AFTER EISENHOWER had been in office for slightly more than a month, Robert Donovan of the Herald Tribune asked him at a news conference, “How do you like your new job?” Eisenhower replied that he had never said nor thought that “I would like it. It is not a job that I suppose it is intended one should like.”1
Eisenhower was being a bit coy. Despite his almost blasé remark in his diary at the end of his first day in the Oval Office, he was finding the job to be fascinating, absorbing, challenging, and fulfilling. He once—only once—admitted that he found the clash of wits with German generals during the war to be “exhilarating.” In a different way, so was the Presidency.
The range of problems was much greater; so were the possibilities of using his talents to bring about compromise and to find a modus vivendi among warring factions. Most of all, even for the former Supreme Commander, it was a heady experience to feel that he was “at the center of the world.” The “excitement” of working daily on a wide variety of difficult problems of the greatest importance, he confessed, was “exhilarating.”2
One of Eisenhower’s major goals was the creation of a United States of Europe. During his year and a half as SACEUR, 1951–1952, he had pushed that concept hard, in public and in private. In his State of the Union message, he called for a “more closely integrated economic and political system in Europe.” He sent Dulles and Stassen on a tour of the European NATO capitals, with instructions to pressure the Europeans toward a ratification of the European Defense Community (EDC), which was designed to create an all-European army. Eisenhower’s idea was that no political unity could be achieved in Europe without a spur, and that EDC was the best possible spur. A treaty had been signed creating EDC; the French were holding up ratification; Eisenhower wanted to force action.
The Europeans told Dulles that they could not afford to spend any more on defense, and that their idea was that the United States ought to increase its nuclear arsenal in Europe (which currently stood at sixteen bombs of twenty kilotons each). Eisenhower reminded the Europeans that “if, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a backward civilization with a second-rate production plant can develop the power to frighten us all out of our wits, then we, with our potential power can, through work, intelligence and courage, build any countering force that may be necessary.”3
Thus patterns were early established. Eisenhower was determined to force the Europeans to spend more on defense, and to achieve political and military unity. Dulles, highly visible and quotable, flew around the world, apparently acting on his own but in fact operating under instructions from Eisenhower. So tightly did Eisenhower control Dulles that Dulles, each evening that he was on a trip, sent a cable reporting on what had transpired that day and what he intended to say the following day. Dulles carried messages; he did not make policy. And, frequently, Dulles had to be saved from his own mistakes, which Eisenhower was more than willing to do, even at his own expense.
• •
NATO was a matter of great concern to Eisenhower, but the war in Korea was of more immediate importance. On February 11, Eisenhower met with the NSC to consider the situation and the options. Bradley gave a briefing in which he discussed recent reports, and a request, from General Clark. The reports concerned a Chinese buildup in the Kaesong sanctuary, a twenty-eight-square-mile area created through the armistice negotiations and which “was now chock-full of troops and material.” Clark believed the Chinese were preparing an offensive; he asked permission to attack Kaesong “as soon as he believes that the Communist attack is imminent.” Dulles agreed with Clark; he said the time had come to end the arrangements for immunity at Kaesong, which had been designed to facilitate armistice negotiations that were now defunct. Eisenhower asked about the possibilities of using atomic weapons on Kaesong, as “it provides a good target for this type of weapon.” He did not like that option, but “we can not go on the way we are indefinitely.”
Bradley thought it unwise to consider using atomic weapons. Dulles mentioned the moral problem “and the inhibitions on the use of the A-bomb, and Soviet success to date in setting atomic weapons apart from all other weapons as being in a special category.” He said in his opinion “we should try to break down this false distinction.” Eisenhower knew that the U.N., and especially Britain and France, would object strongly to using atomic weapons; in that case, he added, “we might well ask them to supply the three or more divisions needed to drive the Communists back.”
But, on reflection, he concluded that there should be no discussion “with our allies of military plans or weapons of attack.” As to Clark’s request to attack Kaesong, Eisenhower said he “doubted the validity” of any advance information Clark might obtain on Chinese intentions. He said that although “I have never been able to understand why the U.N. command had ever abandoned its right of hot pursuit of enemy aircraft to the bases” in Manchuria, he nevertheless would not give Clark the authority to attack Kaesong. He also told Dulles not to broach the subject of ending Kaesong’s immunity with the NATO allies.4
Instead, Eisenhower wanted to increase the psychological pressure on the Chinese. He intended to let them know, “discreetly,” that unless the armistice negotiations resumed and satisfactory progress was made, the United States would “move decisively without inhibition in our use of weapons . . . We would not be limited by any worldwide gentleman’s agreement.”5 Unleashing Chiang was a part of the pressure; so was Eisenhower’s announcement that he was increasing military assistance to the Army of the Republic of Korea (ROK); so were his frequent statements that the situation in Korea was “intolerable.”
But the greatest pressure, by far, was his own reputation. The Chinese were fully aware that in the war against Germany, Eisenhower had used every weapon at his disposal. They knew that he had atomic weapons available in the Far East, that he would not accept a stalemate, and that he was not demanding their unconditional surrender, but only that they agree to an armistice. The substance behind Eisenhower’s threat was Eisenhower’s reputation, backed by America’s atomic arsenal.
• •
On Tuesday, February 17, Eisenhower held his first presidential news conference. He had already announced that he intended to meet with the press on a regular basis, weekly if possible, and that he was considering allowing TV cameras into the Executive Office Building for the conferences. Eight years later, he had met with the press on 193 occasions, and starting in 1955 with the cameras present. He thus subjected himself to the questions of the press far more often than any other President in American history. He did so despite the jeers of his critics, who had great fun with his jumbled syntax, his confessions that he “did not know” about this or that issue, and his often inappropriate or impossibly confusing answers.
Eisenhower was proud of his command of the English language, as he had a right to be. But showing that he could get his verbs and nouns to agree, that he knew better than to end a sentence with a preposition, or that he could turn a phrase, was not part of his purpose in the news conferences. Rather, he used the reporters, and later the TV cameras, to reach out to the nation. One of his basic principles of leadership was that a man cannot lead without communicating with the people. Through the conferences, he could educate and inform, or confuse if that suited his purpose. The conferences helped him stay in control; through his answers, he could command the headlines and the national discussion of issues. The Tuesday-morning meetings allowed him to set the national agenda for that week. By downplaying an issue, he could get it off the front pages; by highlighting an issue, he could make it the prime item of national interest. He could, in short, decide when there was a crisis, and when there was not. He could also obfuscate an issue when he was not yet sure how he would deal with it.
