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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Nov. 29, 1960
Zeus, the Defender
The defense chiefs of the nation are now engaged in a bitter struggle within the walls of the Pentagon, a struggle which breaks into the public prints only spasmodically. The conflict involves the role of the growing U.S. missile arsenal.
The Army and the Navy are adhering to the doctrine of massive retaliation against heavily populated areas. The present ICBMs and IRBMs, including the new Navy Polaris, were designed to destroy the great population and industrial centers of the enemy. They hang like a sword of Damocles over his head.
THE AIR FORCE, however, has returned to a classic military theory which states simply that the military power of the enemy must be wiped out before any war can be won. The advent of the Minuteman, the newest and most mobile of the ICBM's, has helped change Air Force strategic concepts.
The Minuteman will be tested soon — two years ahead of schedule. It can be fired from rail-mounted launching platforms or virtually impregnable underground nests or "silos." Its range is flexible, its destructive potential almost unlimited.
The Air Force now insists that the Minuteman and other weapons be turned on the military districts and supply depots of the Soviet Union, rather than on cities and factories. The clash be between this classic offensive doctrine and the other services' belief in massive retaliation is the basis of Pentagon controversy.
OUR SERVICES are concerned with the most efficient use of the missile money that is pouring into the defense department. This is praiseworthy concern.
But in viewing only the offensive capabilities of the missile, the defense chiefs have made a grave error. They are underplaying the very important deterrent role that missiles could play in the defense of the continental United States and allies overseas.
At present, defensive missiles are deployed to defend against attack by manned bombers. None of them deal effectively with a ballistic missile roaring in from the fringes of space at thousands of miles per hour. Only one weapon has been designed to do this — the Nike Zeus, our vaunted anti-missile missile.
THIS WEAPON has been a poor relation in the growing family of U.S. armaments. Funds for its development have been granted, cut, taken away and granted again with bewildering rapidity. The money for the Nike Zeus seems to be up for grabs every time one of the services comes up with another red-hot offensive development. The result has been a weapon which to date is not even in the testing phase after years of work.
It is time we stopped putting all our eggs in the basket labeled "offense." An adequate defense would also be a deterrent to any enemy who might hope to wipe out our capacity to wage war in a single devastating attack. To know that at least part of our vast capacity for retaliation will remain intact would give pause to the man who pushes the button.
WE NEED NOT ROB Peter to pay Paul. No funds would have to be diverted from offensive missile development to pay for the Nike Zeus. Instead, we must tighten up our missile program and avoid the wasteful duplication of effort that spawned the Thor and the Jupiter — two virtually identical weapons. If need be, we must take funds from the weapons systems which are becoming obsolete before they are off the drawing boards to provide a defense matching the awful capabilities of the ballistic missile, the new mechanical God of War.
- Bill Blundell
Keep Electoral College Editor:
...Letters ...
The argument presented in "A Constitutional Relic" (Wed., Nov. 16, UDK) against the electoral college is essentially that it is old-fashioned, and that it was created to protect Americans from making the wrong choice when the people were uninformed and when there was no mass media. Although the electoral college is not a satisfactory check, a check of some sort is necessary. Popular vote is not yet to be placed as the one and only means of electing a president--at least not as long
as the president is to be something more than a mere popularity figure or a God-like image.
That Americans are well-informed, even with mass media, is questionable. Anyone who takes a trip to the middle of Kansas and compares a small town newspaper with, say, the K.C. Star realizes that the majority of Kansans are not well-informed. And anyone who compares the K.C. Star with, say, the New York Times realizes that the majority of the people in the country are not well-informed — or, at least, not well-informed from a relative
non-biased standpoint. This, of course, excludes the fact that many persons with good newspapers do not read extensively enough to be considered "well-informed"—well-informed enough, that is, to elect a president. This also excludes the fact that even a good newspaper often misses or doesn't print vital information.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
The fact that we have mass media — newspapers, television, and radio — does not mean that most Americans are well-informed. The TV debates cannot be considered to be a nation-wide spreader of truth. It is certainly not the case that a good president will necessarily be a good debater — and vice versa. In fact, with the emphasis this year on "image projection," mass media can be as much of a hindrance as a help.
