The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

THE Allied foreign ministers of the Atlantic world are meeting in an atmosphere heavy with the alarms of impending war. More and more persons in top positions in Washington appear to be resigning themselves to shooting. To ask the blunt question about the prospect of war is to be faced with a look of wonderment over the naïveté of the questioner. One gets the impression that the problem is regarded as when, not if — that the policymakers, or at least some of them, have accepted a thesis that a cold war of the present nature must get progressively warmer till it boils over.

We had a war scare when Czechoslovakia disappeared behind the iron curtain in 1948 and again when the airlift started in Berlin, and in both cases Secretary Marshall felt there was a danger of sudden hostilities. The present feeling is not so jittery, and perhaps for that reason is more serious.

What bothers the military men is that the Soviet Union has become a completely military state dedicated to the churning out of all kinds of lethal weapons. There seems to be no end to the activity, no slowdown. In the United States, on the contrary, a fairly stable pattern has appeared. The object is business as usual in pursuit of a higher living standard. To this end the level of military expenditures is maintained at roughly 35 cents of the budgetary dollar, and the budget is held at roughly 20 per cent of the national income.

The gap in armament is thus growing progressively in favor of the Soviet Union. But aside from the gap, a more ominous situation is present, and that is the obsolescence factor. Such is the fast and furious rate of obsolescence, as the result of the mobilization of scientists, that almost every weapon is obsolescent by the time it is put into service. There is no longer such a thing as standard armament. The temptation must therefore be presented all the time to Moscow to use the weapons as soon as the Russians either get a breathing spell from technological improvement or feel reasonably certain that America has got nothing better.

What of America? The race on which the Soviet Union has started both with itself and with the United States is surely a sign that this country should concentrate even more on prototypes than on a war machine. That is to say, the emphasis must be on research and pilot development.

To this end the suggestion is being made that the scientists should be mobilized on a leave of absence basis for government service rather than brought to Washington from time to time as consultants. Any other course would bankrupt the country. And it would be futile. There can be no hope in free America of duplicating the Russian war machine weapon for weapon and division for division, and the job would be strategically as well as economically foolish.

Accent on power

The rate of Russian war production has created misgivings among the diplomats as well as the military. The whole strategy of the cold war is now a compound of diplomacy and military strategy. Secretary Acheson is driving home the lesson that the country is engaged in a struggle for power. Agreements can be obtained with Moscow, he insists, only by creating strength.

The accent on power bothers those who feel that ideals still have a place in foreign affairs, no less than those who think that ideas have a power of their own. But Acheson will not truckle; he thinks that precious time would be wasted by excursions. That is why he is so impatient with the reformers and the revisionists of world organization.

There are at hand, in his opinion, the instrumentalities needed for the strengthening and the extension of power. At home the agencies of cold-war government are admittedly adequate; abroad there are the organizations available for expressing power: the North Atlantic Pact, the Organization of American States, the Council of Europe, the Organization for European Economic Coöperation. In Acheson’s view the United Nations is not so much a source of power as a source of ideas, and to that extent is not in the same category of usefulness as the other organizations. This is the message he is expressing in his meeting with the foreign ministers of the North Atlantic community.

Acheson’s prime object is to develop a common loyalty to a North Atlantic policy. He hopes that as soon as an agreement on this approach has been won, every foreign minister will go back to his capital to adjust national policy to a North Atlantic policy. An illustration will make this clear. It. is necessary to act as one, say, in relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia. This can be effective only if the Allies waive particular demands upon Tito or relinquish special policies arising from purely bilateral relations.

A more immediate issue concerns Berlin. A demonstration of Communist youth from the Russian sector is slated to be staged in the western sector on May 28. The possibilities of conflict are taken seriously in Washington. The U.S. means business in Berlin, and is trying to develop joint readiness to meet the threat as soon as it is mounted.

Acheson’s “total diplomacy”

At home Secretary Acheson is calling for “total diplomacy.” This is a composite of two things: responsible behavior by men and groups in positions of authority and the ironing out of disparities at home between professions and practice in our American corporate life. This is like asking for the moon in the present state of affairs in America.

Yet Acheson insists that only by this kind of total diplomacy can the Allies be kept together and the cold war won —another way of saying that success depends upon American unity and American strength.

Secretary Acheson explains the first aspect of total diplomacy as a kind of collective self-responsibility in America. In our free and open society a Senator or an editor or a businessman is just as much a Secretary of State as Acheson. He ought, then, to behave like a Secretary of State.

On several occasions of late years there have been examples of this. For instance, Italo-Americans played a great letter-writing part in keeping Italy out of Communist control at the last election. Currently thousands of Americans are contributing to massive shipments of food to West Berlin babies ns a gesture of support. But Acheson is not necessarily thinking of such active participation. He asks merely for a sense of responsibility at home as the best way of facilitating the exercise of American leadership abroad.

The other aspect of total diplomacy is the avoidance of issues which belittle America’s standing in the world as the exemplar of free institutions. This idea is more obscure. But it may be hazarded that Acheson would have the two parties keep constant watch over civil rights and minority safeguards. He may have in mind such historic incidents as the rending struggle in pre-1914 England over home rule for Ireland which made some Germans think that England was ripe for conquest.