As he had done during the war, and in the period 1945–1952, he cultivated the press corps, especially the senior members. Reporters who covered his vacations would find themselves invited to a feast of fresh-caught trout, cooked by the man who had caught them, the President himself. Sometimes he played golf with reporters. And although he could not, and did not, expect the kind of loyal cooperation he had gotten from the press during the war, when he considered the reporters to be quasi members of his staff, he never allowed his relationship with them to degenerate into one of antagonism. In his opening remarks at his first news conference, he praised the American press corps, saying that in the eleven years he had been a world figure, “I have found nothing but a desire to dig at the truth . . . and be openhanded and forthright about it.” And he was aware of, and thanked the reporters for, the sympathetic treatment he had received: “I feel that no individual has been treated more fairly and squarely over the past many years . . . than I have by the press.”
There was an obvious major difference between being Supreme Commander and being President. In the first instance, Eisenhower was executing policies made by Roosevelt, and in his press conferences he could concentrate on how he was carrying out his responsibilities. Reporters did not ask him about, much less criticize, his plans and intentions. As President, he was making policy, which meant that his conferences concentrated on what he was going to do, and why. Further, all reporters were on his side as a general, but as President he faced a press corps of which at least half the working members were Democrats. Despite the differences, it was as true of President Eisenhower as it was of General Eisenhower that he established and maintained an excellent rapport with the press.
In this first presidential news conference, Andrew Tully of Scripps-Howard Newspapers wanted to know if he had “discovered any other secret agreements besides the one signed at Yalta?” No, Eisenhower responded, he had not. What about the repudiation of Yalta? Eisenhower had promised to send an appropriate resolution to Congress on that subject; he now explained, “I am merely talking about those parts of agreements that appeared to help the enslavement of peoples, or, you might say, have been twisted by implication to mean that.” In so saying, he made a major concession to the Democrats. The Republican position was that Roosevelt had handed over Eastern Europe to Stalin; the Democrats maintained that Roosevelt had entered into the best possible agreement, one which should have guaranteed freedom to the Poles, but that Stalin had violated his pledged word.
May Craig of the Portland Press Herald then asked if he was aware that “many members of Congress feel that the agreements were never binding, anyway, because they were not presented to the Senate” for ratification. Of course he was aware, but he confused the issue; “Well, I think there are, in our practice, certain things that are of course binding when the people are acting as proper representatives of the United States—say, in war, as in establishing staffs and that sort of thing. That extends out into some fields that are almost politico-military in nature.”
Unsatisfied, Craig pressed on. “Are you aware that many members of Congress also feel that the President had no right to take us into Korea without consulting Congress, also that he had no right to send troops to Europe?” Eisenhower cut her off: “That all took place long before I came to this office. I have a hard time trying to determine my own path and solve my own problems. I am not going back and try to solve those that someone else had.” (Two weeks later, Craig pressed again; Eisenhower then told her, sharply, “I have no interest in going back and raking up the ashes of the dead past.”)
Eisenhower also used his news conferences to send messages to Congress. When a reporter wanted to know if he intended to sponsor a bill to retain the excess-profits tax, which was due to expire on June 30, he replied, “I would say this—I can’t answer that in exact terms—I shall never agree to the elimination of any tax where reduction in revenue goes along with it.”6 Then, giving the reporters a wave and a big grin, he left the room, leaving them to figure out what he had said and what he meant, but with the distinct impression that everything was under control.
• •
Like most Presidents, Eisenhower had difficulty distinguishing between attacks on his policies and attacks on himself. When Ken Crawford of Newsweek wrote a critical piece, Eisenhower told an aide, “I don’t understand how he could write a piece like that because I’ve always regarded him as a friend of mine.” The aide replied, “Well, he admires you and he is a friend of yours. His trouble is that he hates Republicans.” Eisenhower rubbed his chin, grinned, and replied, “He may have something there.”7
Indeed, in his first months in office, Eisenhower had far greater difficulty with his own party than with the Democrats. On February 7, Eisenhower had noted in his diary, “Republican senators are having a hard time getting through their heads that they now belong to a team that includes rather than opposes the White House.”8 He had in mind the Old Guard, and most especially Senator McCarthy.
A fight between Eisenhower and McCarthy was inevitable. The senator was not about to give over to the Administration the issue that had catapulted him to international prominence, Communism in government. And he was hardly alone. With control of the congressional committees in hand, the Republicans were determined to use their investigative powers to expose the undesirables who, in their view, had taken over the federal bureaucracy. By the time Eisenhower made his diary entry, congressional committees had already launched eleven different investigations of just the State Department. Nearly every Republican wanted to participate; of the 221 Republican representatives, 185 had requested assignment to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But, as had been true since February 1950, McCarthy stood pre-eminent in the anti-Communist crusade.
During the 1952 campaign, aides on Eisenhower’s staff had urged him to denounce McCarthy. He refused to do so because, he said, he could not repudiate a fellow Republican. Now, as President, he needed the support of the Republican senators, and according to popular belief (shared by Eisenhower), McCarthy controlled seven or eight votes in the Senate.
McCarthy’s opportunity to make trouble came when Eisenhower sent to the Senate his appointees for State Department and foreign posts. With a Republican majority, Eisenhower expected a pro forma confirmation. He was therefore astonished and furious when he learned that McCarthy was holding up his first nominee’s confirmation. That nominee was Walter B. Smith, for Under Secretary of State. He was a man whom Eisenhower trusted and admired without stint. Smith had conservative views, to say the least—he once told Eisenhower that he thought Nelson Rockefeller was a Communist—and he had served the Truman Administration as head of the CIA, as well as ambassador to Russia. Eisenhower could not conceive of any possible objection to Smith, but his morning Times informed him that McCarthy was taking “an interest” in the case, because Smith had defended John Paton Davies, who was on Smith’s staff in Moscow. Smith had characterized Davies as “a very loyal and capable officer.” Insofar as Davies was one of McCarthy’s favorite targets, high up on the senator’s famous list of known Communists in the State Department and a prime example of bumbling State Department China hands, Smith’s praise for Davies made Smith, in McCarthy’s view, a possible fellow traveler.
