LETTER TO ROBERT CUTLER FROM C P CABELL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000400190008-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 18, 2002
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: September 20, 1956
• Content Type: LETTER

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OLD COLONY TRUST COMPANY
ONE FEDERAL STREET, BOSTON 6, MASSACHUSETTS
ROBERT CUTLER
CHAIRMAN
September 12, 1956
The Election Issue of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY
(October number) will carry the attached article,
which I wrote in response to the Editor's invita-
tion: "I Shall Vote for Eisenhower."
I wanted you to have this advance copy (on
newsstands September 20).
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In pursuance of the Atlantic's policy of hearing from both parties at the time of a national election, we turn first
to ROBERT CUTLER, a lawyer and Chairman of Boston's Old Colony Trust Company. Mr. Cutler was Special
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Chairman of the National Security Planning Board,
and sat with the Operations Coordinating Board and the Council on Foreign Economic Policy during the period
from January, 1953, to April, 1955. Among his many public offices, he has served as Corporation Counsel for
the City of Boston; as Overseer of Harvard; as National President of the United Community Funds and Councils
of America; and as Assistant to Secretary of War Stimson with the rank of Brigadier General, receiving the
Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.
I SHALL VOTE FOR EISENHOWER
by ROBERT CUTLER
1
WE HAVE nothing to lose; we can only gain.
. Our enemies have men who are below
average. . . . Our enemies are little worms.
I saw them in Munich."
By these words Adolf Hitler, speaking to his
military commanders at Berchtesgaden on August
22, 1939, made his decisive calculation that the
British people as a nation lacked the spirit to fight.
At: that time, in Nazi Germany, a decision by the
Fuehrer was final and incontrovertible. Nine days
later the Nazi WVehrmacht overran Poland and the
point of no return was passed.
This cruel miscalculation by one absolute ruler
plunged the Earth into World War II, killed mil-
lions of people, and tore much of the world's econ-
omy to shreds.
Thus, history reminds you and me that our fate
may turn not only on what we are but also on what
to other eyes and ears we may appear to be.
In our modern thermonuclear age, everything
that we say, everything that we do, everything that
we omit to say and do, bears an enhanced signifi-
cance. Today, a hostile miscalculation of our words
and actions can draw over the Earth, like a pall, a
new Dark Age.
I have a personal judgment of how to minimize
the risk of a hostile miscalculation. What I write
has no official imprimatur. I speak my own personal
thoughts as one American citizen speaking to fellow
Americans. Other judgments may differ. As long
as they are made in search for the same objective -
the security, peace, and well-being of the American
people and of the world - we should be glad to
know and consider them.
In writing what I think, I purposely use a broad
brush. Unless one is in continuous touch with the
complex, shifting sea of intelligence that comes
flooding daily into Washington, he finds it impossi-
ble to deal in detail. And the solution which we
are seeking will, I think, be less readily found by
looking down to details than by looking up to
principles.
Dispassion in our search will also make the find-
ing easier. In the miasma of Election Year people
are apt to wax pretty warm. A backward look at
history sometimes serves to sober down those who
think to have discovered in their time a peril which
is new to the world.
As specifics for dispassion, I prescribe the re-
reading of these paragraphs which were written over
one hundred years ago: -
Harper's Magazine, 1854: In France, the political
cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty;
Russia hangs as usual like a cloud . . . upon the
horizon of Europe; while all the energies, resources
and influences of the British Empire are sorely tried,
and are yet to be tried more sorely, in coping with
the vast and deadly disturbed relations in India and
China.
The Marquis de Custine, writing in 1839 a comparison
between Russia and the Western World: Our news-
papers warn the Russians of everything that happens
and everything that is contemplated in our countries.
Instead of disguising our weaknesses with prudence,
we reveal them with vehemence every morning;
whereas the Russians' Byzantine policy, working in
the shadow, carefully conceals from us all that is
thought, done and feared in their country.
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BOX OFFICE IS NOT ENOUGH 45
ative, represents the new voice in our theatre. If
the sixteenth and seventeenth century theatre was
predominantly one of language, and I believe it
was, and the eighteenth and nineteenth one of
music, the twentieth century theatre is indisputably
a theatre of visual imagery and movement. And it
is the choreographers and dancers who hold the
bud and the seed in their keeping, who work at
the core.
For all things flower from gesture. Before every-
thing, before thought or speech, there must be
breath. The eyes open, the head lifts, the hand is
stretched out. Dance is germinal. The dancers are
initiators. The theatre is admittedly the mother of
the arts, but dance is the mother of the theatre.
