Best Defence? Prayer

The President of the U.S. was discussing the July Big Four meeting with his Secretary of State when the air-raid horn burped through the White House. Old Soldier Eisenhower stood up, shook hands with Dulles and quickly strode to the portico. While sirens brayed over Washington and staff members lugged out heavy suitcases, the President put on his glasses and checked his watch. It was exactly 12:03. He ducked into his limousine with Deputy Assistant Fred Seaton and Special Counsel Gerald Morgan, and Secret Service Driver Deeter Flohr headed the car out the southwest gate. Right on its bumper was a 1938 open Cadillac loaded with Secret Servicemen, and behind it, three carloads of newsmen. For the first time since the War of 1812, when President Madison fled to the Virginia countryside, the U.S. Government was fleeing Washington. The President and 15,000 federal employees were evacuating the capital to spend three days at 31 secret sites during the nationwide civil defense test, Operation Alert.

Deeter Flohr jockeyed the big black car in and out of the noonday traffic and over Memorial Bridge to a supposedly secret route--but along the way schoolchildren and parents with cameras were waiting for a glimpse of Ike. The President's car whizzed past those of other Government officials. Foreign Economic Adviser Joseph M. Dodge at the wheel of a Ford, Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. driving a blue sedan with the State Department markings covered up.

The President's car swung off the main highway onto a steep, narrow mountain road lined with troops, came to a cluster of olive drab Army tents identified as "Bureau of the Budget." "ODM," "Stabilization," ''Manpower," "Men's Latrine.". The breeze whined through a forest of antennae.

Lunch Came First. Ike inspected the area, returned to an airless, sunbaked tent, where he sat behind a butcher-paper-covered field table, greeted Government officials as they arrived. In all, the heads of 32 agencies and departments reported. One of the last was Health and Education Secretary Oveta Gulp Hobby, who the President teased, "I wondered where you were. I looked for you." Mrs Hobby, white-gloved and sleekly coifed, confessed she stopped for lunch along the way.

The tent was dominated by a huge map of the U.S. with blue pins to show air bursts and red pins to show the more radioactive surface bursts in the biggest civil defense test yet. All afternoon and evening the reports came in: an A-bomb on Seattle; an atomic guided missile hit Anchorage. Alaska; an A-bomb struck the Capitol; an H-bomb on Brooklyn; a submarine hit Balboa Heights, C.Z. with an atomic missile. American cities under attack: Los Angeles, Baltimore. Boston, Chicago, Youngstown, Akron, Wilmington, Flint, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Milwaukee and both Portland. Ore. and Portland, Me. A total of 61 cities were reported hit. The President held an hour-and-is-minute secret meeting, afterwards declared martial law across the U.S.

Moratorium on Debts. That evening the President went to the emergency White House, where he had a Spartan office--and a $5 toy telephone with 50 ft. of wire for a staff intercom. Outside, guards patrolled against a mythical enemy and found a real one: rattlesnakes. The next morning the President confessed, "We found more complications yesterday than I believed possible." and went off to the secret, underground Pentagon for a meeting of the National Security Council.

Meanwhile, civil defense centers across the nation estimated a total 8,200,000 dead. 6,550,000 injured and 25 million homeless (a "surprise of the exercise," said Peterson). Paper evacuations of 35 cities saved 1,250,000 persons from death and 2,750,000 from serious injury. Six percent of the nation's manufacturing capacity was vaporized and 10% temporarily knocked out, although some industries lost far more heavily than others--e.g., up to 40% of the steel fabricating and machinery industries were destroyed. Some areas lost 60% of their electric power, gas, telephone and telegraph facilities. Stores of grains and cottons were in good shape nationally, but there was little coffee and less sugar left after the attack.

Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey announced a disaster plan to put a moratorium on all debts, impose severe penalties against hoarding of cash and encourage local bank credit under strict punishment for unethical practices. He also revealed that the Treasury Department already has vast reserves of currency hidden away around the country. After an attack, it would be rushed to stricken areas to meet payrolls and provide a stable basis for trade in necessities.

Troops for the Home Front. One constructive result of the test was a public clarification of what the President had in mind when he sent Congress the military reserve plan that is still bogged down in the House of Representatives. Those who opposed the President's reserve program because they could not see the value of more infantry divisions overseas in an atomic war realized he had another mission in mind. In a speech at the end of the three-day test, the President used the experience to appeal for his reserve program. Said he: "If [civil defense] officials are to do their duties properly . . . they must be supported by trained and disciplined men . . . We must remember that in the kind of disaster of which I am now speaking, one trained reserve battalion in the proper place would be worth five divisions located a thousand miles away. Trained men will be needed on the spot at the time the disaster occurs."

The President also emphasized spiritual mobilization. "This is my deepest impression of this exercise: the most devout daily prayers that any of us has should be uttered in the supplication that this kind of disaster never comes to the U.S."

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