Eleven Lonely Men

As Secretary of Defense, Charles Erwin Wilson is the boss of 3,500,000 uniformed men & women and nearly 1,500,000 civilians. So far, Wilson has been able to bring into the department only eleven men of his own choosing. "An awfully small piece of yeast," as he says, "for such a big lump of dough." The real managers of the Defense Department are a few hundred generals, admirals and civilian bureaucrats.

It was the key career men who drew up the $45.4 billion military budget which Wilson inherited from Harry Truman. Accordingly, they keep a sharp eye on Wilson's efforts to cut the Truman budget by $4.3 billion. The real bosses of the Pentagon regard every cut in their sub-budgets as a reflection on their original estimates.

Fortnight ago, at his first Pentagon press conference, Wilson announced that he knew the budget would be cut. Without waiting for Wilson to propose specific cuts, the generals and admirals began explaining to reporters and others that it could not be done. "Wilson is fiddling with our national security," cried a Navyman last week. "You can't make across-the-board cuts without hurting the whole armed services," said an Air Force officer.

The sad fact is that if the generals, admirals and bureaucrats believe this hard enough, they can make it true. No eleven men, even with Congress in agreement, can swing the vast organization run by the Pentagon out of its ruts unless a considerable number of the professionals are persuaded that cuts can be made without hurting efficiency. Last week it was more obvious than ever that President Eisenhower was going to have to help Secretary Wilson by throwing the weight of his military knowledge and prestige against the phalanx of Pentagon brass.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.