<--PREV Doc #667  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #669 Document #668; January 16, 1954 To Walter Bedell Smith Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series ; Category: Personal and confidential The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 8: A world "racing toward catastrophe"   Dear Bedell: Herewith a copy of an article prepared by Van Fleet for the Readers Digest.1 You will note that his letter says he is giving a copy to the Secretary of the Army, so I suppose that if any "security" is involved, he will get appropriate advice from the Army. I send this to you merely because I believe you will be intensely interested. While I suspect that in certain instances, Van Fleet has been guilty of some exaggeration, I must say that I agree with his main argument completely.2 Will you please return the article to me when you have finished with it?3 As ever 1 For background on General James Alward Van Fleet, commander of the Eighth Army in Korea until February 1953, see Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 165. Eisenhower had written Van Fleet that he had read the article "with great interest" and would ask others "to take a look at it" (Jan. 16, 1953, Van Fleet Papers). 2 Drawing upon his experiences in training native troops in Greece and Korea, Van Fleet had argued that Asian wars must be fought by Asians, who could be trained and equipped by Americans (James A. Van Fleet, "Twenty-five Divisions for the Cost of One," Reader's Digest, no. 382 [February 1954], 1-10). He wrote: "America lacks both the manpower and the money to hold Communism in check in Asia--if we persist in our past policy of trying to do the job with American men." He stressed the establishment of special training centers to prepare men to fight for their own freedom. He cited, as an example, the French experience in Indo-China, which he described as a "rathole--bound to be bottomless so long as money goes to pay foreign troops while the natives stand around as bored bystanders, without responsibility for their own freedom." 3 "Like you I agree with General Van Fleet's main argument completely," Smith would respond, "and I doubt that he has exaggerated very much" (Smith to Eisenhower, Jan. 18, 1954, AWF/D-H). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To Walter Bedell Smith, 16 January 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 668. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/668.cfm <--PREV Doc #667  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #669

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