Decision in the Great Debate

Out of the dying clamor of the Great Debate a final decision emerged last week. The U.S. Senate endorsed President Truman's plans to send four U.S. divisions--about 100,000 men--to Europe to form, with the two already over there, the U.S. core of General Dwight Eisenhower's North Atlantic Defense army. In doing so, the Senate approved the first peacetime deployment of a U.S. defense army overseas.

But the Senate did not stop there. Attached to its endorsement of Harry Truman's foreign policy was a stinging vote of no-confidence in Harry Truman's conduct of that policy. A peculiar coalition applied the stinger. It included resurgent isolationists like Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry and Ohio's John Bricker, who wanted to send no U.S. troops to Europe; men like Ohio's Robert Taft, who were resigned to sending the four divisions, but wanted to draw the line there; and other Senators, Republicans and Southern Democrats, who disputed the truculent challenge Harry Truman had flung at Congress last January when he said he had the untrammeled constitutional right to send U.S. troops "anywhere in the world."

Maneuver. For three days, the coalition used all the tricks of parliamentary procedure to get the sting into a simple Administration resolution aimed at endorsing the dispatch of whatever U.S. troops were needed to provide a "fair share" of Western Europe's defenses. Amendment after amendment was thrown in from the Wherry-Taft sector. But it was men within the President's own party who performed the big maneuver.

John L. McClellan of Arkansas submitted an amendment requesting Harry

Truman to get congressional approval before sending any more than the first four divisions to Europe. Behind the move was the fine hand of Virginia's Harry Byrd, as bitter a foe of Harry Truman as any Republican, and as jealous, too, of the prerogatives of Congress. The Republicans swung in happily behind. "Too long have we permitted the executive branch to sound the tuning fork," declared Republican Robert C. Hendrickson of New Jersey.

It was another doughty set of Republicans, led by Massachusetts' Cabot Lodge, who led the fight against McClellan. The White House gave them no help, and little came from Texas' weary, dispirited Tom Connally or from Majority Leader Ernest McFarland, who was simply ineffectual.

"The amendment would convert the Senate into an operations section of the General Staff," Lodge protested, "something for which the Senate is not fitted either by training or experience or by its ability to act with secrecy and dispatch."

Replied Sponsor McClellan: "It is a declaration of the sense of the Senate." Snapped Connally: "The nonsense of the Senate, probably."

Repayment. When the vote came, the McClellan amendment lost, 44-46. But the coalition, working more skillfully than its opponents, scraped up a few vote changes and suddenly proposed a second vote. That time the McClellan amendment carried, 49-43.

The men chiefly intent on making Harry Truman pay more respect to Congress were satisfied, but Kenneth Wherry's isolationist crew were not. Despite its rebuke for the White House, the resolution still specifically endorsed the sending of troops to Europe. With some of the Senate's windiest members to spell him, Wherry fought to embalm the whole proposal. "I am not in favor of sending troops to Europe, either under the pending resolution or any other," Wherry insisted.

"I have heard that intimated around here," retorted Tom Connally, centering his tired ire on the Senator from Nebraska. "[The Senator] does not want to do anything."

"I do want to do something," Wherry replied. "I want to have mastery of the air [over Europe]."

"The Senator," said Connally sourly, "already has mastery of the hot air."

Revision. Wherry & Co. got no further. Their amendments to maim the endorsement of troops to Europe were killed off; each vote demonstrated that for all the clamor of the three-months-long Great Debate, only a small band of 17 isolationists (all Republicans) remained in the U.S. Senate. At suppertime of the third day, the final vote came. By 69-21, the Senate made its decision: Harry Truman got his four divisions, even if he was morally (but not legally) obligated to go back to the Senate when he wanted more.

Within 24 hours, the Pentagon let it be known that the 2nd Armored Division, the 4th Infantry Division and two National Guard divisions would be moving soon to Europe.

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