To make Smith into a suspect was, in Eisenhower’s view, preposterous, degrading, embarrassing. It gave Eisenhower an intimate sense of the true meaning of McCarthyism. Eisenhower came to loathe McCarthy, almost as much as he hated Hitler. He was determined to destroy McCarthy, as he had destroyed Hitler, but his campaign against the first was much different from his campaign against the second. The direct assault against Hitler was replaced by an indirect assault against McCarthy, one so indirect as to be scarcely discernible, and one which contributed only indirectly—at best—to McCarthy’s downfall. Eisenhower went after Hitler with everything he had; with McCarthy, he kept all his ammunition in reserve. During the war, he had insisted on keeping Hitler at the center of everyone’s attention; in his first years as President, he did his best to get people to ignore Joe McCarthy.
Why the difference? Beyond such obvious factors as nationality and party affiliation, Eisenhower cited two basic reasons for his non-approach to McCarthy. The first was personal. “I just won’t get into a pissing contest with that skunk,”9 he said to his friends, many of whom—including Milton—were encouraging him to do just that. But Eisenhower never adversely mentioned McCarthy by name. Not once. He explained his position to Bill Robinson: “No one has been more insistent and vociferous in urging me to challenge McCarthy than have the people who built him up, namely, writers, editors, and publishers.” He thought they should have a touch of guilty conscience, protested that McCarthyism existed “a long time before I came to Washington,” and complained that as McCarthy grew in headline value, “the headline writers screamed ever more loudly for me to enter the list against him. As you and I well know—and have often agreed—such an attempt would have made the Presidency ridiculous.”10
Aside from the dignity of the Presidency, Eisenhower refused to speak against McCarthy because he convinced himself that ignoring McCarthy was the way to defeat McCarthy. He explained his reasoning in his diary: “Senator McCarthy is, of course, so anxious for the headlines that he is prepared to go to any extremes in order to secure some mention of his name in the public press.” Eisenhower, with Smith in mind, knew what he was talking about. Thus his conclusion: “I really believe that nothing will be so effective in combating his particular kind of troublemaking as to ignore him. This he cannot stand.”11
Eisenhower’s second reason for attempting to ignore McCarthy, and indeed to appease him whenever possible, was his need for McCarthy’s support in the Senate. Some of his advisers strongly disagreed. C. D. Jackson argued that to cooperate with McCarthy would only embolden him further, while costing the President independent and moderate support. But Eisenhower insisted that if anyone should censure McCarthy, it should be the Senate itself, not the President, and that anyway if given enough rope, McCarthy would hang himself. Jackson retorted that appeasing McCarthy was poor arithmetic (referring to the Senate votes) and worse politics. But Nixon and White House aide Jerry Persons urged Eisenhower in the direction his feelings were already taking him. They said that an attack on McCarthy would only divide the party and publicize the senator even more. “The best way to reduce his influence to the proper proportion,” Nixon said, “is to take him on as part of the team.”12
That was no part of Eisenhower’s view. He never saw McCarthy as a possible member of his team. But McCarthyism, broadly considered, was the most divisive issue of the day. Eisenhower wanted to bring the nation together, through cooperation, not tear it further apart by confrontation. Behind McCarthy stood millions of Americans; they were an important part of the electorate that had put him in office; to attack and alienate McCarthy would be to alienate the senator’s supporters, driving them farther away from the middle road in American politics.
Further, Eisenhower was more on McCarthy’s side than not on the issue of Communism in government. It was McCarthy’s methods he disapproved of, not his goals or his analysis. At a February 25 news conference, Eisenhower said he had no doubt at all that “almost one hundred percent of Americans would like to stamp out all traces of Communism in our country,” and added that if there had been a known Communist on his faculty at Columbia, he would have had the man fired, or he would resign.13
But he was no McCarthyite. The senator’s methods, the way in which his charges and investigations set American against American, leaving innocent victims in the wreckage, were themselves evil. Eisenhower knew this, he felt it in his bones, but he was faced with the fact that McCarthy was an enemy of his enemies, and a friend of a good many of his friends. So while McCarthy had to be destroyed, his followers had to be educated and brought into the mainstream, not alienated. The best way to do that, Eisenhower thought, was to destroy McCarthy by ignoring him, or by letting him destroy himself. He believed this so strongly that he even ignored McCarthy when the senator called into question the good name of his old friend Beetle.
Instead, Eisenhower worked behind the scenes, as he would do countless times in the future, for he was not averse to hastening the process of McCarthy’s withering away. In this instance, he called Taft and told him to put an immediate stop on this nonsense about Beetle. Taft did as told, it worked, and Eisenhower began to have a better impression of Taft. Smith was confirmed, McCarthy got no headlines out of the case, battle had been avoided.
What McCarthy and his friends really wanted from Eisenhower and Dulles were major policy and structural changes. In policy, the Old Guard wanted a flat repudiation of the Yalta agreements, to be followed by action—the form of which was unspecified—to free the East European satellites.
As a candidate, Eisenhower had felt free to denounce Yalta. As President, his freedom of action was much more limited. When he turned to serious consideration of the effect of a repudiation of the agreements, he realized that such an action would have negative effects on American foreign policy and would needlessly alienate the Democrats. Further, having assumed power, he did not want to waste his assets by scavenger hunting into the past. Yalta had given the Americans their occupation rights in West Berlin and in Vienna; how could such guarantees be continued if they had been granted by an invalid agreement? The British, among others, warned that if the Americans could repudiate their pledged word, so could the Russians. Anthony Eden said bluntly that the U.K. would never participate in a repudiation. And of course the Democrats would resist with all their power any implied or real repudiation of FDR. Any resolution that passed Congress by a slim, partisan majority would have little if any effect. Eisenhower told the Republican leaders that “solidarity is the important thing.” He wanted politics to stop at the water’s edge.
So, on February 20, when Eisenhower presented to Congress his proposed resolution on Yalta, it did not repudiate the agreements, but instead merely criticized the Soviet Union for violating the “clear intent” of Yalta and thereby “subjugating whole nations.” The United States, Eisenhower’s resolution declared, rejected “interpretations” of Yalta that “have been perverted to bring about the subjugation of free peoples.” It “hoped” that these peoples would “again enjoy the right of self-determination.”14
The Old Guard denounced Eisenhower for this betrayal of basic Republican principles. Taft, under pressure from Eisenhower to go along, tried to bridge the gap by proposing a reservation to Eisenhower’s resolution: “The adoption of this resolution does not constitute any determination by the Congress as to the validity or invalidity of any of the provisions of the said agreements.” The Democrats, meanwhile, led by Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, hailed Eisenhower’s original resolution and opposed any change in it.