5
CAN we be satisfied with our wasteful way of doing
things? Are we not rich enough, well-fed, well-
housed, and well-vehicled enough, to risk some of
our fortunes on keeping intact the environment in
which young talents can best develop? Must we
impose conditions that no artist has ever subscribed
to - namely that a work must meet a budget com-
pounded with overhead costs, with taxes and union
rates, with the fearful expenditure of rousing a cor-
rupted and glutted public? Under our general
setup, the young artist risks starvation or conform-
ity. In art as in all human behavior, conformity is
a breaking down of the will. It is, in fact, death.
The perception that recognizes the slickest in
plumbing, the smoothest in car upholstery, the
easiest in light switches, is not necessarily the per-
ception that recognizes metrical rhythm or color
or tonality or any of the means of evocation. It
will build an icebox. It probably will not inflame
the heart. It will ensure the painting of scenery
as real as any background in a natural history
museum. It will guarantee the exact reproduction
of a violin tone so that, one can have a Stradivarius
wherever one likes, even traveling at seventy miles
an hour. But what it plays or how it plays is not
guaranteed. And as long as the theatre is linked
inextricably with large-scale merchandising, all this
is inevitable. But this is exactly the negation of
ideas, because art is concerned not with reproducing
faithfully what has been seen before, but with in-
venting something that has not. Art is the expres-
sion of human personality and therein lies risk, each
personality being brand-new and of no sure market
value.
Theatre is as direct as personality, and as in-
expensive. It occurs whenever a living actor speaks
and a living ear listens. It is found where attention
is caught, where one says, "I feel," and the other
replies, "I shale." This has nothing to do with
costs or mechanical technicalities or publicity.
Theatre is beyond all these and it must not be
hampered by them. And wherever enormous cost,
enormous technicalities, terror regarding popularity
and conformity warp the artist's intent, it can exist
only in an alloyed and weakened state. Fine work
does develop in the great merchandising centers, in
Hollywood and in television, but always by running
a gantlet of unseemly hazards - and very, very
rarely is money risked on either unknown talents or,
untried ideas. The current norm, the safe bet, is
what is recommended.
When N.B.C. television put on the Sadler's Wells
Ballet for an hour and a half sustaining show, the
ballet chosen was Sleeping Beauty, seventy-five
years old and Russian in origin. The performing
company was foreign and had taken twenty years
of other people's time and money to build, and the
production and transportation had been paid for by
the British government. The same holds true for
Peter Pan, which had been written and produced
with no help from television, but which nonetheless
made history for the medium. And while it is in-
evitable that television and advertising will in time
produce original and special art forms as the screen
has done (in this respect Omnibus and Camera
Three must be complimented on their daring and
perspicacity), the process will be slow and wary be-
cause of the money involved. It is assumed, al-
though tacitly, when men with big reputations let
themselves be drawn into television or pictures, that
their best, their first and forthright efforts, the
efforts on which their reputation depends, will be
reserved for other media.
Now since the living theatre is the proving ground
of all theatre artists, it would seem not only logical
but profitable for the business concerns who exploit
the theatre's products to guarantee the source of
supply by helping with the theatre's financial bur-
dens. The Winnipeg Ballet Company, is supported
by the merchants of the city as well as by civic
levies. It is being built by the city for national and
international advertisement. It is the only com-
pany, not excepting Sadler's Wells, to boast a royal
charter. For the sum expended on twelve months of
television time, one of the great corporations could
endow a theatre for twenty years. The sponsors
would ensure world-wide and lasting publicity, pub-
lic relations in the great tradition. They would
achieve what amounts to true fame. We, the citi-
zens, could have a theatre, either lyric or dramatic
or both, that would match anything Europe or
Russia can show - just such a theatre as we have
not got. Our theatre could be what it always ideally
was before, a compendium of the finest in language,
music, and the visual arts; a place of reaffirmation;
above all, a place for sharing. And the standards
of choice would be laid down as in all other publicly
cherished institutions: not by touts but by teachers
and lovers. We could work in this theatre with
joy and effectiveness because the fear would be
lifted from our hearts - the daily, weekly, annual
fear of total disinheritance.
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half in number of dollars."
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I SHALL VOTE FOR EISENHOWER
IT is my own belief that the basic national security
policy developed by the Eisenhower Administra-
tion shows us the road away from a risk of nuclear
collision and toward a stable balance of honorable
peace.
