Evening star., 1950-12-30

consciously made some sacrifice.
out of the highest motives of
which human beings are capable.
In the process they have emo
bled their own character, have
given new hope and courage to
millions elsewhere and have dis
comfited the leaders of Soviet
Communism.
That is not a performance to
be belittled; nor is the mood one
to be reversed.
We can rejoice in the renewal
OF the faith that has been the
rock of our foundation and out
Of which have gushed healing
waters. We can be confident that
their faith, If sustained. assures
our capacity to overcome at least
one of the twin dangers which,
at the end of World War II con-
fronted us. We are not doomed to
die in our beds.
So much for the past. Let us
look now to the future. Have we
renewed our young like the eagles
only to be shot down in battle?
That might be. That was the risk
our people took when they decided
not to die from the internal
diseases of old age.
The leaders of Soviet Commu-
nism would have preferred sickness
to be the method of our passing
They have great skill in spreading
malignant germs and they prefer
to practice that art rather than
the art of open war where their
nation may have quantitative
superiority, but has qualitative
inferiority. Party leaders have
always distrusted the army and
the generals, and are reluctant
to give them the power that war
exacts. If they have to use any
army. they would rather use some
one else's. Also, so long as they
hold the Red Army in reserve to
be only a threat. they can still
get the advantage of their peace"
propaganda.
But since it seems that the free
world has gained a certain i'm
munity to the Communist Party
poison, their leaders must now
decide whether to accept one of
those waiting periods which
Stain has taught may from time
to time be necessary in order ito
buy off a powerful enemy and
gain a respite" or whether to re-
sort increasingly to open war.
The fact that the free world
succeeded, to the degree it did, in
slowing up Communist success by
methods short of war. automati-
cally increased the risk of war it
self.
But risk is not the same as Ger
tainty. Just as we Surmounted,
in recent years, the primary peril
of inner decay, so. in the year
ahead, we must seek to surmount
also the peril of full-scale foreign
war. Our search must be for ef-
fective deterrents to Russian
armed aggression.
The free world starts out with
certain assets which, I think we
would all agree, are capable of
being developed into deterrents of
a general war of Russian origin
Since moral factors do not weigh
heavily in the Russian scale, we
are forced to think somewhat in
material terms.
Our Industrial Superiority.
Our inventive, resourceful and
free society has given industrial
productivity far greater than that
of Russia. In terms of steel, alu-
minum, electric power and oil, the
United States has a superiority of
3 or 4 to / over Russia. That
ratio of superiority would not, of
course, hold if Russia could take
the industrial power of the Ruhr
and Western Europe and the oil
of the Middle East. So long as
there are impediments to that,
the free world has an economic
power which operates as a major
deterrent to open Russian aggres-
sion, particularly If we also have
the will to forego some of our
pleasures and put our economic
machine into creating weapons
on mass production basis.
Russian Internal Vulnerability.
Already, within the captive
world, there are grave internal
weaknesses and these could be ex-
plotted by skillful opponents.
Despotism, when looked at from
without usually looks solid and
An M% A