The Clark Fracas

At Harry Truman's press conference last week, he pondered his answer to a question, twisting the gold masonic ring on the little finger of his left hand. The question was: Why had he nominated General Mark Clark to be U.S. ambassador to the Vatican? Slowly, the President answered that he had studied the matter ever since January 1950, when Myron

Taylor resigned as his special representative. Truman had finally decided that the cause of peace would be served by the presence of a U.S. ambassador at the Vatican.-

A Listening Post. Through a salvo of newsmen's questions, Harry Truman stood his ground. Behind his determination was a point which he did not bring out: he has been told by some of his top advisers that an embassy at the Vatican would be an important listening post in the struggle against Communism. Much of the debate in Washington last week turned on the value of the Vatican as a source of intelligence in Communist-dominated areas.

The efficiency of the Vatican's "worldwide information service" has probably been exaggerated for many years. In recent years, its information channels from Eastern Europe have been effectively clogged by Communist restrictions. The Vatican (and the rest of the Western world) undoubtedly gets a true general picture of what goes on behind the Iron Curtain, but the Vatican's information about specific events in Eastern Europe often arrives in Rome too late to be of use.

Vatican officials were completely baffled last year when the communized Warsaw government announced the signing of an agreement with Polish Catholic bishops. At first, they expressed doubt that any such document had been signed; two weeks later, they confirmed much of what Warsaw announced. When the Communist government in Czechoslovakia banished Archbishop Beran from Prague this year, again the Vatican did not know what was happening. When Archbishop Grbsz was tried and sentenced by the Communists in Hungary, Rome had to depend for its information on regular press reports.

A Matter of Attitudes. Better than the listening post argument was the fact that Vatican attitudes are important in the international picture. Some of these attitudes might be influenced by the presence of a U.S. ambassador. For instance, Truman was careful to say that he wants to appoint an ambassador to the "State of Vatican City." But.Vatican official last week privately and insistently said that a U.S. ambassador should be appointed to the Holy See rather than to the minute, temporal State of Vatican City. This attitude indicates that the Vatican does not appreciate Truman's problem and does not understand American Protestant opinion.

Last week Protestant protests continued to rise across the land. Letters and telegrams to the White House last week were running 6 to 1 against the nomination. One Protestant leader revealed that Truman had offered him the ambassadorship last January. "I declined and advised against it," said Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, brother of Senator Robert A. Taft and a board member of the National Council of Churches.

Harry Truman had decided against giving Clark a recess appointment, because he wanted Congress to pass a special act permitting the general to stay in military service while holding the diplomatic post.. Despite the roar of protest, Truman was confident. His listening posts in Congress had told him that the fight over the appointment would be bitter and close, but that he would win.

-Last week; reporters dug up a January 1940 Franklin Roosevelt comment on the subject. In a letter to Democratic Senator Josiah Bailey of North Carolina F.D.R. wrote: "Whether we like it or not, mere messenger boys, even when they are messenger boys sent by the President of the U.S., eat in the servants' hall in foreign countries-and I could have hesitated to put Myron Taylor, who after all is a very great American, into such a position. Whether we like it or not, there are certain titles which carry with them the right to sit at the supper table above the salt. Whether an American ... is called an ambassador or by some other title ought to make very little practical difference in this country, but it makes a very great deal of difference in every other country . . ."

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