McCarthy at Large
The case of the Army v. McCarthy has now shocked the liberal conscience of America into a noticeable degree of activity. This fact may even have been responsible for the unusual modesty with which the Senator has sought to argue that he is not fighting the US Army per se, but only a few individuals in it who are soft or crooked or pink. But it is important to remember that the liberal conscience of America was shocked already. It has now with the aid of Mr. Ed. Murrow and Mr. Walter Lippmann become rather more vocal and may have gained a few million more converts (as a recent popularity poll suggests), but by itself, it cannot get rid of a United States senator; and the only way of. preventing this particular senator from terrorising the Administration is to remove him from the position of privilege which he is at present abusing. So it is not the liberals but the Republicans who must do it; and above all, the chief Republican, the man who is President of the United States. Only when Mr. Eisen- hower decides that the constitutional powers of the Executive have been usurped long enough, only when the Republican party decides that McCarthy would be a rotten plank in any- body's platform, can the Senator be stopped. Yet the President has so far declined to discuss the case at all, while Mr. Stevens, who admittedly has now been interrogated under television lamps for nine days, has hardly looked like a Republican who knows what to do about McCarthy. Mr. Stevens makes a bad witness and, in all probability, he has not made a good Secretary of the Army; but he has right on his side and he could prove it more easily' if his President and his party showed articulate signs of being behind him.
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