This put the Old Guard in a dilemma. If it allowed Eisenhower’s resolution to pass unamended, it would imply acceptance of Yalta; if it amended the resolution, it would be guilty of partisanship and of splitting with a Republican President. But the Old Guard could not simply drop Yalta. Senator Hickenlooper wanted a clear and strong repudiation, and he had a number of allies on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which held hearings on the subject.
Then Stalin, of all people, came to Eisenhower’s aid. On March 4, word came from Moscow that the Soviet dictator was near death. Under the circumstances, passing a repudiation resolution would be regarded as particularly callous; further, the imminent change in Soviet leadership made it inopportune to reopen old wounds. Nevertheless, Eisenhower was ready to go ahead with his own resolution. On March 5 he told a news conference that “what I really want to do is to put ourselves on record . . . that we never agreed to the enslavement of peoples that has occurred.”
When he was asked to comment on suggestions that the Taft amendment represented “a break between you and Senator Taft,” Eisenhower replied, “So far as I know, there is not the slightest sign of a rift or break between Senator Taft and me. And if anyone knows of any, I don’t.” Four days later, Eisenhower met with Taft and other Republican leaders to discuss the issue. Taft admitted that it was probably better “to forget the whole thing.” Eisenhower’s “powder-puff resolution” was not worth fighting for, while opposing it or amending it would be too costly. Stalin’s death, on March 5, allowed everyone to escape the dilemma by shelving permanently any resolution on Yalta.15
• •
The death of the man who had single-handedly led the world’s second most powerful nation, and America’s principal enemy, was an event of momentous importance. The trouble was that no one in the United States knew what to do about it, how to take advantage of it, or what was going to happen next. Eisenhower, relieved to have escaped the need to denounce FDR in public for Yalta, privately told his Cabinet that American unpreparedness was a “striking example of what has not been done” by the Democrats while they held power. Since 1946, he said, there had been much talk about what would happen when Stalin died, but the net result of seven years’ talk “is zero. There is no plan, there is no agreed-upon position.” He added that was why he had brought Robert Cutler down from Boston to give some form, direction, and organization to the work of the National Security Council (NSC). SHAEF had always had contingency plans ready in the event of Hitler’s death, and he wanted the NSC to be equally prepared in the future.16
Eisenhower was equally unhappy with the failure of the NSC, and the JCS, to think through the implications of the defense budget, which had soared more than 300 percent in the past two and a half years. Ike wanted it cut, and ordered Wilson to get at it, which was done.
• •
Except for the Secretary of the Treasury, George M. Humphrey, only a handful of Republicans supported Eisenhower on these cuts, although few went public with the opposition. The Democrats felt no such constraints. After Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson announced his program of major reductions, Senator Symington launched an attack—one that the Democrats would continue and intensify over the next eight years—charging that Eisenhower’s determination to balance the budget through defense cuts was leaving the United States vulnerable to Soviet aggression.
When Eisenhower was asked about Symington’s charges, at a March 19 news conference, he used the occasion to educate the American people. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there is no amount of military force that can possibly give you real security, because you wouldn’t have that amount unless you felt that there was almost a similar amount that could threaten you somewhere in the world.”17
At a Cabinet meeting the following day, the President was even blunter. Dulles was opposed to making a balanced budget top priority. He warned Eisenhower that if the United States cut back on defense spending, it would have the effect of saying the crisis was over. The Europeans would then feel that in that case, they too could cut back on military expenditures. This, he gravely warned, “would take the heart out of NATO.” Eisenhower immediately disagreed. There could be no security, he told Dulles, without a sound economy, which was dependent upon a balanced budget. Dulles charged that the decision to balance the budget was made in a vacuum.
He then tried to pose a dilemma for Eisenhower: what were they going to do about Korea? Continue the stalemate? If so, they would lose congressional support. Try to win? If so, they needed more money for defense. Eisenhower held his position. “There is a limited kind of striving for a victory,” he said, “but we simply cannot have these succeeding deficits.”
Dulles tried another approach. The French were coming to Washington to ask for more help in Vietnam. Dulles thought that “we can clean up Indochina by an eighteen-month all-out effort” of military aid to France. It made good sense to Dulles to spend the money now, in order to effect greater savings later. So too in Korea—victory there now, whatever the cost, would mean savings later.
Eisenhower admitted that there was some truth in what Dulles said, but not enough. He pointed out that just getting sufficient force in Korea to drive the Communists back a few miles, so that the front lines would run across the narrow waist of the peninsula, would cost $3 or $4 billion. “How much better off are we at the waist,” he wondered, “and how much do we want to pay to get there?” Dulles said driving forward to the waist would improve Korean morale. Eisenhower replied that that was “an imponderable.”
Turning to a broader theme, Eisenhower flatly declared that “the defense of this country is not a military matter. The military has a very limited sector.” If military spending continued at present levels, “then we’ve got to call for drastic reductions in other things,” such as veterans’ benefits, Social Security, farm programs. Eisenhower also warned his Cabinet that “any notion that ‘the bomb’ is a cheap way to solve things is awfully wrong. It ignores . . . the basic realities for our allies. It is cold comfort for any citizen of Western Europe to be assured that—after his country is overrun and he is pushing up daisies—someone still alive will drop a bomb on the Kremlin.”18
• •
Shortly after taking office, Eisenhower had a telephone conversation with Omar Bradley about the situation in Korea. Hanging up the phone, he turned to Ann Whitman and said, “I’ve just learned a lesson.” Bradley had called him “Mr. President,” after a lifetime of calling him “Ike.” Eisenhower told Ann that it was a shock to hear it, and made him realize that as long as he was in the White House he would “be separated from all others, including my oldest and best friends. I would be far more alone now than [during the war].”19
To overcome those feelings of loneliness, Eisenhower turned first of all to his wife. They almost always ate their evening meal together, in the West Sitting Hall, usually with Mamie’s mother, Mrs. Doud, who lived in the White House with them. Later in the evening, when Ike painted, Mamie would sit with him, reading or answering correspondence. They took their vacations together, whether to Augusta in the winter or Colorado in the summer. In the late winter of 1953, following Mamie’s first visit to the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, named Shangri-La by FDR, Mamie announced that she would not go back to the rustic, rather shabby place unless it was modernized. But there was no money in the White House budget to do so. A member of the staff suggested to Mamie that since the place was operated by the Navy, the Navy might pay for remodeling. Mamie said, “I think I’ll just pass a hint along to the Commander-in-Chief.” The work was done; Eisenhower renamed the retreat Camp David after his grandson; therefore, until the Gettysburg farm was remodeled, Ike and Mamie spent numerous weekends together in the mountains.20
Ike’s son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren also helped him preserve some modicum of a normal family life. John and Barbara stayed in the White House until after the inaugural: Ike liked having them around, and they liked being there. The morning of January 22, Mamie had discovered Barbara sitting in a big four-poster in the Royal Suite, having her breakfast served to her. Mamie laughed at the sight; Barbara said that she would “never be nearer heaven than right then.”21 In the months and years that followed, Barbara was often back, with her children, which added immeasurably to Ike’s pleasure, and to his sense that the White House was a real home, not an institution.
