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University Daily Kansan Thursday, March 7, 1963
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Thin Thread Holds West
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
In 1958, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles informed the communists that aggression would be met by massive retaliation at times and places to be chosen by the United States.
Since then President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara have acted to establish a defense posture which gives the President greater choice than doing nothing or launching all-out nuclear war.
THIS MORE versatile armory has been necessitated by and most useful in areas of brush wars and subversion—such as Southeast Asia.
It is obvious that the doctrine of massive retaliation will not stop subversion in Southeast Asia and Latin America. No nation's interests are served by obliterating the area in dispute with a thermonuclear weapon.
THE NATO forces in West Berlin-if they are robbed of nuclear backing—would not force the numerically-superior Soviet force to do more than stutter in a drive to the English Channel.
But "outmoded" and self-defeating as the doctrine of massive retaliation may be, the West is stuck with it. It is the only thing which keeps the Soviet forces from pushing into Western Europe.
Despite the obvious reliance on nuclear weapons to maintain the West's positions in Europe, the controversy rages whether the United States
would use them if Soviet forces stepped across the border.
Charles de Gaulle and others say, or at least fear, that the United States would not use their nuclear weapons if the Soviets started to swamp Western positions.
THE BASIS OF their fear is that the United States would, at the critical moment of launching a nuclear war, regard Europe as lost, and, in hopes of saving its own skin, renege on its promise to fire the big one.
What the U.S. would do at the moment of truth must remain academic; at least until that terrible time of decision.
What it not academic is whether the Soviets believe the U.S. will drop the nuclear arm as promised. The Soviet view of the credibility of the U.S. promise is the key to the question.
Terry Murphy
IF THEY doubt it, seriously, they will cross the line.
So the U.S. must be convincing not only to its NATO allies, but also the Soviets. Therein lies the answer; the longer one belligerent talks of doing something the more likely he is to do it. So, regardless how modern the new look of the U.S. defense may be, the much-abused doctrine of massive retaliation is the thin thread that supports the West in Europe. Like it or not.
FDR Strengthened Office During Critical Years
By Elaine Blaylock
"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Those now-famous words were spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt 30 years ago this week, when he was inaugurated President of the United States. Thus began an administration which was to have a dramatic impact on the office of the presidency—even within its first hundred days.
Historians have said that "a man cannot possibly be judged a great President unless he holds office in great times. And there was certainly no lack of challenge on that gloomy March day. The banking system of the country was collapsing. Millions were out of work. Trade had come to a near standstill.
THERE WERE triumphs even in the first few days of the Roosevelt administration, although some would say they
were mostly psychoiological, in the first week he issued a proclamation closing the banks, but the banks were already closed. The proclamation simply gave them some legal authority for not re-opening. He called Congress into extra session, but that in itself changed nothing. As soon as his inaugural speech was finished he sped a list of Cabinet appointments to the Senate where they were rapidly confirmed. But he would have named his Cabinet within a few hours anyway, and the Senate almost always approves Cabinet appointments.
Still, it took a brave and creative man to begin seizing powers usually reserved for wartime, and to mobilize a nation behind him. Wrote Walter Lippmann, "At the beginning of March the country was in such a state of confused desperation that it would have followed almost any leader anywhere he chose to go. In one week, the
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nation, which had lost confidence in everything and everybody, has regained confidence in the government itself."
To reach the people he revived the press conference, giving it added influence. He projected the warmth and strength of his personality through his fireside chats to a vast radio audience. After the first fireside chat, Will Rogers commented that FDR had made everybody understand the complicated business of the bank crisis, "even the bankers."
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
CONGRESS WAS called into special session on March 9,1933. Once he had them in town, Roosevelt began to demand measures that startled congressmen, bewildered the public, and kept Washington correspondents hopping to try to keep up with the day-to-day developments.
Jack Cannon, Business Manager; Jim Stevens, Assist. Business Mgr.; Mike Carson, Advertising Mgr.; Joanne Zabornik, Circulation Mgr.; Brooks Harrison, Classified Mgr.; Bob Brooks, National Adv. Mgr.; Charles Hayward, Promotion Mgr.; Bill Finley, Merchandising Mgr.
In the course of three months, Roosevelt's legislators — sometimes labeled his "rubber stamp Congress," passed 15 major measures. They ranged from the Emergency Banking Act on March 9 to the Railread Coordination Act on June 16.
One of Roosevelt's weaknesses throughout his White House career was his performance as an administrator. Yet, in those Hundred Days he inspired others to carry the burden of the detail work—much of it being done, in fact, by men who genuinely hated him.
SOME OF the reform and recovery legislation of those early days survived and became part of our national heritage. But many of the early emergency bills were highly experimental in nature and drafted in a shoddy fashion. Even then their drafters must have known they failed to coincide with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. But the Roosevelt "brain trust" went ahead, ignoring the limits ordinarily imposed on the executive branch by that high court. Perhaps it was best for the sake of a shaky nation that it was several years before the judicial branch reclaimed its rights and repudiated some of those early measures.
The nearly dictatorial powers seized by Roosevelt in the first hundred days were to leave their mark on the office of the presidency. Should the nation ever face another crisis such as this, there is not only the precedent of his strong leadership, but specific laws giving the President authority to issue the necessary orders.
First, there is section 4 of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933:
"The Commission is authorized . . . if in its opinion the public interest so requires, summarily to suspend trading in any registered security on any national securities exchange for a period not exceeding ten days, or with the approval of the President, summarily to suspend all trading on any national securities exchange for a period not exceeding ninety days."
"In order to provide for the safer and more effective operation of the National Banking System ... during such emergency period as the President of the United States by proclamation may prescribe, no member bank of the Federal Reserve System shall transact any banking business except to such extent and subject to such regulations, limitations and restrictions as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, with the approval of the President."
THEN THERE is Section 19 (a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934:
In fact, the President has been given the power to declare what amounts to financial martial law if a panic like that of 1933 should reoccur. Still, the office of the presidency did not become a dangerous dictatorship because these powers were added. Rather, Roosevelt enhanced its strength, dignity and independence.
Because Roosevelt was such a strong president, there were many who loved him—and also
many who came to hate him. But as the years pass, he is becoming more and more of a universal folk hero . . . more and more enveloped in American mythology.
MUCH COULD be said of the real man behind that veil of mythology, but a few brief comments will suffice here. Roosevelt came from a wealthy, aristocratic family. He graduated from Harvard, where he is remembered as a not particularly brilliant student. From there he went on to the law school of Columbia University and became a lawyer.
He had risen high enough to be a candidate for vice-president before suffering infantile paralysis, which left him with a physical handicap that was far overshadowed by his strong, confident personality. Some have surmised that from this handicap he may have even gained some of his strength to face the turbulent days of his administration.
BUT TWO of his accomplishments seem to stand out. First, he gave a frightened people strong, decisive leadership at a time when it was badly needed. Second, he gave them the confidence that there was a goal of domestic peace and prosperity in the future. one that was attainable and worth working for. Both of these things—leadership and a definite, worthwhile goal—are crucial to high morale.
The rightness or wrongness of many of his actions during the first hundred days could be debated at length. Undoubtedly—and probably inevitably—there were blunders in those hectic times.
With their panic quieted and their spirits lifted, the American people were better equipped to face the many problems that lay ahead of them.
Whatever Roosevelt's mistakes may have been in the Hundred Days, he was a truly strong president at a time when such a president was a necessity.