DEFENSE: Down from the Peak

President Eisenhower likes to scoff at last fall’s uproar over Sputnik as the “Sputnik attitude”—a period of frenzy that the U.S. would do well not to repeat. But Texas Democrat George H. Mahon, hard-working chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, warned his colleagues last week that the Sputnik attitude has vanished too fast for the nation’s good.

When Russia sent the first man-made earth satellite into orbit last October, said Mahon during debate on the $38 billion defense appropriation, “we became aroused, humiliated, angry, frustrated and determined. Now the anger has cooled and the determination has been blunted.” From a “peak of awareness and urgency,” the U.S. has backslid to ”the humdrum plane of complacency.” And complacency is dangerous. “The Soviet threat to our pre-eminence in industry, science and military striking power is steadily increasing. We have long been accustomed to think of the U.S. as occupying an unchallenged and unchallengeable position. We cannot afford to make such assumptions today.”