Washington

on the World Today

PRESIDENT TRUMAN got more acclaim for his mobilization speech than for any other speech in his Presidential career. He is said to have written it himself. On his return from Key West, he found two schools of thought bidding for his ear. One, headed by Secretary Forrestal, wanted an immediate showdown with Moscow, meaning a so tar and no farther” ultimatum on the Soviet’s direct and indirect aggression. Secretary Marshall was not so extremist. He insisted on a sort of mobilization of American manpower by means of the draft and UMT so as to provide the equipment for a showdown. Marshall won out.

Such is the anti-Russian feeling that many observers criticized the speech as too weak for the crisis. Ponder that! An unparalleled request for a draft in peacetime, and it is called inadequate. Those who were dissatisfied wanted a guaranty to Western Europe. Without further preparedness, it was said, a guaranty would simply be paper-made.

At present all the signs point to Congressional willingness to give Truman either UMT or a draft, not both. The draft, of course, is the more urgent, with an increase in authorized strength from 670,000 to 900,000. Secretary Forrestal’s request for the increase has made a strong impression. It is backed by the understanding arrived at in the Key West military talks on unification. Forrestal is determined that there shall be greater unity between the Air Force and Naval aviation over their respective functions, in place of the old West PointAnnapolis rivalry. The example of unity at the top will certainly have a beneficent effect in the lower echelons.

Truman under fire

The President, in spite of the direction he has given to American preparedness, has lately been lost in a series of morasses. The main one, of course, was Palestine. The blunt fact is that the Administration got into a most unholy mess in its handling of the future of the Holy Land. Again, the President at a recent press conference said that the broadening of the base of Chinese government to include the Communists had never been American policy. This is somewhat startling, and the newspapermen went back to their files. They found that, whatever the policy is now, it certainly once was to promote peace between Nationalists and Communists, and to have a coalition government in which the Communists were represented. Secretary Marshall hastily speeded to his chief’s rescue with the statement that American policy in China is to encourage Chiang Kai-shek to “broaden the base” of Chinese government and to leave the details to the Chinese. Put the gaffe down to the extraordinary difficulty of conducting a press conference.

Neither President Truman nor Secretary Marshall is adept at press conferences. Which is a pity, for a press conference, in addition to being almost an arm of government for domestic purposes, could be a formidable weapon in political warfare with the Russians. Secretary Marshall wants to do better, but he is uncertain how to proceed. He is perfectly at home off the record, or among newsmen he knows, but he emulates a clam when speaking at a press conference. The times call for facts and their masterly presentation. Secretary Hughes was a good performer, and Under Secretary Aeheson did well, too.

Congressional investigation

The Un-American Activities Committee got its appropriation with a bumper majority. But that doesn’t mean its methods are approved. A dissident legislator would have invited the charge of being a Commie if he had voted against the Thomas Committee. Yet many legislators look with favor on the house-cleaning proposed by the Lucas Resolution.

This would give the witness summoned before a Congressional committee the right to have his counsel present and to obtain a stenographic transcript of the testimony at cost. Reports of committees could be released only after discussion at a meeting called upon proper notice and approved by a majority of the committee members present. Both the committee and its employees would be forbidden to issue any report alleging misconduct unless the accused person had been previously advised of the criticism and given a reasonable opportunity for rebuttal.

These und ol her safeguards have become nccessary as a result of recent witch-hum mg. Heads of departments and their employees would be the greatest beneficiaries. Nowadays they are, in the words of a department head, “hounded.” It has got to the point, especially in the House Appropriations Committee, that anybody who worked for the WPA, or who has a third cousin who was a member of one of Attorney General Clark’s list of Front organizations, or who belonged in the thirties to an anti-Fascist group, is ipso facto deemed suspect.

The Republican Congress has been insisting upon the surrender of Executive files in connection with disloyalty charges. The Administration, particularly Averell Harriman, says they are none of the Legislative’s business. Even the FBI is alarmed, because, if its reports are shown on Capitol ITill, how will it get information? It is of first importance to the FBI to protect informants.