But neither Mamie nor the family could fully satisfy Ike’s need for friendship and companions. Mamie seldom woke before 10 A.M., and did not get out of bed before twelve. “I believe that every woman over fifty should stay in bed until noon,” she said, quite seriously.22 She would study the papers, looking for bargains, whether in foods, clothes, or gifts, which she would then order over the telephone. She closely supervised the White House staff and took charge of the social functions, deciding on the menu, flowers, and seating arrangements. “I have only one career, and his name is Ike,” she frequently declared, but in fact she was so busy—not to mention his schedule—that they seldom saw each other in daylight. John had his own career to pursue—he returned to Korea and the front lines shortly after the inaugural—and Barbara and the grandchildren lived in New York State. Further, Mamie never played golf, and she refused to play bridge with her husband, for the good reason that he yelled at her every time she misplayed.
Fortunately, he had friends who shared his love of golf and played bridge to his satisfaction. Even better, they were devoted to him. Following his election, his gang got together and agreed that they would always be available to the President whenever he had a free moment for golf and bridge. They were men of large affairs with crowded schedules of their own, but they felt that since they had played a major role in convincing their friend to take on the Presidency, they owed him whatever they could give him—which was primarily their time and their friendship. Over the next eight years, they were always available. Ann could telephone them in the morning, tell them that the boss wanted to play, and they would immediately get on a plane to Washington. Or, on a few occasions, to England or the Continent.
Ike told Slater he was especially delighted at the gang’s willingness to come to Washington at a moment’s notice, because most of his favorite partners and opponents in Washington were Democrats. He enjoyed playing with Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Senator Symington, and others he had known for years in the capital, but he feared that if he continued to play with them “some Republicans might not understand.”23
In his memoirs, Ike paid a handsome tribute to his gang. “These were men of discretion,” he wrote, “men, who, already successful, made no attempt to profit by our association. It is almost impossible for me to describe how valuable their friendship was to me. Any person enjoys his or her friends; a President needs them, perhaps more intensely at times than anything else.”24
In the middle of February, Robinson, Roberts, and Slater came down from New York to spend the weekend at the White House. After golf in the afternoon and dinner on Saturday night, the party went to the movie theater in the White House to see Peter Pan. Slater asked Ike how the Presidency was going to work out for him financially. “Hell,” Ike replied, “this job is no easy touch. Truman says I’ll be lucky if I don’t use $25,000 a year of my own money.” Mamie added that the government only allowed her $3,000 for redecoration, and complained about “the stingy small bath towels.”
Later in the afternoon, Robinson accompanied Ike to the study in which he did his painting. As Ike worked on a self-portrait Milton had requested, he talked to Robinson about various political problems. “Ike always likes to be in motion of some kind when he is talking and thinking,” Robinson noted. “He seldom sits in the same chair for very long during a discussion and abhors sitting behind a desk in any extended conference. During our two- or three-hour talk he was all over the room and he continued to talk animatedly while he worked on the painting.”
• •
When Robert Donovan asked Eisenhower on February 25 how he liked his job, Ike mentioned “the confinement, and all the rest—those things are what you pay.” Wanting always to be in motion, he hated having to spend hours, days, or weeks on end in his office, without a break from the routine, and he got away as often as possible. On February 7, Ann noted in her diary that “today the President wanted to play golf, very, very badly. He awoke to a cold and drizzly rain. He peered at the sky frequently during the morning, and finally, after another excursion out to the porch, announced, ‘Sometimes I feel so sorry for myself I could cry.’ “25
Later that month, Eisenhower was delighted when the American Public Golf Association offered to build a putting green on the South Lawn. Ike accepted, and had it placed just outside his office window. He practiced his approach shots and putts on his way to and from the office. He was furious with the squirrels, which were almost tame because Truman liked to feed them, and who buried acorns and walnuts in the green. Ike told Moaney, “The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take a gun and shoot it!” The Secret Service talked him out of that idea, substituting traps instead; soon most of the squirrels had been transported to Rock Creek Park.26
Ike’s favorite place to play golf was not on the White House lawn, nor at the Burning Tree Golf Club outside Washington, but at Augusta National. There he and Mamie could entertain their friends, relax, and play cards. On February 27, he made his first trip there for a weekend; the gang flew down from New York in a Chase National Bank plane; everyone had a great time. Ike played golf with the world’s most famous golfer, Bobby Jones; he vowed to return often.
• •
He needed all the relaxation he could get, because among other problems, Joe McCarthy was on another series of rampages. He had charged, for example, that Dr. Ralph Bunche, a Negro American who had won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize and who was working at the U.N., was a Communist. It was a ridiculous charge that made Ike furious.
McCarthy, in Eisenhower’s view, sought headlines, not Communists. A whirlwind tour of Europe that spring by McCarthy’s young aides, Roy Cohn and G. David Schine, seemed to the President to prove the point. Cohn and Schine were “investigating” Communist penetration of the Voice of America by examining the holdings of America’s overseas libraries. Those libraries had already been pretty thoroughly purged by Dulles’ orders, but Cohn and Schine announced that they had found books written by 418 Communists or fellow travelers still being circulated. McCarthy demanded that Dulles trace the book orders and find out who had authorized the purchase of books by such people as Foster Rhea Dulles (the Secretary’s cousin, a distinguished historian), John Dewey, and Robert M. Hutchins. Dulles then banned the works of all Communist authors and “any publication which continuously publishes Communist propaganda.” Some books were burned. Dulles also dismissed some 830 employees of the Voice.
