Modest, homely Omar Bradley of Moberly, Mo., the Army's Chief of Staff, slipped on his steel-rimmed glasses in the Senate Caucus room last week and took a soldier's look at the North Atlantic Treaty. The diplomats and statesmen had argued out the legal niceties of the pact. Infantryman Bradley skipped the fine print and drove to the main point. In his mild, high-pitched voice, Bradley told the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee: "Our frontiers of collective defense lie in common with theirs [the other treaty nations'] in the heart of Europe."
Ten years before, Franklin...