U.S. IN EUROPE: AS UNPOPULAR AS HITLER

WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS, longtime foreign editor for the Scripps-Howard newspapers and now in semiretirement, writes from France that it is time for the U.S. to "take the play away from Moscow."

THE United States is about as popular in Europe today as Hitler's Germany was in 1938-39.

Thanks to the drumfire of Communist propaganda, plus our own errors, our aims are more and more misunderstood.

Our allies more often say nice things about Malenkov and Molotov than they do about Eisenhower and Dulles. I doubt that we have a single ally we really could depend on if the Reds let fly with an atomic bomb on New York coupled with a warning to London, Paris et al. to "stay neutral"--or else. And unless there is a drastic change, things stand to get worse rather than better. We are being pictured day in and day out, year in and year out, as wanting war while the Soviet Union cries for peace.

It is imperative that we take the initiative--that we do something dramatic, something constructive, something arresting, something to catch and to hold the world's imagination.

The President should offer to disarm down to a mere police force if others would do the same, under proper regulations. He should offer to abolish all offensive weapons, including the atomic variety, or submit them to foolproof international control. He should propose a new world agreement which would guarantee the East against Western aggression and vice versa. He should reiterate the God-given right of the peoples of all countries, large and small, to governments of their own choosing, at genuinely free elections by secret ballot. He should invoke the lofty principles and the spirit of international decency and justice which gave birth to the United Nations and pledge our support for nations which live up to those principles.

We have been too lavish with our bil lions and too sparing of our brains. Europeans now accept our aid as nothing more than their due, as they cut down on their own efforts, including military service. We should reduce drastically our foreign establishments, drop our giveaway programs and use some of the taxpayers' money thus saved to make the U.S. as impregnable as possible.

I am not suggesting that we "abandon" our allies. Far from it. I am merely suggesting a better way to serve them, and us and the free world.

How much longer are we going to keep putting the national-defense cart before the horse? America's first line of defense is no longer Europe. It is in Detroit, Pittsburgh. Washington, New York, in the air over the North Pole. And Europe's first line of defense is in the same place. The corollary is that the best thing we could possibly do for Europe is to make America secure.

STATE DEPARTMENT COST U.S. VICTORY IN KOREA

LIEUT. GENERAL GEORGE E. STRATEMEYER, MacArthur's top Air Force man in the early days of Korea, tells a congressional committee how the military was hobbled.

WE could see the supplies, the trucks and material stacked up but we were not permitted to hit it. We could not violate the air over Manchuria. In order to hit a target in your bomb run, you have to fly a straight course, and you usually try to bomb on the length of the bridge and not crossways. But in order not to violate the air over Manchuria, Communist China, we could not fly the length of the bridge to take it out. We could not go over midstream.

I had sufficient air, bombardment, fighters, reconnaissance, that I could have taken out all those supplies, those airdromes on the other side of the Yalu; I could have bombed the devils between there and Mukden, stopped that railroad operating, and the people that were there fighting could not have been supplied. But we weren't permitted to do it. You get in a war to win it; you do not get into a war to lose it. And we were required to lose it. General Van Fleet had them on the run and he could have taken them and he wasn't permitted to do it. That is not American. And who did itI don't know. I know that General MacArthur's hands were tied, not by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but by the then State Department. I make that as my opinion, and I still believe it.

RECOGNIZE FORMOSA AS A SOVEREIGN STATE

LONDON'S ECONOMIST, respected voice of Britain's middle-of-the-roaders, offers the British government a plan for Formosa.

THERE are three possible solutions for the problem of Formosa. The first is to abandon it to Communist conquest. Britain has always been ready to do this, but it is unlikely that America can now be persuaded to do so. There are good strategic reasons for keeping the island in friendly hands, and no one has suggested an alternative refuge for Chiang and his followers. The second course is to make the island a ward of the United Nations. This cannot be regarded as a practical proposition.

The third possibility is to recognize Formosa as a sovereign state on the grounds that it is effectively controlled by a government which repudiates the authority of Peking and cannot be dislodged except by the defeat of the United States in war, just as the People's Republic, which was helped to power by Russia, cannot be overthrown except by the defeat of Russia. The British official doctrine is the "realist" one that recognition does not imply approval, but merely acceptance in international relations of an effective and apparently stable rule over a particular territory. It would be well for Britain to be consist ent in its realism, for what is sauce for the Peking goose is sauce also for the Formosan gander.

G.O.P. WILL LOSE IN FALL BECAUSE OF McCARTHY

DAVID LAWRENCE, arch-conservative columnist and publisher, says that Republicans "foolish enough to bet" on the forthcoming elections can demand long odds.

THE morale of precinct workers and local organizations of the Republican party in several states is shot to pieces, and this may prove a major cause contributing to the loss of Republican control of both houses of Congress.

Perhaps the most serious cleavage in the Republican party arises from the mishandling of the McCarthy issue by the White House staff, whose influence is believed to be responsible for goading President Eisenhower into the position of seeking deliberately to punish the Wisconsin Senator. For several months the direct and indirect attacks on Senator McCarthy at the President's press conferences have not gone unnoticed among Republicans who feel that the Wisconsin Senator has performed a service to his country. Literally millions of Republican voters think Senator McCarthy now is being persecuted not for a few intemperate remarks and speeches made under provocation but because he fought the Communists in government.

These millions of voters include many hundreds of thousands who crossed over from the Democratic to the Republican party in several key states in the 1952 elections. They probably will protest in November by not voting at all.

When the history of the Eisenhower administration is finally written, if there is such a thing as a medal for "distinguished political disservice," it might be awarded to the members of the White House staff and the Administration offi cials who thought up the bright idea of a public fight with McCarthy by means of the Cohn-Schine trivialities.

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