The President's Reorganization Plan for the Defense Department, so much in the news these past few months, brings before us a fundamental issue that every democracy must face anew in times of threat and crisis. The issue—the role that the military shall play in our society and in the making of our national policy—is familiar. What makes it compelling is the siege the Soviet Union has laid to the United States and the Western world and the peculiarly fearsome dangers of war fought with missiles and thermonuclear warheads.

So long as the nations of the world must rely for their security principally on themselves, they will continue to establish armed forces for their protection against outside threats. But every democratic society faces the danger that these forces of arms and of men trained in their use will be used against the society that created them.