Challenge to Debate

A year ago, spurred by a speech by ex-President Herbert Hoover, the U.S. plunged into the Great Debate. The issue: the promise of U.S. troops to Europe. Last week Herbert Hoover, in a nationwide telecast, called for a revival of the debate. Once more, he took the side that had lost.

Said Hoover: Even with the U.S. commitment, Western Europe's rearmament in the past year had been sluggish and unwilling. "There is in Europe today no such public alarm as has been fanned up in the United States. None of those nations has declared emergencies . . . They do not propagandize war fears . . . Not one . . . conducts such exercises in protection from bombs as we have had . . ."

Hoover listed eight reasons for West European belief that the Russians will not invade (among them: the venture would be too risky; Stalin has enough trouble with dissident nationalities already under his wing; it's more profitable in Asia). Correct or not, he said, "Western Europe's lack of hysterics . . . calculation of low risk . . . lack of hurry to arm . . . requires that the United States recalculate our own risks and reconsider the possible alternatives . . ." Added facts for revaluation are the upheavals in the Middle East, the failure to forge victory in Korea, the "dangerous overstraining" of the U.S. economy by gigantic expenditures.

Hoover recommended "the essentials of the proposals" he had urged a year ago, including i) withdrawal of U.S. ground forces to defend the Western Hemisphere, "this final Gibraltar of freedom"; 2) expansion of a powerful air & naval striking force that would act as a deterrent to World War III; 3) supply of munitions, rather than men, to the U.S.'s allies; 4) revision of the U.N. Charter, which "must not be allowed to dominate the internal sovereignty of our Government."

Another Republican challenge to debate came from New York's Governor Thomas Dewey. Speaking from Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria before the National Industrial Conference Board, Dewey confined himself generally to U.S. Far Eastern policy. Unlike Hoover, he urged no shrinkage but an extension of American commitment in foreign policy.

Said Dewey: "Our mutual defense picture in the Pacific looks something like Europe would look if we had guaranteed to fight for Norway in the north, for Belgium in the center, for Greece in the south, leaving all the rest of the continent of Europe as fair game for Communist aggression." The governor, as he has done before, proposed a defensive alliance that would include not only Japan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, but also the islands of Indonesia and the menaced countries of Southeast Asia. With the alliance, he said, there should be a clear warning that retaliation would be visited on any aggressor.

"I am profoundly convinced that, if we form such an alliance and issue such a warning, there will be no invasion of Southeast Asia ... If we do not take such action, the free Pacific will be lost..."

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