This national security policy rests upon twin
pillars. One: the United States must have in instant
readiness a military force capable, together with its
allies, of effectively deterring Communist aggres-
sion. Second, and equally important, our national
economy must be sufficiently strong and expanding
to support this military strength and to aid in sup-
porting the military strength of the Free World, as
well as to counter any further spread of Communist
influence. Such a national economy must derive
from the play of free enterprise and not from a regi-
mented state; in short, it must be a civilian, and
not a garrison, economy.
To sustain over the long run in times of peace the
necessary military capability, our economy should
be safeguarded against inflation by a fiscal policy
which can regularly provide for defense out of cur-
rent tax receipts. Moreover, the defense burden
should be supportable by taxes which do not stunt
the economy's healthy growth.
To me, these aspects of the President's national
security policy state the essentials. Of course, there
are many other facets, such as: our continuing sup-
port and active participation in the United Nations;
the complex fabric of our wide-spreading and inter-
related mutual assistance treaties; the establish-
ment of defensive military bases overseas; our vigor-
ously enhanced programs for the defense of the
continental United States; our broad measures for
assistance to other nations of the Free World; our
annual Federal expenditures of over $2 billion for
research and development; our advance in the use
of atomic energy in peaceful, as well as military,
fields. But to me, however mighty the quality and
quantity of these other factors may be, they are
incidents of and support the two basic concepts.
Because I praise this policy, I do not imply that
it is immutable or static. Every policy decision by
the President requires constant review in the light of
changing times and events.
The outstanding achievement 'of the Eisenhower
Administration has been to change the emphasis
and direction of our national security policy by
recognizing positively a different concept. That
concept is: for the safety and survival of the Re-
public in the years that lie ahead, the possession of
military might alone is not enough; of equal im-
portance is the maintenance of a free and healthy
civilian economy, strong enough to support the
demands not only of military defense but also of
industrial growth and progress.
I believe this policy to be sound. I.believe this
policy to be suited to the genius of a free people. I
believe that this policy diminishes the risk of hostile
misapprehension and miscalculation of what is
America's true intent and thus points to the road of
honorable peace.
For these reasons, the Eisenhower Administra-
tion which created the emphasis and direction of
this policy should be returned to office in the No-
vember elections.
By what I have written above I do not mean to
imply that the great policy papers of earlier years
did not refer to the desirability of a strong American
economy. Of course, they did. But I am thinking
here, not of references, but of emphasis and direc-
tion. Most people are glad to declare that they are
against sin, that they are members of a church,
that they support the local Community Fund. But
it may have been your experience that the emphasis
and direction put in carrying out these declarations
is often a different story.
In the security policy of President Eisenhower,
the economic base was conceived of as, and in prac-
tice has been, a foundation stone of the national
defense.
2
I HAVE stated that a national security policy based
on a strong and viable national economy is sound.
Has not the application of this policy since Janu-
ary 20, 1953, adequately evidenced its soundness?
In the Eisenhower years, we Americans have seen
the United States achieve a record total national
income; a record of sustained high employment of
our people; a remarkable stability in the level of the
cost of living index (which rose 37.2 per cent
between 1946 and 1953 under the prior Administra-
tion in contrast with 1.6 per cent in the three
and a half years of the Eisenhower Administration
through June, 1956).
Under the preceding Administrations of the
Democratic Party, the Federal budget had been
balanced only three times in twenty years. Until
Fiscal Year 1956, the public debt had not been
reduced since 1951. In 1956, the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration brought Federal expenditures into
balance with Federal income and made some reduc-
tion in the public debt, pushing back the specter of
inflation.
All groups of our citizens benefit from this stabil-
ity: not only those who draw fixed incomes from
pensions, savings deposits, and insurance proceeds,
but the school and college teacher and the wage-
earner in the plant, in the office, in the mine.
The real index of prosperity is not the number of
dollars in your pocket, but what you can buy with
them (after deducting income and Social Security
taxes). Contrast the purchasing power of the fac-
tory worker's average weekly wage under the in-
flationary spiral of the prior Administration and
under the remarkably stable living costs of the
Eisenhower years. Between 1944 and 1952 the
production worker's average weekly wage almost
doubled in number of dollars; but even though he
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
had twice as many dollars per week in 1952 as lie
had in 1944, his purchasing power was $1.88 a week
less. In the Eisenhower years this penalizing trend
was reversed. By December, 1955 - the end of
Eisenhower's third year - the purchasing power of
the workingman's weekly wage had increased by
$6.19 a week over 1952. Thus, during these three
years there was a clear gain in purchasing power,
contrasted with a clear loss in purchasing power
during the prior seven years.
