49. Diary Entry by the President, January 11, 19561
This morning, in two successive appointments, first with Dillon Anderson and second with Arthur Flemming, the question of our mobilization stock pile was raised. There seems to be some concern as to whether we should not try to economize by cutting back our five year program, on the theory that in a limited war we could get all the strategic materials we needed, while in an all-out war the thing would be over in thirty to sixty days. I declined to cut back the program for two principal reasons.
- (a).
- The theory of the thirty to sixty day war has nothing whatsoever to back it up. While it is obvious that in thirty to sixty days the two giants in the atomic field might conceivably accomplish a mutual destruction of terrifying proportions, yet this would not in itself necessarily end the war. Wars are conducted by the will of a population and that will can be at times a most stubborn and practically unconquerable element. In ancient times the final siege of Carthage is an example [Page 178] —in modern times the 1940 bombing of Britain and the 1943–44–45 bombing of Germany are others. Another observation under this same heading is that if our nation would suffer the kind of destruction that we know to be possible today, we could, even if considered militarily victorious, be wholly dependent upon reserve supplies for a matter of several years. This would be particularly true if ports and shipping were destroyed, and if the war encompassed some of the areas from which strategic materials come.
- (b).
- The second reason is that I cannot possibly see how the United States can possibly lose anything in storing up imperishable supplies that it does not in itself produce in sufficient quantity. The material resources of the world are constantly being depleted, and at an accelerated pace. The time is bound to come when some of the items will begin to mount sharply in price. Some may even become almost completely exhausted. Only the discovery of substitutes or even changes in the habits of the mode of living of people will provide a long term answer. But the nation that has supplies of presently used scarce materials will obviously have more time to work out this problem than will others. This is the case where the provisioning of war reserves in raw materials does not constitute a drain upon the long term resources of the nation.
[Here follows the President’s entry on his afternoon meeting on the Middle East; for text, see volume XV, page 23.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries.↩