Harriman’s stand has been supported by President Truman, who, in turn, is supported by a long line of Presidential precedents based on sound political considerations and upon principle. Representative Hoffman, venting his anger over Executive stubbornness, has introduced a bill to make the Executive tell. Its chances of passing are nil.

New faces

It is noted that. Soviet Ambassador Panyushkin is more amiable than his predecessor, Novikov. But the difference is merely surface. As those who go to the meetings of the Far Eastern Commission, which sits in the old Japanese Embassy, bear witness, he is tougher in conference than Novikov. In the Far Eastern Commission the Russians betray not the slightest agreement to a waiving of the veto or an all-in conference in liquidating the war with Japan. And a peace without Russia runs counter to a Chinese commitment to Russia against separate peacemaking. Of course, the Chinese could adduce the principle of change of circumstances for going it alone.

The charge in the Far East is that the Russians have extended neither the friendship and support for Chiang Kai-shek nor the respect for Chinese rights in Manchuria that they promised in the Sino-Soviet pact of August 14, 1945. But the Chinese will not budge, since they are now using all their cards to get aid from America. They may eventually desert their present position.

Wellington Koo, China’s Ambassador to Washington, has succeeded the charming Procope of Finland as the center for the Capital’s disgruntled. These are bent upon making China an extension of American party polities. Of course, there are Sinophiliacs in the group, notably the zealot, Congressman Judd of Minnesota. But in general the aiders are composed of the old isolationists, the foes of the Marshall Plan, and die-hard Republicans.

Talking of ambassadors, the new British head of mission, Sir Oliver S. Franks, is awaited with some impatience. The lack of somebody on the British side who knows his economics has been felt keenly. Sir Oliver is a professor. So was Lord Bryce, and it didn’t hurt him, though the new man may share Bryce’s distaste for public appearance. However, Franks, in addition, is a great administrator, as well as an expert on the economics of Europe. He made a profound impression on the Capital for his work in Paris at the head of the sixteen-nation group, and for the gift of disarming exposition he showed when he reported the work in Washington.

“Father Franks,” as he is known at Oxford, will remind Washingtonians of Lord Halifax. He has the same spare and ascetic look, is a man of deep religious feeling, and has the same sense of dedication. One story about him is going the rounds. When he left the government service, he said, “Now I can go back to Oxford and recognize what is right or wrong instead of only what is possible.”

The of the Capital

There is no consensus on the tactics of Soviet aggression. Some insist that, with the situation “harmonized” (in Hitler’s word) behind the iron curtain, a military pounce will be hazarded, especially if the Italian vote does not put the Communists in the saddle. Spitzbergen is regarded as the likeliest target. This supposition is encouraged by the fear reported from the Scandinavian peninsula on the heels of Stalin’s demand for a mutual assistance pact with Finland.

Other observers feel that cold war will be relied upon by the Soviet Union. This viewpoint regards the moves in Czechoslovakia and Finland as dictated merely by fright about the outcome of their respective elections. It was clear that in both countries Communism would have sustained a setback. For two reasons Moscow could not have run the risk of an electoral showdown there — the bad effect behind the iron curtain and ihe encouragement to the free countries in the Western world.

As for tactics against the West, the question asked by this school of thought is why should there be any need to change the rules when the Soviet cold war is succeeding in holding back Western European recovery. This school deprecates hysteria about Soviet tactics, on the ground that any such feeling would promote panicky and unwise legislation, as, for instance, the stationing of American agents in Europe’s customhouses to see that no goods processed with American materials go to Eastern Europe.

But the common denominator of both schools of American thought is that, cold or hot, the present war one of these days will produce a showdown between Russia and America. In the nation’s memory and in its sense of national security there exists the opposition expressed by Jefferson against a Europe under any tyrant’s heel. And, even granted the great discipline that Communism imposes, the uncertainty of a false step by a satellite, especially Tito, is ever present in Washington minds.