It is true that the electoral college should be revised; eliminated? — No! It is not yet true that the American public is all-wise or all-knowing: 50.5 per cent is not yet to be considered the only criteria for electing a president.
John L. Hodge Kansas City senior
UNI DIRECT
Dailu Hansan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
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... Books in Review ...
By Calder M. Pickett
Acting Dean, School of Journalism
THE WAR FOR THE UNION: WAR BECOMES REVOLUTION, 1862-1863, by Allan Nevins. Scribner's, $7.50.
It is a pleasure to report that, in the glut of volumes concerning the Civil War, one of genuine scholarship appears every so often. The latest is Allan Nevins' sixth volume in the monumental "Ordeal of the Union" series.
We are due to be saturated even more with Civil War books in the next four years. This one is more than a recitation of the critical battles of 1862 and 1863. It is more than a recitation of Lincoln working with his cabinet or trying to pacify the radicals or trying to find a general who didn't seem to fold when the guns began to sound.
This is what Nevins means in his subtitle, "War Becomes Revolution." In this time of momentous conflicts in Tennessee, Virginia and Maryland, the North was losing battles but steadily becoming more powerful. Shoes were being manufactured for the troops, and so were uniforms. Great fortunes in oil and steel were soon to be made. Railroads were spanning the eastern states, and soon the continent.
"THE WAR FOR THE UNION" is all of these, but it also is a description of what was happening to America in this year of the war. An industrial giant was in the making, one that perhaps would not have emerged until a later time had not war come.
The Nevins thesis is almost, superficially, a proving of the economic interpretation of history. But there is no Marxian thesis-antithesis-synthesis here. Individual greatness and initiative — American greatness and initiative, if you will — were behind this revolution, not one class warring on another.
The year 1862-1863 with which Nevins is concerned is perhaps the bleakest year for the North. Nevins starts this volume with the Mississippi River thrust of Ulysses S. Grant and the Peninsular Campaign of George B. McClellan. Grant achieved signal victories with the capture of Ft. Henry and Ft. Donelson, but the waspish Halleck denied Grant his glory. McClellan fumbled in the senseless Seven Days' campaign, revealing his supreme and frightful ego and making the patient Lincoln despair of ever winning a genuine battle.
BLOODY SHILOH FOLLOWED, but this was a battle that could bring little solace to either side. Then came the effort to discipline McClellan through appointment of the inept John Pope, who bungled and lost the Second Battle of Bull Run.
Then came the removal of McClellan, an action by Lincoln which has been both praised and criticized. The dashing Burnside followed, and his troops were massacred in the wave after wave that went against the Confederate trenches at Fredericksburg. Hooker succeeded Burnside, and he lost another great battle, that of Chancellorsville.
Antietam brought jubilation to McClellan, and gave Lincoln his excuse to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. But Antietam was nothing to be proud of. McClellan rested and let Lee escape across the Petemac. Antietam brought a terrifying death toll but served notice on the nations of Europe that it would not be wise to intercede on the side of the Confederacy.
NEVINS ENDS this particular volume as the siege of Vicksburg is under way, and as the North begins to hear that another Confederate foray into northern territory is expected. Vicksburg and Gettysburg were to bring a turning of the tide, but these victories are not in this volume.
Bruce Catton has dealt with the battles of the Civil War in literary, at times poetic, fashion. Nevins is a stylist, but not of the Catton kind. Yet his books probably will endure longer, and have more meaning. What we in the 20th century have come to regard as the "big picture" applies more to these discerning books by a historian who is fully conscious of the changes that came about in America in the years from 1861 on. Revolution truly was taking place in the American nation.