Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1951-07-08

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carried the message to the Senate
Finance Committee.
Some of you may be wondering"
he said, what effect a truce in
Korea. will have on our defense
mobilization program if current
negotiations are successful.
"The answer Is it will have no
effect. Our defense mobilization
must be based, not on the Korean
fighting, but upon what we know
to be the ultimate aims and pres
ent tactics of the Soviet Union"
One after another, the adminis-
tration's top spokesman pounded
away, in a regular anvil chorus.
Secretaries Marshall and Acheson,
Admiral Sherman, Economic Sta
bilizer Eric Johnston and President
Truman himself-all of them said
the same thing, and said it with
almost frantic urgency:
Korea is one small corner of a
world in conflict. # we can make
peace there. well and good. But
there will be other Koreas. The
less we are prepared for them, the
more of them there will be.
At Stoke: A Mood
The reaction in Congress has
been MISUNDERSTANDING it will
become more positive, one way or the
other, as the reaction of the people
themselves begins to make itself
felt. Few legislators stepped for
ward to dispute formally the propo-
sition that was being laid down.
Senator Taft, for one, congratulated
the administration on it's proper"
efforts to head off a psychological
softening up. True, economic con-
trolls seemed to be taking beating
on the Hill, and Mr.. Truman's. tax
requests would hardly be granted
in full. But these are issues on
which reasonable men may differ.
What is at stake in this psychology
ical phase is, after all, more than
a program. It is, rather, mood
a mood called the will to live.
The danger that this mood will
be exchanged for some fatuous
drive "back to normally" is not
confined to the United States.
There are allies abroad for who
the effort of preparedness calls for
more sacrifices than it does here.
For them, the temptation to seize
on the prospect of peace in Korea
as an excuse to ease up is greater
than it Is for us.
Yet in these European countries,
1t must be, people are asking them
selves today, even as we are: What
is this Korean peace move of Rus
sia'sH Is 1t stratagem, or a con-
fession of weakness? And if our
allies react at all as we do, they
will find themselves progressively
inclined to answer that it prob
ably is both.
For the more one studies the
mystery of this Kremlin zig-zag, the
more 1t begins to look like a re-
action to one plain fact: Korea,
sounding an alarm that could not
be mistaken, was doing the thing
Russia least wanted done. Korea
was drawing the free world to-
gether, at last, in common resolve
to protect itself.
In this light, the Russian move to
close out the Korean incident bears
a suspicious resemblance to an at
tempt to lull the free world, first
into letting down, next into falling
apart. If it is such a stratagem, it
obviously is also a confession of .
weakness - relative weakness - on.
Russia's part.
But stratagem or no stratagem,
the trap is there. And the trap
must be avoided. Today, therefore,
as we step out on the first plank,
the warning is plain to see. II the
Korean peace bridge leads any,
where near a sense of false security,
1t will have proved rotten bridge
indeed.
A