The French had their views, and we had our views about it. After a great deal of trouble it was finally worked out in a thoroughly practicable way from the military point of view, and a sound political adjustment here.

What was done was, in the first place, not to create a supreme command but to make a Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, who should be under the supreme commander in Europe. Therefore, General Ridgway retains the supreme command, but there is a commander-inchief for the Mediterranean under him, and that is Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was appointed to that post.

That immediately raised another question which created a great deal of difficulty for the military people. There had been an argument as to whether the Mediterranean should be regarded as a theater by itself, through its own commander-in-chief, or whether the naval forces in the Mediterranean were not really basically, from the military point of view, supplementary to the land operation in Europe, whether it was not the Mediterranean, with its naval forces, sort of a wing of the European command.

That was resolved in this way: The 6th Fleet, which has our carrier striking force in it, which has always been conceived of as a part of the defense operation, was made a separate command and the commander-in-chief is under General Ridgway. That is, it remains as it has been before, under Commander-in-Chief South, who is Admiral Carney, stationed in Naples.

That takes out these large American striking forces, which are called the 6th Fleet, and leaves them attached as they were before, to Admiral Carney.

The rest of the Mediterranean is there regarded as an area of communication through the Suez Canal, and into Turkey and Egypt, and that will be, that part of the operation will be, conducted by Admiral Lord Mountbatten.

I think, and the Chiefs of Staff seemed to agree, that from a military point of view this is a workable and good solution, and from a political point of view it is all right. It satisfied everybody concerned here that this is acceptable to them.

That was an achievement; it was not an easy matter to hammer these things out, but it was done.

THE ANNUAL REVIEW

The next thing that we had put a great deal of time in on was what is called the annual review, and that really means the statement by the various countries in NATO of what they will do in a calendar year in raising and in maintenance of forces.

We hoped that it would be possible to get all of that at this meeting. It was not possible to do that, and it will have to be completed at the April meeting, but we went a long way to make it possible.

Now, this operation is a little more difficult than it seems. It starts out by the various countries under the direction and leadership of SHAFE and General Ridgway saying what they will do in the year ahead. Most of them have a fiscal year and a calendar year coinciding; others have just a few months out, but very few have a split year, as we know it.

What they do is to write down on one side of the paper the ambitions of their general staffs and their soldiers. They write down on the other side of the paper the cold reality, as the Secretary of the Treasury or the Minister of Finance might point it out, and there is always a considerable gap between these two.

In many cases there is the hopeful expectation that we are going to fill that gap, which we have pointed out we cannot do. There are certain things we cannot do, and certain things we can do, but they must bring their effort in accordance with their resources, with such help as we have planned out for them.

Last year that was done by a very high-level group, with great success; the results were adopted at Lisbon.

This year it is being done by the new international staff under Lord Ismay, which is working out pretty well.

This year we hammered out in the Council, and adopted, certain rules and guiding principles which, I think, will very much help the solution of this problem, and along extremely sound lines, in my judgment.

STRUGGLE OF THE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE

For some time we have had a struggle going on between the desirable and the attainable. There has been a tendency on occasion for some of the military people to insist that they wanted to put down what, in their military judgment, was necessary and desirable, and if it could not be done, well, that was too bad, but that is what they wanted to do. This has had a tendency to discourage; if what you could do was always said by the soldiers to be inadequate, people get tired after awhile, so we finally started out with a very fine speech that General Eisenhower made in Rome last year, the whole military conception began to change around and come together with the civilian conception, which was that we should put down what it was that was most important to do first; that we should not allow ourselves to become slaves of the calendar.

If you said this whole thing has to be done by 1954 or 1956, and it cannot be done, then despair takes hold of the people. We said, "Let us do everything that we can do, and let us have what we can do, the very most effective military thing to do."

Well, now, that idea was finally accepted completely, and it has resulted in a very sound objective which is, before you go on trying to increase the quantity of the force that you have in any spectacular way, to be sure that the quality of what you have got, the battleworthiness, the equipment, the training, the reserves of that force are adequate. Then you have got something that is hard and competent and good, and can do a job, and to which additions really are important.

Now, that is what they are doing this year. There will be an increase in amount as well as in quality. There will be an increase in the total expenditure, almost a billion dollars more, to be spent by our Western European allies on defense arrangements in 1953 than in 1952. That is all to the good.

1 Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

MILITARY ACHIEVEMENTS TO DATE

If you look at what has been accomplished, without attempting to transfer myself into a military expert, but taking what they have said, I think it is about this: That when NATO began there was no obstacle whatever in the way of a quick punch attack by the Communist forces which are already in Europe. There was just nothing to stop them at all, and at any moment when they were out on maneuvers, they could just have kept on, and there was not anything to stop them at all.

I think we have now gotten to the position where the Communist forces in Europe cannot overrun Europe and, therefore, if there was to be any physical military aggression it would have to be preceded by a very considerable mobilization and obvious prelude to aggression. That is an important thing. I think it has given a great sense of security that this thing does not happen overnight.

It is given an added sense of security that mobilization is an ominous thing, and very many things can happen if that is once started in these other countries, and all of that is to the good; and this buildup will continue more slowly than we had hoped, but it will continue, until the situation is going to be one which would make any sort of an aggression most unwise.

