On the Record: Apr. 1, 1985

Dwight Eisenhower, in a newly released 1956 letter, on the pressure to increase the U.S. defense budget: "Someday there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think what could happen in this country."

Lord Mountbatten, in a newly released 1961 excerpt of his diary, on the dawning space era: "If there is general disarmament, this will be a wonderful age, but if our ability to control space is solely to be used to increase our destructive capabilities, then I see little chance of the world surviving."