Schlesinger Stresses Importance Of European Rearmament Policy

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. '38, associate professor of History, in a debate yesterday with attorney Frederick Ayer, Jr. '37 at the Arlington Street Church, strongly opposed the "Gibraltar" foreign policy of Herbert Hoover, stressing the importance of an American-sponsored European rearmament.

Both Schlesinger and Ayer, Democrat and Republican respectively, agreed that the United States must play an active role in the support of European defenses. On the domestic front both men advocated price controls on the home front against an anticipated inflation.

Schlesinger said that he could foresee no all-out war with the Russians in 1951. He felt that Russia would not attack the United States because it had an inadequate stockpile of atomic bombs. Schlesinger considered that another deterrent to immediate Soviet aggression was the Marxist theory which held the disintegration of Democracy is inevitable.

While Russia prepared for war, Schlesinger said that the best course the United States could follow would be to strengthen Europe's defenses so that the Soviet "would abandon aggression."