In Defense of Britain

The 15 member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had their official ears tuned to their own special wave length last week during the President's press conference. What, they wondered, would Ike have to say about the broad-sweeping British plans for reducing military manpower and placing emphasis on deterrent nuclear weapons (TIME, April 15)--a plan that had sent a ripple of misgivings through several NATO capitals? Asked a newsman: "Are the British going too far too fast in your judgment?"

"You can discuss this question intelligently," Eisenhower replied, "only in the light of the age-old truth that the security position of a country is not determined wholly by the troops that it keeps. It is determined also by their economic, their spiritual, their intellectual strength, as well as their purely military." Britain, said he, in a mixed metaphor that fascinated the experts (see PRESS), "has had a really heroic row to hoe in trying to keep its economic nose above water." So the British are "trying ... to cut their cloth, you might say, according to what they had, and not to what they would like to have." Ike conceded that "their reduction has disturbed some of our NATO partners." But he added that "this was all thoroughly discussed with me at Bermuda."

For the British move, Ike found a U.S. precedent. "You will recall in 1953 the first thing that this new Administration undertook was a complete survey of our military establishment and our military needs, and it acquired . . . the term 'new look.' Well, it was merely an effort to bring military establishments more in line with the military facts of today. Now . . . Britain is trying to do that. At the same time they are trying to put out the ultimate help they can in the alliances of which they are a part, and still keep themselves a viable economy . . . These are very complicated and tough questions, and I certainly admire the courage and the nerve with which Britain has undertaken it."

In other words, if the senior statesman of NATO's senior partner was worried about the British arms cut, he was not showing it.

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