None Can Stand Alone

Wearing his famed black beret and crackling with splintery opinions, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein popped into Washington last week. Though his visit was unofficial, Monty, as military chief of Europe's Western Union forces, delivered one deliberate message to the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff: if Western Europe was to stave off invasion, the Western Germans must be rearmed for defensive warfare, under Allied command/-

This week Monty was to address the English-Speaking Union in Manhattan, publicly and in more general terms. But the nub of his message was the same: that the West could not allow old rancors to divide it against the greater threat of the East. "Civilization is in danger," he said, "because of a clash between two conflicting moral codes: between Communism and Democracy . . . As a Christian soldier I declare myself an enemy of Communism and all that it stands for. Unless this danger can be held, great trouble lies ahead . . .

"This is a very testing time ... I believe that the world is going through one of its vast secular revolutions ... a switchover in human affairs such as the world has not seen since Roman days . . . It is the duty of the Western democracies to ensure that this crisis . . . does not lead to the destruction of the civilization, the culture, and the standard of living which is our heritage."

In that struggle, cooperation between the U.S. and Britain is "the linchpin of the structure," said Monty. "None of us can stand alone and none are doing so today ... In Western Europe, the eyes and thoughts of everyone are ever turning westward . . . They look to the English-speaking nations and wonder if they can count on their help: definitely. We must not let them have any doubts."

Speaking as a soldier, Montgomery warned: "To promise to rescue the West in due course after a successful invasion from the East is quite useless. If the West is overrun again, that is ... the end of Western civilization . . . Do not let us fail to do the right things now!"

Such common purpose among Western democracies was far more important than technological advantage or more atomic bombs, Monty insisted, and it might mean "some small loss of sovereignty for the common purpose." But, said Montgomery earnestly, "the premium is not very great. The dividend will be enormous--it will be peace and freedom."

/- A position shared by many U.S. strategists, but not by U.S. military policy makers (see FOREIGN NEWS).

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