(See Cover)
Just before 8:30 one morning last week, an olive drab Cadillac rolled down the ramp to the underground parking lot of the Pentagon Building. Its passenger, cap set ever so slightly at a rake, stepped out, pulled down his trim, suntan Eisenhower jacket and strode toward the elevator. Pentagon workers did not need to glance at the five-star circlets on his shoulder straps to know who he was. They gave him "good morning." General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower grinned his acknowledgments, got into the elevator, was soon in his third-floor office and busy at the most difficult job of his life. Ike Eisenhower, who had conquered some massive tasks in his day, was directing the rebuilding of the U.S. Army and its once-great Air Forces, both still at the edge of wrack & ruin as the result of the U.S.'s planless postwar demobilization.
No man knew better than Soldier Eisenhower that the main forces of U.S. policy were dollars for food, clothes and fuel, that the war to win peace was being waged in ideological and economic fields (see Foreign Relations), and that the commander in that campaign was Secretary of State George Marshall. But it was also true that Marshall, and the nation, in the last analysis, were dependent on Eisenhower. The principle was enunciated 154 years ago by George Washington: "There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. . . . If we desire to secure peace . . . it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
The dictum was never more valid than in 1947, when, as seldom in history, the world's military strength was divided between two great powers. Could Marshall depend on Eisenhower, his Air Forces and his Army to make it clear that the U.S. is "at all times ready for war?" Three years ago, on Dday, facing the coast of Normandy, Ike Eisenhower commanded the mightiest military force of men, guns, ships, and planes in history, and most of it was U.S. strength. Not even the most extreme of U.S. military now contend that the U.S. should still have such a force or anything like it. But the Army and Air Forces over which Ike Eisenhower now presides are little more than skeletons.