Main Threat And Test Is In Europe

Wanganui Chronicle, 22 July 1950, Page 5

Main Threat And Test Is In Europe

WASHINGTON, July 20 (Reed 7.30 pm).—The United States will press for substantial increases in the defences budgets of the Western European nations at the meeting next week of the North Atlantic Treaty Deputies' Commission in London. Officials said today that in view of the increased world-wide Communist threat, of aggression the United States expects Western European members of the North Atlantic. Treaty organisation to speed up their own rearmament programme on a scale comparable to the new American arms programme “insofar as this is consistent with their economic resources.” They acknowledged that European countries are not in an economic position to double their own defence budgets and that some of the Western European countries, including Britain, are already devoting a greater proportion of their total national income to defence than is the United States. Officials said the new Communist policy of “armed invasion and war” represented a threat to the North Atlantic area as great as, if not greater than, the threat to the Far East.

One official summed it up bluntly by declaring “No one here is fooled into thinking the main show is in Korea. The big test is in Europe. That's where the main threat exists." Officials said the timetable fol North Atlantic preparedness has been shortened as a result of the Korean war. There unquestionably will bfc bitter disappointment in the United States if Mr. Attlee’s proposal to match the “high purpose and resolve” of ths American people in their current mobilisation programmes does not result in concrete and comprehensible measures. Some sections of the Press which are usually critical of British policies are already charging Britain with standing by and doing nothing while the United States bears the main burden of fighting the United Nations cause in Korea. —Reuter. (