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The House has already cut the Army's $6 billion budget request by $436 million. Last week Navy Secretary James Forrestal appeared before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to battle another
House slash of $377 million in the Navy budget. His estimate of the damage: 157 ships, 100,000 men, 1,000 aircraft. Said he: "A reduction in naval strength of any such magnitude . . . would surely be interpreted as evidence of our intention to recede from our international obligations and commitments abroad."
Time for Decision. By the time the planners' "year of crisis" comes, Ike Eisenhower and the present commanders of other services will be gone. Sometime next fall, the Veterans Administration's General Omar Bradley will probably take over Ike's job. Atlantic Fleet Commander William ("Spike") Blandy, who ran the Bikini bomb tests, will probably replace Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz as Chief of Naval Operations. Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg, former C.I.G. head, now replacing General Ira Eaker as deputy chief of air, is slated to step into Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz's shoes sometime next winter; the Marines' Major General Graves Erskine will probably take over from General A. A. Vandegrift.
The new team will have to meet the threat. But the decision on the forces they will direct must be taken, at least in part—and with proper civilian analysis of the proposals of the military—before the old team steps out. If the U.S. drifts too long, it may not get the chance to change direction again. Said a top War Department strategist last week: "They say we can't afford it. Maybe we've got to afford it. What will a man give to save his life?"
* All of them products of wartime research. During World War II no plane saw combat which was not on the drawing boards before Pearl Harbor.