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Show "The best speech he has made at any time during his five years In the White House," said a famous fa-mous Washington news correspondent correspon-dent in commenting on President Eisenhower's "State of the Union" message last week. Most clear-thing clear-thing Americans can say Amen to that. It has been many a year since the President of the United States has humbly admitted the perilous state of affairs in which we currently cur-rently find ourselves. This is fortunately for-tunately all to the good; because since Sputnik I, few of our leaders, military, political or otherwise have been willing to admit that we were so completely behind the cold war 8-ball. Mr Eisenhower did a pretty fair job of pointing out the errors of ommission and commission, which have relegated us to the rear rank behind the Soviets in the struggle for international supremacy. supre-macy. And on the constructive side, he outlined a few things that must be done, if we still have the desire to survive. Among other things he mentioned mention-ed unselfish service, loyalty to the common cause, sacrifice and hard work. These positive and constructive construc-tive activities are the very same, which during the past century, had elevated this country to the position posi-tion of strength, power and Influence Influ-ence We enjoyed before the advent ad-vent of the Sputniks. The Immediate reaction of the leaders In the various segments of our political, industrial and military mil-itary activities will provide an interesting in-teresting index as to how willing we are to make the necessary changes. Will the members of Congress forget the idea of "politics as usual," us-ual," and sacrifice political advantage ad-vantage for the good of the nation as a whole? We sincerely hope so; but to date there is little Indication that such will be the case. Remember, Re-member, 1958 Is an election year. Will our union leaders change from their present policy of "more pay for less work" to one in which the great labor force of America will be mobilized cheerfully and willingly toward giving a full day's work for a full day's pay ? To date Messrs McDonald, Reuther, Lewis and Hoffa have not so indicated. It looks like strikes as usual in 1958. Will the Pentagon Chiefs of Staff cease their jealous and eternal bickering and submit to the changes necessary for a united and less wasteful military effort? Not according to a statement released by them on January 11. It reads, "The chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force have come out against any fundamental changes in the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Old dogs seldom learn new tricks, may prove true again. In harmony with the recommendations recommen-dations of President Eisenhower in his recent "Message" the following was written by Dr. Alfred P. Haak, a noted American economist, under the title "Thank You, Mr. Sputnik". Dr Haake recommends the following: follow-ing: "More of the throe R's, science and mathematics and learning to think in competition with other students and less of the glamorous furbishments that multiply the cost of school buildings. "We need restoration of what we used to call 'The pride of craftsmanship' crafts-manship' and virtue, sweat, and sacrifice as the price of the right to exist. "We need leaders who do not see God every time they look inlo a mirror, law enforcement for labor la-bor leaders as well as for the rest of us, and a Supreme Court which respects the Constitution of the United States. "We can stop worrying' if we will really go to work." So long 'til Thursday. |