The spectacle was more than many columnists could bear. Richard Rovere, Walter Lippmann, Bruce Catton, and others demanded that Eisenhower speak out. He refused. “I deplore and deprecate the table-pounding, name-calling methods that columnists so much love,” he explained to one correspondent. “This is not because of any failure to love a good fight; it merely represents my belief that such methods are normally futile.”27 On May 9, Eisenhower’s friend Harry Bullis of General Mills warned him “that the senator has unlimited personal ambitions, unmitigated gall, and unbounded selfishness. In the opinion of many of us who are your loyal friends, it is a fallacy to assume that McCarthy will kill himself. It is our belief that McCarthy should be stopped soon.”
Still Eisenhower refused. He told Bullis that “this particular individual wants, above all else, publicity. Nothing would probably please him more than to get the publicity that would be generated by public repudiation by the President.” That would only “increase his appeal as an after-dinner speaker and so allow him to raise the fees that he charges,” which Eisenhower thought was McCarthy’s chief motivation. Eisenhower said he realized “it is a sorry mess,” and admitted that “at times one feels almost like hanging his head in shame.”28 But shame or no, he would not act.
Even if Eisenhower tried to ignore McCarthy, no one else would. Cohn and Schine were dominating the news, pushing the major issues of statecraft off the front pages, and there was a veritable national uproar over the holdings of America’s overseas libraries. In Europe, if possible, the uproar was even greater. Philip Reed of General Electric went to Europe to assess the damage for Eisenhower. Reed reported that “it was surprising how seriously McCarthy and his tactics are taken in Europe” and spoke of the “shattered morale” in America’s leading propaganda agency. He advised Eisenhower to “take public issue with McCarthy” in order to correct the European impression of “abject appeasement.”29
On June 14, at Dartmouth College commencement exercises, Eisenhower did speak out. Talking without notes, he began with a rambling discourse on college life, golf, and patriotism. Then, leaning forward, he admonished the graduates, “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.”30
The pronouncement caused great excitement among the press, which speculated that Eisenhower was finally, at last, going to go after McCarthy. But it was not to be. The next day, Dulles asked Eisenhower if he wanted recent restrictions on material in the overseas libraries lifted. Eisenhower said no, “it would be undesirable to buy or handle books which were persuasive of Communism.”31 At a news conference on June 17, Merriman Smith asked the President whether the Dartmouth speech was “critical of a school of thought represented by Senator McCarthy.” Eisenhower immediately backtracked.
“Now, Merriman,” he began gently, “you have been around me long enough to know I never talk personalities.” He said he was opposed to the “suppression of ideas,” but then added, “if the State Department is burning a book which is an open appeal to everybody in those foreign countries to be a Communist, then I would say that falls outside of the limits I was speaking, and they can do as they please to get rid of them.” Did that mean he approved of book burning? Well, no, not exactly.32
Eisenhower was equally vague in the privacy of his Cabinet meetings. On June 26 he told Dulles it was all becoming too embarrassing, and he wanted the Secretary to issue yet another statement on book policy (seven had already been sent out). Dulles, harassed himself, charged that Voice employees were burning books “out of fear or hatred for McCarthy,” and out of a desire to embarrass the Secretary of State. Eisenhower said that he “could not conceive of fighting the Commies by ducking our heads in the sand,” but then, on the other hand, he did not want American libraries distributing Communist propaganda. On still another hand, he said he knew for a fact that the German people “love our libraries,” that he was proud to know that a library in Bonn carried a book that “severely criticizes me—on the battle of the Rhine or something.”33 Dulles finally escaped his predicament by issuing yet another directive, which said that books in overseas libraries should be “about the United States, its people and policies.” McCarthy, meanwhile, was off after new targets, and Eisenhower had avoided an open break with the senator.
• •
Eisenhower’s refusal to go after McCarthy brought widespread criticism, and not just from Democrats. Nor were the criticisms limited to McCarthy; General Ike was a great military commander, people were saying, but President Ike is no political leader.
In Eisenhower’s view, the complaints about his refusal to exercise real leadership were misdirected. The critics were watching the periphery, while he concentrated on the main battles. These included taxes, the budget, the war in Korea, the level of defense spending, foreign aid, and the general problem of world peace. On all these momentous issues, Eisenhower insisted, he provided firm, direct, and, most of all, effective leadership. He used all the weapons at his command, including private meetings with congressional leaders, his persuasive powers with the Cabinet, patronage, and his ability to mold public opinion through his news conferences and speeches. He left no doubt where he stood on any of the issues he felt were important, and he got his way—despite intense opposition—on every one of them.
Taxes are a problem for every President, of course, but they were especially irksome for Eisenhower because of Republican insistence that they be cut, at once, regardless of the size of the deficit. To that end, seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Daniel Reed of New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had introduced a bill (H.R. 1) to advance from January 1, 1954, to July 1, 1953, a scheduled elimination of the 11 percent increase in personal income taxes adopted because of the Korean War. He also announced his intention to let the Korean War excess-profits tax expire as scheduled on June 30, 1953. These two measures would cost the government some $3 billion in revenue. Eisenhower repeated over and over that he would not allow a tax cut until he had a balanced budget; he wanted to postpone the cut in excise taxes and to extend the 11 percent increase in income taxes.
The battle lines were clearly drawn. “I used every reason, argument, and device,” Eisenhower later recalled, “and every kind of personal and indirect contact to bring Chairman Reed to my way of thinking.”34 Nothing worked. Eisenhower made it plain to other Republican congressmen that if they wanted their share of the patronage, they would have to give him their votes on taxes. That brought a few members around. Eisenhower asked Taft to use his influence, which the senator reluctantly did. In July, Eisenhower finally got what he wanted.
Part of his success was due to his promise to bring down federal spending. That was the argument that had moved Taft. The senator was therefore appalled when, at a Legislative Leaders’ Meeting on April 30, Eisenhower outlined his budget for the coming fiscal year. Although it made heavy cuts in defense, they were not enough to satisfy Taft; he objected strongly to the continuation of foreign aid at levels only slightly less than those of Truman; he refused to believe that more cuts could not be made and the first Republican budget in twenty years could not come out balanced.
