Eisenhower's Right Flank

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THREE nations--Jugoslavia, Greece and Turkey--cover the right flank of Eisenhower's Europe. They are small, but native pluck, geography and American aid have combined to make them individually strong. If any one of them had been a shade less strong it would be independent no longer but a victim of Stalin's program of national assassination. Together the armies of these three small states number something like three-quarters of a million men, under arms and ready to fight. General Eisenhower must wish that in the present dangerous period he commanded such a force in Western Europe, ready to fight.

As of the present writing, however, this concludes the most satisfactory part of the story. Though they are strong individually, the three nations are weak collectively. Their frontiers adjoin and they are menaced by the same adversary; but they are not linked in any defensive alliance against that adversary and so far as is known they have not developed any joint strategy for dealing with him in case he attacks. If one is invaded, the others do not have a binding commitment to come to its aid; and in case Moscow settles this problem by invading all three at once, none of the three commanders-in-chief knows what moves the other commanders will make.

Furthermore, although geography makes these three states part of Europe's first line of defense facing East, they are not as yet part of the Western military system. They are not members of the Atlantic Pact or of any affiliated regional grouping which would permit the establishment of liaison between their general staffs and the military headquarters of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in Paris. General Eisenhower at present has no jurisdiction over them, no competence to give them advice let alone orders, and not even an excuse to ask them questions...