April 25, 1956

The Eisenhower administration’s foreign policy came under attack from Tennessee senator and presidential aspirant Estes Kefauver in an address to the Vassar student body. Charging that recent suggestions from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles of a larger presence for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were made four years ago by then General Eisenhower, Senator Kefauver said a bi-partisan group endorsed a correction for the “continued disunion” within the Atlantic community in 1949. The West, he said, was “far weaker in April, 1956, than it was in April, 1952.” He urged the President to accept this proposal and to convene NATO partners to “determine what steps they might take to forge unity in the military, economic and political policies.”

The New York Times