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Show Rawiings Issues Challenge To Watkins on Missiles By Calvin W. Rawlings Democratic National Committeeman I have noticed from press reports re-ports that Senator Arthur V. Watkins at the clinics which he is holding throughout the state to rebuild his political fences has endeavored to pass the responsibility responsi-bility for the present crises resulting re-sulting from Russia's surpassing us in the development of guided missiles, from the President to tee on Atomic Energy and Democratic Demo-cratic Senator Henry Jackson, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Applications, wrote a letter to President Eisenhower personally, calling his attention to the fact that as President of the United States he had the solemn responsibility of assuring our nation an adequate military defense, and in said letter called his attention to the fact that the ICBM program was then on a peace-time footing and that it was their hope that this program would immediately be on a wartime war-time footing and carried out with the boldness, the daring, the moneys and the resources devoted de-voted to our atomic effort in the war. In this letter these two Democratic senators indicated that it was their deep conviction that our nation will never again be able to mobilize after an all-out all-out war has begun; that with the Soviets already able to deliver a crippling nuclear attack against our homeland, we must presume that mobilization after the onset of hostilities would be impossible. impos-sible. The pointed out that any attempts to put crucial military programs on a wartime footing must be made in time of peace and that ICBM's effort should be put on a crash basis immediately. This was anoroximatelv two " WM 'JV- Jr--i '..-..4.,. CALVIN W. RAWLINGS the Democratic Congress. I cannot permit these representations represen-tations to go unchallenged. The stark facts are these: In 1952 and again in 1956, D wight Eisenhower was overwhelmingly over-whelmingly elected as President of the United States, which automatically auto-matically made him Commander in Chief of all our armed forces, as a result of the public being sold the myth that he was a great political leader and military mastermind mas-termind with infallible military Odgment. In view of this build- given President Eisenhower as a great military genius, whose decisions on how to protect this nation from its communistic foes, surpassed in wisdom those of any living American, every voter had a right to expect him to discharge dis-charge his most important and solemn responsibility of assuring and one-half years and nothing happened. Apparently Sputnik and Mutnik have had greater influence in-fluence on the President than our Democratic Congress, as the President has now, at long last, accepted the recommendations of our Democratic Senators made over two years ago. Time is of the essence in this fight for survival. sur-vival. I hope that will not be another case of too little too late. The record will show that every cent requested by President Presi-dent Eisenhower for the guided missile program, has been given him by our Democratic Congress. Senator Watkins should, like Senator Lyndon Johnson, be more interested in finding a solution so-lution to the problem which the Eisenhower Administration has created, rather than placing the blame. our nation an adequate military defense. You are all now familiar with the sad and tragic story. Russia is far ahead of us in the development develop-ment of the intercontinental ballistic bal-listic missile, which could destroy de-stroy America without warning and against which there is no defense. Some try to shift the blame from the President to the Pentagon, Penta-gon, where the sad story of indecision in-decision and interservice rivalry under five years of Commander-in? Commander-in? Chief Eisenhower, have contributed con-tributed to our present plight. Some endeavor to justify the President's failure in this life and death struggle to the fact that Eisenhower was a part-time President and that the palace guard protected him from unpleasant un-pleasant facts and made decisions for him even though these decisions de-cisions affected the safety of America. This is not the case in the present crisis. The President was warned of th eimpending catastrophe on June 30, 1955, in ample time to have prevented the crisis had he taken bold action in fulfillment of his solemn duty to guarantee this country a proper defense against any action of our recognized recog-nized and desperate enemy. On June 30, 1955, Democratic Senator Clinton P. Anderson, chairman of the Joint Commit- |