The Eisenhower policy of positive and enhanced
emphasis on the vitality of the national economy,
an emphasis equal to that upon military defense, is
no longer derided, as it was at first, as "trickle-
down." The flow of strength through the national
economy has become a Niagara of confidence. A
climate has been created and exists today in the
United States which is favorable to the vitality and
expansion of private enterprise. There is general
confidence in the air, among consumers and busi-
nessmen and among workers and investors. Confi-
dence in the future is the prime stimulant to civilian
business, and civilian business is the great employer
of our citizens.
A collapse in America's business system, so ar-
dently anticipated by the Soviets, would have been
for Moscow a major victory, possibly a victory that
might have overcome the Free World. For the
economies of the Free World countries are related
necessarily and closely to the economy of the
United States. But the collapse never came. The
prosperous, upthrusting vitality of United States
enterprise has generated a strength and a confidence
in other peoples.
The soundness of the Eisenhower security policy
has been demonstrated by its results both at home
and abroad.
3
I HAVE stated that a national security policy that is
rooted in a strong and growing civilian economy is
suited to the genius of a free people.
By this statement I mean that, in striving to
preserve our freedom as a democratic people by a
defensive military program supported by heavy
annual expenditures, we must be careful not to lose
that freedom. In our concern for our safety, we
must not change our desirable democracy into a
garrison state - regimented, controlled, and made
over into the image of the tyranny we seek to es-
cape. The magic of our productivity would then be
supplanted by economic mediocrity.
When the present Administration took office in
January, 1953, the dark menace of Communism
loomed in the Free World sky, It was plain that to
meet so formidable a threat, without the scourge
of general war, would require a long-term effort.
The United States debt was then at record heights
and headed higher: The Federal Government was
operating in Fiscal Year 1953 at a deficit of $9.4
billion, and the operating deficit for Fiscal Year
1954 - based on programs of the prior Administra-
tion - was estimated to reach $9.9 billion. And an
elaborate top-level study had just been completed
by the outgoing Administration, which recom-
mended that urgent consideration be given to en-
larged national security expenditures, over and
above what would be required in subsequent Fiscal
Years by already approved programs.
It took courage and a. deeply felt conviction to
move against this violent running tide, to diminish
governmental restraints and controls, to free nat-
ural incentives and forces, and to shift from the
improvisation of crisis and "crash" to the solidity
of a "long-haul" program.
I have never thought that this kind of thing was
"putting the dollar sign on defense." Nor do I
think so today. The Eisenhower philosophy sought
to put people to work; sought an expanding produc-
tion; sought a stable living cost. It sought to move
people out of government work into civilian jobs
producing goods for the consuming public. These
were goals consonant with freedom for the indi-
vidual and with subordination of the state.
Some will no doubt say that the performance has
been less perfect than the intent. But the perform-
ance has been good enough to show that free enter-
prise, rightly set free, is a better way for the Ameri-
can people than any deal by Government.
I have stated that the national security policy
which I have described points to the road of honor-
able peace and to minimizing the risk of hostile
misapprehension and miscalculation.
It seeks to build our military power on such a
basis that the American people can and will be able
to carry it for the long haul. It does not feed on
"crash" or crisis, but on the far look ahead.
The Eisenhower policy is not directed toward a
fixed D-Day.. A security policy that strives for
superior strength on a certain day necessarily tends
to brush aside, as a less important consideration,
the swift transitions of modern technology. Yet
complex weapons and machines take so many
months - even years - to design and produce
that, if they are ordered in too great a quantity at
one time, they may be obsolete before all can be
delivered. A penalty of "crash" is obsolescence.
Furthermore, the attainment of a fixed goal date
for maximum defense carries an inevitable and
dangerous consequence: where do we go, from here?
Such a security policy carries the torch of war in its
hand.
The Eisenhower policy is the converse of this
dangerous fixed D-Day approach. It aims at con-
tinuing improvement and continuing readiness of
forces and thus seeks to avoid those peaks and
valleys of armed strength which conduce to war.
Because of this policy's "de-hotting" approach,
it tends to disarm hostile miscalculation.
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I SHALL VOTE FOR EISENHOWER
There are some at home who mistake "de-
hotting" for penury or incapacity or weakness.
