Engineers and conservation

The real objection to the PickSloan plan as respects flood control is its exclusiveness. The Engineers are interested in building mammoth dams and reservoirs; they are not concerned with the upstream conservation work that would hold more of the water on the land. Many conservationists feel, however, that without this work on the land the dams will tend to silt up. Moreover, many of the projected reservoirs would permanently flood large areas.

Few persons would maintain that land conservation measures — such as contour plowing, terracing, grasslands, and the reforestation of denuded hillsides, as well as the building of retention dams on small tributaries — would prevent downstream floods completely. At times the earth becomes saturated with water and runoff is inevitable. For example, this year’s flood originated in large part on the Yellowstone and Milk Rivers in Montana. Heavy snowfall was melted by warm winds while the ground was still frozen, and the water had nowhere to go but into the rivers.

It is significant, however, that there are no retention dams on the Yellowstone or Milk. Some such upstream projects might have helped to check the flow of water before it became a raging torrent downstream. In the Kansas floods last year there was graphic proof that the farms which had conservation plans helped retard the flow of water and suffered far less damage than those without them.

Under any flood-control program some big dams would be necessary. But by excluding the work of such agencies as the Soil Conservation Service and the Forest Service, the Pick-Sloan plan frustrates the kind of upstream conservation that would balance the program — and probably would render fewer big dams necessary at less cost.

The big-dam program also frustrates what may be termed the community-watershed approach, which enlists the support of people at the local level in dealing first with small drainage basins as units. Notable progress is being made in this respect in Oklahoma and along the SaltWahoo watershed in Nebraska.

It was to bring about more coördinated planning of flood control as a part of natural resources development that the Hoover Commission recommended that the civil functions of the Army Engineers be absorbed in a new Water Use Service in the Department of the Interior.

In refuting the Engineers’ argument that civil functions provide valuable training, the Hoover Commission noted that this program occupied only about 200 regular officers supervising 9000 civilian engineers and 41,000 other employees.

In April of this year President Truman reportedly was ready to ask for this transfer of functions in a new reorganization plan. Inexplicably, the plan was withdrawn. Some persons attribute the withdrawal to the salesmanship of General Pick during the President’s tour of the Missouri flood area. Others think that Mr. Truman decided that the unofficial lobby of the Engineers on Capitol Hill was too powerful to take on; the Rivers and Harbors subcommittee in Congress, headed by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, so far has successfully resisted every attempt to tamper with the Corps. In any event, the flood problem has been left exactly where it was — in a mass of confusion.

Mood of the Capital

President Truman is at his best in an informal, relaxed pose when his ready wit serves him to good advantage. He has taken special delight in showing guests through the newly refurbished White House, and he was in his element when he conducted a tour for the American people via television. Incidentally, the White House has been tastefully redecorated to preserve the old charm but in stronger, safer surroundings.

Mr. Truman’s attitude since he announced his intention not to run again can be described as one of ebullience. He seems to be a man from whom a great burden has been lifted — though he is still capable of strong language, as was seen in his reminder to Congress on the defense budget and in his criticism of the limitation on public housing.

The ebullience, however, also has led him into some unfortunate offthe-cuff bobbles. His ill-considered remark to the visiting editors about possible authority to seize the press and radio was blown up all out of proportion; White House press conferences sometimes are pretty brutal affairs in which the main effort seems to be to bait the President into a blunder.

Nevertheless, Mr. Truman’s later dismissal of the incident as “hooey” did not wholly dispose of the difficulty caused by poorly-thought-out replies. The President demonstrated the difficulty a few days later with his remark — which later had to be retracted — that he had sent Russia an “ultimatum” in 1949 to get her troops out of Iran. One White House correspondent quipped that each newspaper ought to furnish an assistant correspondent to go over and get the retractions.