Waging Total Peace

Another respected voice in U.S. affairs spoke up last week, with a warning that was wider than Eisenhower's. Addressing the Naval War College at Newport, R.I. 79-year-old Bernard M. Baruch declared: "What has been done so far is inadequate . . . We still have not faced up to what the total peace-waging requires. We still stagger from crisis to crisis, with the initiative left to the enemy. We still treat each country as a separate problem, instead of as part of a unified global strategy." We are "spreading ourselves too thin."

Baruch cited examples. Suggestions had been made that MAP arms be diverted from France to Bao Dai in Indo-China. "Are we then to weaken Western Europe for some halfhearted and possibly ineffective action in the Orient?" In Germany, "sooner or later we must expect a showdown--since Germany cannot be expected to remain divided indefinitely. Are we pacing ourselves so that we will be ready for that showdown when it comes? . . .

"Hasn't the time come for the expenditure of sufficient resources to force a decision somewhere?"

What is needed, said Baruch, "is a central 'think body' ... a nonpartisan group which will stay on the job until the cold war is won, a group which would sit in continuous deliberation on the whole of the peace-waging, serving as a central point of decision, weighing all of the many commitments pressed upon us, guiding the best disposition of our strained resources, determining where in the world we are to fight a mere holding action, and where we can achieve a decisive breakthrough--and at what effort."

For this "general staff for peace," Baruch suggested a broadened and revitalized

National Security Council, a body now made up of the President, Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, and the chairman of the National Security Resources Board. Its domain would include the military, the economic and the diplomatic. Baruch would put it "under the direction of a man of the stature of General Marshall," add to it other full-time members who would do "nothing but think, work, plan--live and breathe--the cold war."

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