President Truman's Proposals

One year age President Truman enunciated bluntly the growing threat of Russian expansion and won overwhelming support for a foreign policy molded to drive the Soviet Union into a limited sphere. Today it is a matter of fact that we have not succeeded in stopping the extension of Russian influence. Through the Communist parties which are its international agencies the Kremlin has exerted continually increasing power throughout Europe.

The President's proposals Wednesday followed from the conviction that his program has failed during the past year because he has provided no military bite to back up his diplomatic bark. Selective Service and Universal Military Training, he feels together with such men as James F. Byrnes and Walter Lippman, will provide the necessary bite. They will show both Russia and those European nations which may in the future fall into Russia's sphere that we "mean business." Russia is supposed to respond by displaying new respect for the potency of American policy; and nations such as France and Italy, theoretically, will be encouraged by this new and positive display of American interest to resist Communist domination, both from within and from without.

Tipping the Balance Toward Ultimate War

If indeed it were clear that President Truman's program would achieve these effects there could be little room for opposition. But there are strong arguments leading to the opposite conclusion: that Selective Service and Universal Military Training are likely to lead us step by step into war because they are wrong-way measures in no way striking at the real roots of Communist success.

Opposing the President places one in the uncomfortable company of the isolationists and the third party. Yet a cogent case which both of these groups reject shows that the course upon which we are asked to embark errs gravely. Now is the time to exploit our "crisis" consciousness. President Truman has used the bankruptcy of his Doctrine's failure to redouble his demands--rather than to halt in his tracks and take stock. With public opinion recognizing the crossroads nature of the moment a reorientation of United States policy can and should evolve.

Our master plan must proceed anew from the basic premise that diplomacy and power politics only reflect what occurs within nations. The immediate danger from Russia is political rather than military. It is within nations that we are losing and it is within nations that the vast store of energy we would throw into a military potential must find application in the political and economic battle. This past year our support in the internal wars has gone to an unrelated and opportunistically-determined assortment of forces. Russian expansionism's basis for triumph has been its ability to force a choice between extremes. On the one side stand the regimes of the old; on the other the Communist bid to meet the pressing kind of desperation Europe knows today. Organized political forces advocating democratic socialism have repeatedly found themselves squeezed, outmaneuvered, so placed they cannot reach out for a mass following. No appreciable help has come to them from the United States. In the struggle between the Communist promise and conservatism, mass support has gone and will continue to go to the parties espousing Communism.

ERP Can Still Be a Peace Plan

Fortunately the structure for an altered policy already exists. Both the European Recovery Program and the Brussels Pact will serve well if administered under the reoriented recognition that non-Communist leftist leaders have something to offer their respective nations, a middleway alternative capable of competing successfully with Communist parties and thus of stopping the Russian dominance of Europe that Communists victories inherently involve.

Universal Military Training and Selective Service are steps in the wrong direction above all else because they have been advanced under the influence of the fuzzy-minded concept that everything left-of-center is totalitarian. But even assuming that such military mobilization did provide the key to the situation it is difficult to see how the President's program would accomplish its aims. What will United States military force be able to achieve if, for example, Italy actually elects a government controlled by Communists? Will we fight? If we determine to act in this manner hope for peace will in effect vanish. One will wonder if we have done any line-drawing or bluff-calling.

That President Truman's charted route ultimately means war seems an accepted truth on the part of at least some supporters of his plan who want armament for strict preparedness purposes. This is the greatest current tragedy in light of the fact that it is not too late to redirect our policies triumphantly. What endangers this country is not the ideology of socialism but the seizure of power by disciplined groups string-pulled from Moscow.

Crimson editorials represent the majority viewpoint in the Full Board.