These will include the special pleaders in the arsenal
of war; those who want to restore 500,000 men to
the Army; those who seek more funds than can be
now effectively put to work for long-range missiles;
those who demand more wings now for the Air
Force. If Congress should give heed to each of
these voices crying at its ear, America could easily
appear to a suspicious far-off chancellery to be not
the Goddess of Liberty but the Goddess of War.
Beware also of the boy-in-the-candy-store ap-
proach to the purchase of armaments. Military
hardware is attractive and persuasive. Each Serv-
ice has an eloquent proponent. And so it should,
for the task of a Service is to be always alert and
capable of achieving victory. But the boy who buys
"one of each" before he leaves the store is going to
have an economic bellyache by nightfall.
Turn for a moment to the air power of the United
States. We are now spending on air power, includ-
ing the Air Force and that one-half of the Navy-
Marine Corps budget-which is wholly for air power,
some $21 billion a year. Under a policy designed to
preserve the world at peace, in time of peace, is this
large sum enough?
Some able and devoted men are asserting that the
United States should spend at least: a billion more a
year on air power. Whether this view is right or
wrong is not susceptible of finite answer. At bot-
tom, America has a judgment to make. That
judgment does not turn only on whether the United
States can profitably spend right now a billion more
a year on aircraft and, if it can, on whether we
should spend it on other types of aircraft or on more
of the same type (which may soon be obsolete and
require replacement by more advanced designs).
These questions, indeed, are very practical and
worth while. But beyond them lies the great im-
ponderable. To what extent, as we increase the race
in armament designed for attack upon a far-distant
land, do we "hot-up" the fears and risks of miscal-
culation by those who can absolutely sway the ac-
tions of that land? May not America risk the secu-
rity of our homeland as much by overbuilding as by
underbuilding our armed power? Do not mistake
me. I believe a strong man armed is safe in his
house. In the time to come we Americans must be
strong. I do not advocate weak-sisterliness, ap-
peasement, neutralism, or blind acceptance of Soviet
words that have no valid counterpart in deeds.
But the urgent need to be militarily strong does
not at all -imply a security policy for war. The
policy of the Eisenhower Administration is one for
peace and not for war. It eschews weakness on the
one hand and "preventive war" on the other. It
is a policy of keeping up our fighting strength in the
air, at sea, on the land. It undertakes to dedicate a
balanced and effective segment of resources each
year for all aspects of national defense in order to
keep that strength up, constantly changing and
being renewed.
Such a national security policy-does not accept
any such concepts as these: -
1. That when and if the Soviets might surpass us
in some element of military power, they will cer-
tainly attack us.
f2. That possession by the Kremlin of the Inter-
continental Ballistic Missile will mean that the
Free World can no longer defend itself; that the
ICBM is the "ultimate weapon."
3. That in order to survive, America must vastly
increase its annual national defense expenditures
over the present levels.
4. That World War III is inevitable.
The Eisenhower security policy, as I understand
it, rejects these concepts as untenable because they
look only to general war.
I happen to believe that the Communist leaders
do not intend to wage a shooting war against the
Free World as long as the Free World stays strong.
It is reasonable to suppose that they think the
subtler ways of subversion, neutralization, decep-
tion, and economic penetration are cheaper, and
that, if these subtler ways take longer, they leave for
Communism a, far more desirable prize than it land
ravaged by a shooting war. If this supposition is
correct, then the United States' concern for it free
and peaceful world must. be broader than the main-
tenance of military might to deter armed Com-
munist aggression. The United States must also be
genuinely concerned in political and economic
cooperation with the other nations of the Free
World, in order to counter the Kremlin's non-
aggressive steps to spread further the ideas and the
influence of Communism.
4
WHO can be sure of the real intentions of the
Russian leaders? Appalling though general ther-
monuclear war may be, it is credible to suppose
that there are rulers in the world today who still
consider aggressive war on a grand scale to be an
instrument of national policy for attaining national
objectives - rulers who might, and could, launch
"preventive" nuclear war as a tactic of their sup-
posed national defense.
We Americans can be sure that the United States
under Eisenhower will never provoke or initiate an
aggressive nuclear war. Waging a "preventive"
war with nuclear weapons is not a possible alterna-
tive in the national policy of this Administration.
For the aggressor in nuclear attack, whatever
might be the outcome of his ghastly act, would bear
upon him forever, in the resulting twilight of the
world, the brand of Cain - the burden of a punish-
ment greater than man could endure and live with.
Yet the risk remains that the tenacious men in
the Kremlin - who mean to dominate free men
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 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
just as strongly as we mean to keep them free -
may someday misapprehend what we Americans
really do mean.
