Will to Victory

Before returning to the U.S. for a visit, Ambassador Alan G. Kirk called on Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky to discuss the "present impasse" in Korea. Said Kirk: "The Soviet government must surely recognize that, as a simple statement of fact, the breakdown of armistice talks in Korea would add greatly to the explosive character of the situation, and might stimulate a course of events which would be undesirable from the point of view of both our governments."

The statement differed little in tone from any other recent U.S.-Soviet exchange. But Vishinsky's reaction illuminated a changed atmosphere in U.S.-Soviet relations. Was that a threat? demanded Vishinsky. No, said Kirk, only a fact. A confident U.S. spokesman offering reassurances to a nervous Russian was something new to the postwar scene.

New Confidence. Vishinsky's formal reply to Kirk contained the usual Soviet opium, but ended with a hope of better U.S.-Russian relations. Washington did not take this Soviet olive branch at face value, but it recognized that the Kremlin probably does want a slackening of international tension.

The all-but-unnoticed fact was that the U.S. had shaken off the scrambling urgency of fear. By last week the U.S. was gradually becoming aware of a new sense of confidence. Its front was holding firm, its flanks were secure. It had time and breath to plan counterattacks and plot a strategy for the future.

The signs were big & small. One was a full issue of Collier's (see PRESS), which not only described a possible war with Russia, but, more significantly, also looked at the shape of a world in which Russia was no longer a threat. Another sign was the thunderous American Legion applause for General Douglas MacArthur and his insistent demand for a clear aim & end. Said MacArthur: "There must exist above all else a spiritual impulse--a will to victory." But MacArthur made it clear that he was not talking of a purely military victory; war with Russia, he insisted, was not inevitable. Old Soldier MacArthur was saying that for a soldier (and for a nation) in any war, hot or cold, hope of victory is essential for morale.

What would such a victory be? Not simple "containment" of Soviet Russia. For a contained Russia, still conspiratorial, still bent on world conquest, still atomically armed, would remain a dangerous and treacherous Russia, letting no free man sleep soundly. What the U.S. wanted was a world in which men could sleep in peace.

Receding Threats. It was an aim both more difficult and more inspiring than "containment." For the world holds more ills than Soviet Russia--a fact of which the U.S. was sharply reminded last week by the truculent Egyptians and an assassin's bullet in Pakistan. A year ago, the real meaning of these reminders would have been drowned out in the clamorous urgency of dealing with the threat of world Communism. But as the immediate Soviet threat recedes, the U.S. can understand that the challenges it faces in the Near and Middle East (and also in the Far East, in Europe, and at home) do not spring essentially from Communism.

The U.S. is part (at present the foremost part) of a great liberating revolution, whose main elements are material progress, political freedom and justice. Soviet aggression is a reactionary attack against that revolution, from the rear. As the Soviet pressure, diminished by the rearmament of the free world, lets up, the U.S. and its allies will be able to go about their business.

That business, as the U.S. began to realize in October 1951, is nothing less than the reorganization of the world along the lines of the progressive revolution of human freedom. The U.S. business in the Iran dispute or the Egyptian dispute is not merely to hold ranks together against Communism. It is to keep the free world in orderly motion toward goals which Britons, Egyptians, Americans--and Russians--share.

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