Red-faced, raising his voice, snapping out his words, Taft declared, “I can’t express the deepness of my disappointment at the program the Administration presented today.” As Eisenhower recounted in his diary, “[Taft] accused the security council of merely adopting the Truman strategy and, by a process of nicking here and chipping there, built up savings which he classed as ‘puny.’ He predicted that acceptance by the Congress of any such program would insure the decisive defeat of the Republican party in 1954. He said that not only could he not support the program, but that he would have to go on public record as fighting and opposing it.” Eisenhower found himself “astonished at the demagogic nature of his tirade, because not once did he mention the security of the United States . . . he simply wanted expenditures reduced, regardless.”
Eisenhower broke in. “Let’s go back,” he said. Looking directly at Taft, he continued; “The essentials of our global strategy are not too difficult to understand.” Europe must not fall; we can’t take it over; we must make it stronger. “Next, the Middle East. That’s half of the oil resources. We can’t let it go to Russia.” Southeast Asia was another critical point; we had to support the French in Vietnam. Taft’s idea about relying exclusively on atomic weapons, based in the United States, brought from Eisenhower a scornful comment: “Reprisal alone gives us no assurance of security.” America had to maintain a position of strength, or the Russians “will take these over gradually without fighting.” He then gave Taft a detailed explanation of his defense policy.
Finally, a simple conclusion: “I cannot endanger the security of my country,” and the meeting ended. Eisenhower commented in his diary that Taft did not have “considered judgment,” because “he attempts to discuss weighty, serious, and even critical matters in such an ill-tempered and violent fashion.” And, in a telling judgment on the subject of self-control, Eisenhower said of Taft, “I do not see how he can possibly expect . . . to influence people when he has no more control over his temper [than that].”35
• •
Aside from the basic question of war or peace, the most important problem any modern President faces is the size of the defense budget. Everything else—taxes, the size of the deficit, the rate of unemployment, the inflation rate, relations with America’s allies and with the Soviet Union—is directly related to how much DOD spends. All of Eisenhower’s major goals—peace, lower taxes, a balanced budget, no inflation—were dependent upon his cutting the defense budget.
He knew it and was determined to do it. Indeed, an important factor in his decision to enter politics was his unhappiness with Truman’s defense policy. As Taft had noted, spending for the military went up and down between 1945 and 1953 at a dizzying pace. On the eve of the Korean War, Truman had reduced defense to $13.5 billion. Eisenhower had opposed such drastic cuts, and often said that he personally believed there never would have been a Korean War if Truman had not demobilized so rapidly as to force the Army to withdraw its divisions from South Korea in 1948. By 1952, Truman was projecting more than $50 billion for defense, and had committed the United States to building up a maximum strength—to a near total-war footing—by 1954, the so-called “year of maximum danger.” (By 1954, according to the Pentagon, the Soviet Union would have a hydrogen bomb and possess the means of delivery.)
Eisenhower told Republican leaders that this target date business was “pure rot.” He said, “I have always fought the idea of X units by Y date. I am not going to be stampeded by someone coming along with a damn trick formula of ‘so much by this date.’ ” What he wanted, instead, was a steady buildup, based on what the country could afford. When he announced his program, however, all the services objected strenuously. The Air Force, which had been scheduled to get the largest share of the Truman buildup, was especially upset, and not in the least hesitant in going public with its criticisms. Air Force objections got wide publicity. The Air Force argued that it had to have 141 groups by 1954 or it could not meet its responsibilities.
“I’m damn tired of Air Force sales programs,” Eisenhower told the Republican leaders. “In 1946 they argued that if we can have seventy groups, we’ll guarantee security forever and ever and ever.” Now they come up with this “trick figure of 141. They sell it. Then you have to abide by it or you’re treasonous.” Eisenhower said he had told Defense Secretary Wilson to put his house in order, to force the generals and admirals to keep their mouths shut. “I will not have anyone in Defense who wants to sell the idea of a larger and larger force in being.” The main Air Force spokesman on Capitol Hill, Senator Stuart Symington, charged that Eisenhower’s program would leave the United States open to a Russian strategic bombing campaign. Eisenhower thought that too was “pure rot.”
“We pulverized Germany,” he reminded the congressmen, “but their actual rate of production was as big at the end as at the beginning. It’s amazing what people can do under pressure. The idea that our economy will be paralyzed is a figment of Stuart Symington’s imagination.” Eisenhower looked at the problem from the other end—he pointed to the effect on the economy if the United States continued to build toward Truman’s target date. What would happen after 1954? Could the country simply shut down the plants that had geared up to produce all those tanks, ships, and planes?
Still the politicians objected to Eisenhower’s cuts. Surely the Air Force knew better than anyone else what its needs were. Eisenhower said that was “bunk.” He reminded the congressmen that “I’ve served with those people who know all the answers—they just won’t get down and face the dirty facts of life.” The politicians were not convinced. How could they, mere civilians, argue with the Pentagon? Eisenhower replied that he knew the Pentagon as well as any man living; he knew how ingrained was the tendency to overstate the case, to ask for more than was really necessary.36
These remarks were made in private meetings, but Eisenhower was just as emphatic in public. At an April 23 news conference, Richard Harkness of NBC asked him if the “stretch out” in defense spending meant that he was looking to a ten-year buildup. “Well,” Eisenhower responded, “I would object to ten years just as much as I object to two. Anybody who bases his defense on his ability to predict the day and the hour of attack is crazy. If you are going on the defensive, you have got to get a level of preparation you can sustain over the years.”37
A week later, when the subject came up again, Eisenhower gave a history lecture. The situation in the 1950s, he said, was not at all like the situation in June of 1944 when “I went across the Channel.” At that time, he said, “we knew the day. We knew when we wanted our maximum force. We knew the buildup we wanted. We knew exactly what we were up against.” None of that was true in 1953.38
An integral part of Eisenhower’s defense posture was reliance upon allies. That meant specifically that he wanted more funds for Mutual Security Assistance (MSA), so that he could distribute military hardware to the Koreans, to the NATO allies, and to other friends around the world. Eisenhower believed that it was cheaper for the United States to pay the costs of keeping a British or a German force on the Elbe River, or a French force in Vietnam, than it was to keep an American force there. Here he ran into the firm opposition of a majority of Republicans in Congress. They were tired of the Marshall Plan, tired of foreign aid, tired of “giving away” America’s money. It was in this area, rather than in Pentagon appropriations, that they saw an opportunity to cut spending. Like Taft, they wanted a “Fortress America” program, although unlike Taft they were unwilling to reduce the size of the fortress.