I do not think that the Russians are apprehen-
sive for today, when they know we have a Chief
Executive who is temperate and ardently devoting
his great talents to bringing the world into an
equilibrium of honorable peace. But they are ap-
prehensive of the morrow. Tomorrow is going to see
an increase in military might and thermonuclear
destructive capabilities. It seems to me inevitable
that they must be thinking to themselves: what,
in that time, would happen to the Soviet Republics
and their millions of people if the United States
should be dominated by a War Party?
On such a line of thinking, what calculation will
the men of the Kremlin be making of America's
possible course of action in the future? If in our
highest councils in America our thoughts and our
talk should come to dwell more and more upon arma-
ment and military alignment and fears of war, will
the Kremlin calculate that America intends to
launch, or may be frightened into launching, an
attack upon the Soviet people - and, so miscalcu-
lating, decide to strike America first?
Dreadful miscalculations have been made before.
Witness the miscalculation which Hitler made in
1939 of the British people.
The more the world "hots-up," the closer it
moves toward the risk of a mistake which, this
time, can never be corrected.
The security policy which President Eisenhower
has developed and the steps which he has caused to
be taken in carrying it out, the relative moderation
of the policy's offensive accent and the policy's
bearing-down emphasis on America's national eco-
nomic strength, have tended to show clearly to the
world that Uncle Sam is not the warmonger that
the Communists once loudly claimed.
The world has seen this Administration, since
Eisenhower took office, reduce its men under arms
by over 20 per cent (some 700,000 men). It has
seen our nation working toward a balance of forces
and defensive armament that a free people is capa-
ble of sustaining and of affording to sustain over as
long a peacetime period as the need continues for
great military defense endeavors. Following the
end of hostilities in Korea, it has seen the United
States withdrawing its armed forces from the Far
East.
In the long years ahead and under suitable cir-
cumstances, there may be further reduction in the
number of our men standing under arms. As we pro-
gress with our defense, we can hope to substitute
new weapons, mobility, speed, and modern means
of delivering firepower, for men taken away from
their homes and their constructive civilian labors.
One doubts if the peace of the world will be pro-
moted in the long run by Uncle Sam, like a solitary
Atlas, bearing forever all burdens of Free World
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security. The United States has provided substan-
tial assistance to Free World nations in order that
each shall in its own right become capable of coping
with local insurrection, civil disturbance, and "lit-
tle wars." As these friendly powers grow stronger,
each will tend to assume with its own national
forces the responsibility for its own indigenous
security and its own national defense.
As a plain matter of fact, the United States and
its Free World allies cannot match with their rela-
tively lesser populations the manpower resources of
the totalitarian powers. Nonetheless, we can be
sufficiently strong with mobile and elite forces, more
centrally based, and with advanced skills and ad-
vanced weaponry. And in the years ahead such a
course can encourage balance on the world stage
and lessen the risk of a bipolarized collision.
This kind of national security policy intrinsi-
cally demonstrates that it is not fixed on constant
alarms and fears of war. It is a policy that has a
different approach, a different attitude, a different
quality. Pulsing through it, and its administration,
is the unshakable determination of the President to
find for peoples everywhere the equilibrium of hon-
orable peace. And it is this unshakable determina-
tion, so luminously apparent in him, that the world
has learned to trust as the real thing.
James Scott Reston of the New York Times in
describing Candidate Eisenhower. just before the
1959, Republican Convention in Chicago made an
appraisal that is hard to forget. He wrote that the
General had a particular quality which might be the
best thing for America at that time: he was a good
man. His quality of goodness was genuine, with no
shoddy in it.
Today, in 1956, the peoples of the world have
learned that this quality of good is an integral part
of Eisenhower; it is not a coat he puts on and takes
off. From this fundamental of his character flows a
spontaneous, radiant expectancy that things can
and will turn out for the better. This attitude of
mind is instinctive and affords to him a resource of
strength in adversity, a calm confidence which in
my long association with him was evidenced day in
and day out. He brings to every undertaking the
belief and conviction that free men can and will
work out together a future that will not be futile or
degrading, but a future that will be good.
It is this quality of spirit that has given to Presi-
dent Eisenhower, more than any other man I have
known, conviction and assurance and capacity to
make great command decisions. He has faith, and
that faith sets him free.
The affection, the respect, and the confidence
which world peoples have for President Eisenhower
is a great asset of our country. The United States
should use this asset to the full.
For these reasons, I shall vote to retain Dwight D.
Eisenhower as President of the United States.
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