Bipartisanship revived

Clearly there is no purpose in expecting anything like total diplomacy unless a sincere effort is made to develop and abide by bipartisanship in foreign affairs. John Foster Dulles in his new book War or Peace says: “At no time during the five years since fighting stopped could a treaty have been ratified without the support of Republicans. At no time during these five years could the necessary appropriations have been voted without a large measure of bipartisan support, because even when the Democrats or the Republicans had a paper majority, internal party divisions prevented its being, of itself, a working majority.” The conclusion is that we cannot conduct the cold war with any success without bipartisan coöperation.

Yet when the President went on his winter vacation bipartisanship had almost entirely fallen apart.

One man only revived it — because that one man had always supplied the cement. And that was Senator Vandenberg in his letter of March 25 to Paul G. Hoffman. Now one move after another is being made not only to restore bipartisanship but also to put it on a more intimate basis than ever before.

The Vandenberg letter was a tip to the President to get a bill of particulars from the Michigander. Several trips to Vandenberg’s bedside ensued. John Sherman Cooper, a fine American from Kentucky who did well as American delegate to the General Assembly, had already been appointed to go to the European meetings with Acheson, but Vandenberg wanted, also, to see John Foster Dulles in the State Department. So that appointment was made.

Dulles believes in negotiation

Dulles has a usefulness beyond his value in interparty liaison. He still believes in the United Nations at a time when the world organization is in the doghouse of the hierarchy of the State Department. He has not lost his faith in the strength of ideas and ideals. Thus he may ameliorate the Realpolitik of Secretary Acheson in the latter’s approach to world affairs. Dulles would not only bring Communist China into the United Nations: he would try to work out with Russia an arrangement for making the UN truly universal. Diplomacy to Dulles means negotiation.

Work on a meeting of minds on policy matters is now going forward in organized fashion. The new contact man on the Hill, Assistant Secretary Jack K. McFall, knows Congress, having worked in a staff capacity on one of the committees. He has the use of the Forrestal house, which has been taken over for official purposes. Here the officials meet with members of Congress in friendly informality to talk over current issues.

Senator Connally, moreover, has divided his committee into groups for the specialized study of American relations with particular regions and interests. They will keep the whole committee informed. This, of course, would give the Republicans on the committee equal status with their Democratic colleagues in access to information.

On the Republican side Senator Ives wants the party leadership also to adopt an initiative for continuous liaison. How this can be done when the Gabrielson-Taft-Wherry-Bridges team seems to be in the GOP saddle is difficult to fathom. But the Ives effort is important as showing once again the coöperation of the titular head of the party, Governor Dewey.

McCarthy’s boomerang

How McCarthy captured the headlines is regarded as a mystery by sober-minded citizens. When the Senator, making an election speech, charged that there were over 200 card-carrying Communists in the State Department, he did not expect to be taken too seriously. But Senator Lucas, the majority leader of the Senate, took him up. This gave a boost to McCarthy and landed the issue in the arena of public debate.

It was thus the serious acceptance of the more or less wordy challenge that assured McCarthy of renown. Even the National Catholic Welfare Conference could not stomach McCarthy extremism. Father Cronin, the Catholic Church’s authority on Communism and Communists, said his own investigation had shown there is not one known Communist Party member in the State Department. McCarthy was so startled by the hullabaloo that he had to busy himself getting ammunition. Here he got aid from all kinds of opposition that exist over the execution of foreign policy.

Mood of the Capital

The Capital is full of doubts and contentions and suspicions connected with loyalty. The black eye that government service has sustained from the defamers will not be easily healed. Those who are named and vindicated during the loyalty investigations are harried by anonymous messages. A government official who was merely questioned in committee in a case concerning one of his subordinates found a moving van outside his house with a message that he had “better get going quickly.” A stenographer trying to get a job, who gave the name of a government official as a reference, was told that businessmen nowadays would not accept such references.

Yet the record of loyalty appearing in the FBI findings is truly amazing. Of the nearly two and a half million workers only one twentieth of 1 per cent have been adjudged disloyal.

This is a record that the chairman of the Loyalty Review Board, Seth Richardson, who is a Republican and an isolationist at that, will tell you is impressive. He thinks it would compare favorably with the results of an inquiry into the affiliations of any other group. Instead of praise, however, government servants are being showered with brickbats, and this behavior is bound to have a damaging effect upon morale, efficiency, and prestige.

As a result of the politicking with disloyalty a counterfeeling is developing against both the immunity enjoyed by legislators and the unlimited power of Congressional investigation. This is equally extreme.

The power of investigation is a precious dike against wrongdoing. Certainly it has been abused, but the record of laws and rectification and punishment coming out of the investigative process is a long and distinguished one.

Good government would go quickly out the window if the legislators did not enjoy complete immunity. If members of Congress were to be subject to lawsuits for libel and slander because of their efforts to protect the public interest, bribery and corruption would flourish in the halls of Congress like the green bay tree. Merely a threat of a suit would silence men anxious to expose a scandal or an impropriety. Anyway, no safeguard is more specific in the Constitution than the provision for i legislative immunity.