Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 17, 1964, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press thursday september 17, 1964 t Johnson pulled them together As chaos faced . By William s. White Lyndon Johnson s Deci Sion on his gloomy first saturday night of his presidency to keep personal associates of John f. Kennedy for his own subject to their being willing to stay and help was for him the inevitable one. With the Kennedy Cabinet there had been no problem at All. The new president had served with them All observed them All agreed and differed with them All throughout the time when he had sat in the Cabinet with or. Kennedy at its head. He knew them All sometimes perhaps even better than or. Kennedy because of his Peculiar gift of empathy. Long since he had formed a special admiration for two of them Secretary of state Dean Rusk and Secretary of defence Robert Mcnamara. Of or. Rusk he had said privately hardly a month before the assassination of or. Kennedy that he was a Good Man a prudent Man a Man making no show but always knowing what he is doing and Why he is doing indeed again privately for As vice president he had leaned Over backward never to seem to speak in any Way for the administration unless asked by the president to do so he had hot by defended or. Rusk when in the aftermath of the cuban Cri Sis in the autumn of 1962, a Magazine article spoke slur singly of the Secretary s contributions to the decision to Clear soviet missiles from Cuba or to go to War. It was made to appear in the article that or. Rusk had been timid and hesitant to or. John son this was ugly nonsense. What or. Rusk had done As or. Johnson saw it was rightly to Reserve his Jud Gjent As the senior Cabinet officer until All sides had been heard. This seemed to or. Johnson not Only the right course but the Obliga tory one from where or. Rusk sat. Lbs was also sympathetic at the time to United nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson who had been badly Cut up in the article As perhaps an appear again or. Johnson saw or. Stevenson s proper role As the in. Or. Johnson although him self a really Tough liner in the great grave conference was not willing to stigmatize Johnson had made up his mind about him in the very first Ken Nedy Cabinet meeting in Janu Ary of 1961. Returning to his of fice in the Capitol from that morning but i think i know what i am talking about. He knew what ought to be done in his department. It was bang bang bang bang. If i were president the professional a frankly to present his Side of the others who either held a differ problem that is All the diplomatic implications and All the undoubted objections that would be voiced by Many members of ent View or simply thought it their duty to present one for common inspection. As to or. Mcnamara or. Meeting he remarked to a Friend a Man in this new cab inet to tie to is that Young Fel Low Mcnamara. I saw him in action for the first time this irony of Canada s defence by Warner Trover Ottawa special there s mild irony in the fact that Canada shaping a new defence policy oriented toward the International police role and thus becoming less dependent on United states military strategy in shaping Domestic defence to May become More and More reliant on . Training and tactics in school ing troops for their new role. In his Pursuit of adequate forces and training to handle what he Calls the Complete spectrum of defence . Defence Secretary Robert Macnamara has pushed american forces into new roles and concepts at both extremes of military weaponry. At the far right of the graph running from conventional to nuclear warfare Are the Small tactical nuclear weapons such As the Davey Crockett which can be car ried in a jeep and operated by As few As two infantry men. No More difficult to operate than a second world War mortar they have the destructive Power of a tank regiment. Similarly with the Light beam rifles now being built in a development program they Are powered by Bat teries can throw a beam of sufficient intensity to Start a fire in an infantryman s uniform for instance at ranges of a mile. But it s at the opposite end of the spectrum the most surprising innovations Are to be found. Civilians and Mili tary men alike have grown too used to space shots and Nylon Armor for foot soldiers to be shocked or appalled at the new and ingenious methods of killing the enemy. In its search for total efficiency in the area of guerrilla warfare now called counter insurgency or Coin for Short the . Military planning machine has moved All the Way from the stuff of science fiction to the Nean Derth Aloid certainly Canadian troops dedicated to use in an inter National peace keeping role must be trained for any pos sible kind of conflict. This Means operation from Heli copters As in Viet Nam from jeeps and personnel carriers As in Cyprus or on foot and against machetes As in the Congo. Survival exercises for Canadian troops May very soon include exercises in the use of the Sling the Bow the club and the Hardwood Spear As methods of defence and destruction. Parallel with the need for a far wider Range of training is the requirement for More skillful troops. Educational standards