To Eisenhower, this was just another instance of congressional stupidity. “Consider British bases,” he told the Republican leaders. From Britain, the United States could strike the Soviet Union with B-47 bombers instead of having to use B-52s. He reminded them of the “huge difference” in initial costs, in operation, and in maintenance.39 He managed to get most of what he asked for on MSA, and the Pentagon budget did go down. Together with maintaining the existing level of taxes, these were major triumphs. Eisenhower, more than any other individual, was responsible for winning them.
• •
The most obvious way for Eisenhower to reduce defense spending was to reduce the level of tension in the world. Since 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union had been hurling the most horrendous charges at each other as they built and maintained armed forces designed to fight the battle of Armageddon. Eisenhower’s election and Stalin’s death provided an opportunity for a fresh start. Stalin’s immediate successor, Georgi Malenkov, seized the chance. On March 15, he declared that there was no existing dispute between the two countries that “cannot be decided by peaceful means, on the basis of mutual understanding.” The Soviet propaganda machine then went into high gear on a “peace offensive.” Eisenhower had to respond. He had a sense of urgency about the need to do so, because he had just read a CIA report on the world reaction to the Soviet moves. “It begins to look to me,” he told Dulles, “that if I am to make a speech on this question of peace, I should do it soon.” Dulles was opposed—he did not believe a word of what Malenkov was saying—but Eisenhower insisted.40
In late March, Eisenhower met with Hughes in the Oval Office. After going over some routine matters, Eisenhower “began talking with the air of a man whose thoughts . . . were fast veering toward a conclusion.”
Hughes recalled the scene vividly—Eisenhower’s head “martially high,” his “strong mouth tight, the jaw set—and the blue eyes agleam and intent.” Eisenhower “wheeled abruptly” toward Hughes and went on: “Here is what I would like to say. The jet plane that roars over your head costs three-quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man . . . is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead us? At worst, to atomic warfare. At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil.”
Eisenhower said he wanted to see the resources of the world used to provide bread, butter, clothes, homes, hospitals, schools, “all the good and necessary things for decent living,” not more guns. To help bring that about, he wanted to make a speech that would not include the standard indictment of the Soviet Union. “The past speaks for itself. I am interested in the future. Both their government and ours now have new men in them. The slate is clean. Now let us begin talking to each other. And let us say what we’ve got to say so that every person on earth can understand it.”
Hughes injected a word of caution. He said he had just talked to Dulles about how the United States would react if the Communists accepted an armistice in Korea. Dulles had said he would be sorry, because “I don’t think we can get much out of a Korean settlement until we have shown—before all Asia—our clear superiority by giving the Chinese one hell of a licking.”
Eisenhower’s head snapped around. He stared at Hughes. Then he said, “All right, then. If Mr. Dulles and all his sophisticated advisers really mean that they can not talk peace seriously, then I am in the wrong pew. For if it’s war we should be talking about, I know the people to give me advice on that—and they’re not in the State Department. Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace—or we forget the whole thing.”41
Eisenhower told Hughes, and C. D. Jackson, to get to work on a speech on peace. He monitored every word of the many drafts, often providing them with imagery and telling phrases. Over the next two weeks, they worked hard at it.
• •
On April 16, 1953, Eisenhower went to the Statler Hotel in Washington to give the American Society of Newspaper Editors the finest speech of his Presidency. He called it “The Chance for Peace.” Insofar as it was a response to the Soviet peace offensive, it was propaganda—eloquently put, but still propaganda. Eisenhower welcomed recent Soviet statements on the need for peace and said that he would believe they were sincere when the words were backed with deeds. Specific deeds, including the release of POWs held since 1945, a Soviet signature on an Austrian treaty, the conclusion of “an honorable armistice” in Korea, Indochina, and Malaya, agreement to a free and united Germany, and the “full independence of the East European nations.”
In return for such actions by the Russians, Eisenhower said he was prepared to conclude an arms-limitation agreement and to accept international control of atomic energy designed to “insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.” All this would be supervised by “a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.”
Eisenhower knew that most of his demands for proof were unacceptable to the Russians. Under no circumstances would they pull out of Eastern Europe; the idea of German reunification gave them nightmares; they could not be expected to (or even be able to) call off the guerrilla warriors in Vietnam and Malaya; and their opposition to on-site inspections within the Soviet Union was implacable, and well known.
The specific charges, demands, and proposals in “The Chance for Peace,” in other words, were little more than a restatement of some of the oldest Cold War rhetoric. They were not what made the speech great. What did make it great was Eisenhower’s warning about the dangers and the cost of continuing the arms race.
“The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated,” he declared. “The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples.” Then he added up the price: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Suddenly Eisenhower began perspiring. As the sweat beaded up on his face, he became so dizzy he feared he would faint. Then he was racked by chills. He reached forward and grabbed the podium with both hands to steady himself. He had had an intestinal attack the previous evening, and that morning Dr. Snyder had given him sedatives, but now the attack was worse than ever. With an effort of will, Eisenhower drew himself together, managed to concentrate on the text, and read on, skipping some passages so as to emphasize the important ones.
“This world in arms is not spending money alone,” he continued. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” He picked up his voice, looked out at his audience, and began ticking them off: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.” Sweat was pouring from his brow, but he read on: “We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.”
Looking out again, he pronounced his judgment. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
Eisenhower’s conclusion, pointing to the alternative, was as splendid as his evocation of the costs of the arms race. He said that if the Soviets showed by deeds that they too were ready for peace, the United States would devote “a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction . . . to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom. The monuments to this new kind of war would be these: roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.”42
• •
The reception to his speech, in the Western world, was overwhelming. The American press outdid itself in praising him; so did the British and Continental newspapers; messages from American embassies around the world reported the greatest enthusiasm to any statement by an American since George Marshall outlined the European Recovery Program.
There was much in “The Chance for Peace” that was pure propaganda, but the overall tone of the speech was so reasonable and moderate, Eisenhower’s sincerity so apparent, as in his willingness to speak the blunt truth about the arms race in such vivid terms, and the reception of the speech was so favorable, that the Soviets had to respond. How, and when, remained to be seen.