THE LISBON TIMETABLE

Senator SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Secretary, might I interrupt you for just a minute there? Did you find that you had to change the timetable that was set at Lisbon for the development of the forces? Did we have to stretch it out?

Secretary ACHESON. The answer is both yes and no, Senator.

At Lisbon, and at all of these annual reviews, you do two things: You take the year about to open and the countries, and each one of them says what it will do in that year, and that is a firm operation.

Then, for planning purposes, since you have to place orders in advance, you have to make arrangements for drafting people, and all of that, they have a planning goal for the next year following the one that is about to open, and a still more indefinite planning goal for the third year ahead.

We have pretty well-not completely, but pretty well-accomplished what was hoped to be done in 1952.

Where we have fallen short in that is in the effectiveness of the units.

The number of divisions proposed was raised, the divisions are not as good as the Lisbon specifications said they should be, they have not got the equipment that they are supposed to have, and in training and one thing or another, they have not come up to the Lisbon standards, but they have come within measurable distance of it.

It has turned out to be clear that what in the beginning of 1952 we hoped could be done in 1953, will not be done in the quantity we hoped, and similarly, what we then hoped to be done in 1954 will not be done in 1954 in that quantity.

Instead of attempting to reach those quantities planned ahead at Lisbon, they are concentrating on the quality, with a smaller advance in quantity, but a greater attainment of quality.

The CHAIRMAN. That was 96 divisions and 9,000 aircraft, was it not?

Secretary ACHESON. I do not remember the figures. The actual figures of 1952 were very much shorter than that.

The CHAIRMAN. In 1954?

Secretary ACHESON. It was probably the goal that you mentioned was the more distant one ahead, but what has been accomplished is important and worthy of consideration.

CONFIDENCE IN GENERAL RIDGWAY

We also, at this meeting in Paris, had General Ridgway there, and I think that was important. It was the first time that General Ridgway had appeared before the whole Council, which is made up of three or four ministers from each country.

General Ridgway made a very great impression, and he made an impression because he was forthright and very clear indeed, and he was also understanding of the civilian governments' problems. He stated quite frankly that everybody should understand that his mission, as written out in instructions to him, could not be accomplished with the forces now at his disposal. He understood that; he wanted to be sure that we understood it, everybody understood it, and it does not mean that he was discouraged or giving up, but that we had to keep going longer in order to get to the point where once we had hoped to get in a much shorter time.

He said he understood fully the political and economic problems which the various governments had, and discussed those in a way which led the governments to realize he did understand them very well, and he got a good hearing, and there was a great feeling of confidence in General Ridgway.

Then, after the Mediterranean Command question was settled, the two commanders in the Mediterranean came in, Carney and Mountbatten, came in; they were introduced, and made very brief speeches to us, and then went on their way, so we had the command business, and we had the Mediterranean, and we had this problem of working out the forces for 1953, one settled, the second one put well on its way to settlement in April.

DEFENSE INFRASTRUCTURE

We then got onto another matter, which is a very important thing, and a most troublesome one. That was the logistical support for the European forces, that is, the whole network of communications, the roads, the railways, the harbor facilities, and all of that, which suffers by the horrible name "Infrastructure." I suppose that means the underlying support structure.

This is something which is not created for the forces of any one country. It is for the whole combined force and, therefore, it has been worked out as a scheme by which the country where the facility is

going to be will contribute the land and certain things which it, and it only, can do. It is not a charge on the united group.

Then the construction work is parceled out, and then the hat is passed to get enough funds to carry on the work for a year.

That is a very poor way of doing it, because what has happened so far is that none of the countries have put anything for this in their budget when they make it up because this operation does not take place until after the budget is made up.

Therefore, they all sit around and say, "I am sorry, we can't do anything."

Well, after several years of that-and Bob Lovett has borne the burden with us-it was decided this year to stop that kind of thing altogther and have the countries put into their budgets the best guess that they can make, and the biggest effort that they can make so that, after all, after you sit down together, you are negotiating from something that you have got, and not from something that you have not got.

We have had what is called four slices. A slice is roughly a year's program dealing with some actual part of this construction, which can be done, and usually, in the year ahead.

We are now in what is called the fourth slice. The meeting in December was able to raise only half the money which was called for, and we had two projects presented to us by General Ridgway. One was 'what they thought it was necessary to do in the year ahead, specifying the items, and the cost of that was roughly $400 million, somewhere in that neighborhood.

Then he gave us another list which was the things you had to start right away if you were going to do any of this the next year, and the cost of that was about $200 million.

Now, the second one was financed, that was done, and he was told to go ahead on that basis.

At the meeting in April they will have to take up the last part of it, and work that out, and I think that should be done.

These underlying support facilities are very important indeed. All the harbor installations, the truck and road arrangements going to the various fronts, the communication systems set up under various contingencies so that they will operate whatever the form of attack, and airfields, are another very important part of it.

But progress was made on that, and I think progress was made so that in the future it will be less difficult.

THE FRENCH AND INDOCHINA

There was also a discussion of several important political problems. The French are periodically in great depression about their position in Indochina, which is an extremely difficult one, with a very grave drain, both financially and in manpower on the French military forces. Sometimes they get discouraged because they do not see much light ahead; and then we all go to work on it, and give them some help, and then they feel much better about it. They are up and down on this great problem.

1 Robert A. Lovett, Secretary of Defense.

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