Truculent Turtlebacks

Stuart Symington, the United States' Under-Secretary of War for Air, may have acted premature in his revelation of Army Air Force plans to send a squadron of B-29 Superfortresses on a globe-girdling demonstration of United States air might. The route and date of the flight, as well as the flight itself, apparently have received only tentative consideration and approval from policy-makers in the War and State Departments. There was nothing tentative, however, about Secretary of the Navy's James V. Forrestal's statement that the United States was maintaining the strongest fleet in the Eastern Mediteerranean to "support United States policies in that area"--as the Secretary put it. Nor was there anything indefinite or undecided in the whopping hops of the Army's Pacusan Dreamboat or the Navy's Truculent Turtle across the Pacific.

It all seemed to add up to a diplomatic policy greatly influenced if not largely created by the War and Navy Departments, two branches of the government whose chief historic preoccupation has been with war, rather than peace. While the good grey Secretary Byrnes tirelessly performed his role at the Paris peace conference, the admirals and the generals were doing their best to originate their own type of policy, one greatly reminiscent of the sabrerattling of days long gone by.

One of the chief causes for the split between East and West at Paris and for the queasy state of affairs between this nation and Russia has been the mutual distrust between our two nations. For Russia, this suspicion goes back to memories of an American expeditionary force in Vladivostok and years of non-recognition by this country. And, in the United States, distrust of the Comintern has flared up with new intensity in direct ratio to every instance of Russian obstructionism of Slavic temperamentalism in the United Nations. The principal problem of the Paris peacemakers has been to allay the fear and distrust between nations that is the legacy of World Wars I and II.

At the press conference at which Secretary Symington announced plans for the forthcoming flight, the Secretary was queried as to the purpose of the flight and replied, "What do you think?" The United States and the world don't know what to think about it, Mr. Secretary.