Operation Eisenhower

A Senate subcommittee with eyes cocked at the political heavens summoned Chief of Staff Eisenhower last week to explain the demobilization snafu--and incidentally to air their own views. They reckoned without Strategist Ike Eisenhower. Before the week was out he had passed the buck right back to Congress.

Angered by Congressional needling, Ike Eisenhower gritted out: "I have commanded more American soldiers than anyone else in history. You men cannot possibly have a greater interest in them than me."

And in that mood, before the committee, before both houses and over the radio, he spelled out the problem.

"To Secure the Peace." Tardily, after the unsoldierly hubbub of homesick G.I.s had reached a stage of near-mutiny (TIME, Jan. 21), Chief of Staff Eisenhower had forbidden any more soldiers' demonstrations on pain of court-martial. Now he told why he had put the brakes on demobilization and thus touched off the rumpus.

Since V-J day, demobilization machinery had restored to civilian life almost half again as many men as anyone had figured possible. At that headlong rate of discharge, said General Ike, we would have soon "run out of Army."

Why did the U.S. need to keep so many men in arms? Eisenhower spelled it out: in Austria and Germany the Army has the job of supervising and policing 15,000,000 civilians and destroying Germany's ability to make war; it has the same kind of job in the Pacific. G.I.s also have to protect $14 billion of U.S. property scattered around the globe. They have to roll up the bases. At home they have the job of keeping house and demobilizing their highpoint colleagues.

The size of the task would diminish but there would be work for a long time to come. The Army figured it would need a minimum 1,500,000 on July 1--not, Eisenhower was careful to point out, as a permanent military establishment but as an interim force "to secure the peace."

"A Most Fateful Decision." With an air of you-asked-for-it he announced that he had ordered the release by June 30 of all enlisted men with 40 points or 24 months service. The order would cut deep. The Army counts on only 135,000 from Selective Service, which expires on May 15. The enlistment pool was drying up. When July rolls around, Army authorities fear, they may be a quarter of a million men short.

That was the fact which Congress had to face. What was the answer?

Eisenhower said solemnly: Either the Army will have to have more men, "or competent authority--I presume the Congress itself--will have to relieve the Army of its vitally important missions ... a most fateful decision."

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