A Gain Among Losses

For Western diplomats, it was a week of compromise, indecision and foreboding, but in the general gloom Secretary Dulles found one solid, significant triumph for U.S. and inter-American diplomacy: the ouster of the Communist-dominated government in Guatemala.

The events in Guatemala (see HEMISPHERE), Dulles told a nationwide radio and TV audience, ''expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter-American system, and they test the ability of the American states to maintain the peaceful integrity of this hemisphere. For several years now . . . Communism has been probing ... for nesting places in the Americas. It finally chose Guatemala . . ."

The Red nest in Guatemala, the Secretary pointed out, was "a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine, the first and most fundamental of our foreign policies." Dulles noted that the doctrine itself came into existence as a result of Russian designs on the Americas, and then traced the more recent spread of the Red fever in the Central American republic. Ousted President Arbenz of Guatemala, said Dulles bluntly, "was openly manipulated by the leaders of Communism."

Dulles had praise for all concerned in the successful revolution: the U.N. Security Council for refusing to take up the matter (and put it into the path of the U.S.S.R.'s veto), the Organization of American States for swiftly dispatching a peace commission to Guatemala, and the "loyal citizens of Guatemala who, in the face of terrorism and violence and against what seemed insuperable odds, had the courage and the will to eliminate the traitorous tools of foreign despotism."

Despite this victory, Dulles warned, the need for vigilance is great. "Communism is still a menace everywhere, but the people of the United States and the other American republics can . . . feel that at least one grave danger has been averted . . . The unscrupulous will be less prone to feel that Communism is the wave of their future."

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