and learning ability must necessarily be raised to meet the growing complexities of modern military training. Higher degrees of dedication to training a greater proportion of professionalism Are needed among men Given extraordinarily Dougli training in so wide an area of warfare. I would put in my stack with when a poker player has absolute Confidence in his hand he shoves into the pot his entire stack of chips. At All events it was or Rusk and or. Mcnamara upon whom Moat of All the new president leaned that saturday night As the Load of a Hundred responsibilities fell on his heavy Black Clad shoulders. A few friends were about him in the Sun room one of them the slight quiet Abe Fortas who As undersecretary of the Interior had been a Johnson companion and adviser since the Roosevelt new Deal Days of 30 years before. It was no Accident that Only or. Fortas and two or three others were there that night president Johnson in fac ing crisis turns first to those whom As he says have been often to the Bridge and Back meaning roughly those who in danger and possible disaster would not Retreat. Everyone in the Sun room except the new president was quiet through nearly the whole of that evening. Or. Johnson himself was never so. Sitting at the Telephone he pressed one after the other of its six buttons calling a lesser official or a Cabinet officer with no distinction of protocol in his mind. For each there was a brisk clipped hurried but Calm instruction do. This to night do this tomorrow get in touch with so and he was not merely issuing directions nor was the insurance of directives his sole motive. He was deliberately giving All the key officers of the government All they could possibly do just As he was burdening himself. He knew their grief and him self fully Felt it As occasionally he passed his hand Over his forehead in a half violent Ges Ture. But he knew they must overcome grief at once become lost in the immediately Neces sary things that must be done throughout the government. So he never spoke of grief. He was pulling then All together emotionally and personally As Well As officially. Racing against fear and possible chaos he dared not let momentum halt or falter. Amidst it All he telephoned the department of Justice and directed j. Edgar Hoover to open at once a full unsparing inquiry into the assassination in Dallas. He wanted the country to know that no verdict of the dal Las authorities although he had no question of their integ Rity of purpose would been Ough. There must be objective National investigation Over which his own state would have no control no conceivable Power to Whitewash anybody or any movement or Section. Meanwhile however this in Wardly harassed and outwardly Rock like Man was aware that the most absolute need for the country s continued safety was to Start and sustain a furious outward looking and Onward looking residential activity. The need was to demonstrate both Here and abroad that the institution of tie presidency had not died and could never die. The contrast Between the opening hours and Days of the new administration and the opening hours and Days of the last administration to be in stalled upon the heels of death that of Harry a. Truman could not have been wider. Or. Truman had come to of fice in almost total ignorance of what or. Roosevelt had been doing and planning and promis ing. Or. Trufan had hardly been informed by or. Roose velt at All. Or. Johnson had not Johnson singled out Macnamara Early. Only been kept fully informed by or. Kennedy he had been a working intimate part of All that his chief had done and planned and promised. There started that first saturday night two weeks of decision and action from a Man who usually now slept no More than four or five hours out of the 24. He was seeing men and women in his office at the rate of 90 a week seeking More kinds of advice from More kinds of people than any president before had Ever done. I. His sympathy for the White House staff was both sensitive and Active he knew that even though he had publicly urged them to stay on some might feel that this was Only a kind of genial Sham on the part of the new president. Thus while his desk was piled with a Hundred problems and visitors to his office were coming and going like men moving through a revolving door he thought of Theodore Sorenson the one who had been closest of All to the late presi Dent and said to him Ted i would like you to write the first draft of my first speech to con it was an accolade to a suf Fering Man to whom or. John son of course gave the Gist of what he intended to say. Copyright 1961, by Wil Liam s. White. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin. Publish ers distributed by United feature Syndicate inc until saturday at this exclusive value your Choice of 3 exquisite styles in luxurious deep quilted fabrics. Dow soft Dacron and foam seat and Back cushions. Pick your suite today luxury sofas colonial i Back sofa beep Button tufted Semi detached Cushion Back. Luxurious Dacron and foam seat cushions. Quilted fabric. Terms Little at week. Your Choice of easy chairs i Back chairs to match the three sofa styles shown. 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