THE SECOND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY FAILURE OF 1954

JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

WALTER LIPPMANN gets mad:

FOR the second time this year we have stood immovably with a policy, and have had to watch it fail. In the spring it was the Navarre Plan for the military recovery of Indo-China and now it is the European Defense Community. In both cases there were warnings that at the best the prospects of success were slim, and that no time should be lost in preparing an alternative to fall back upon. Both times the Administration not only refused to heed the warnings but refused to consider, even hypothetically, what to do if the Navarre Plan or EDC proved unworkable. And so, having lashed ourselves to the mast, we have gone down twice with a sinking ship.

SOUTHEAST ASIA NEEDS A STRONG MILITARY ALLIANCE

GENERAL CARLOS ROMULO, longtime spokesman for the Philippines in the U.S. and former president of the U.N. General Assembly, in the Scripps-Howard press:

TWO markedly different views seem evident [at Manila]. The Philippines, Thailand, Australia and, somewhat more mildly, New Zealand, have shown a preference for a strong security organization based on a NATO-like defensive military alliance. The United Kingdom and France, with tacit if reluctant U.S. consent, prefer a loose treaty of mutual defense subject to the constitutional processes of each participating state. The U.S. is caught between the two contradictory positions held on the one hand by its best friends in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, and on the other by two of its outstanding allies in Europe.

If nothing comes out of Manila except a watered-down version of existing mutual defense treaties between Australia and the U.S., and between the Philippines and the U.S., then it might have been better to have attempted no further diplomatic moves. To indulge in too much sound and fury which signifies nothing to the Communists would only be to arouse their mockery and contempt. We need to do three things in Southeast Asia:

1) We must reassure the native peoples that we are determined to preserve peace with freedom in the region.

2) We must say clearly that we will fight any act of aggression in the area.

3) And we must forthwith so organize our military forces and our economic resources that the Communists will understand that we mean to stand by what we say.

The long-range success of the Manila conference will depend upon the degree of American support for these proposals.

COMMUNIST PINCERS ENCIRCLING THE U.S.

CARDINAL SPELLMAN, leading Catholic prelate of North America, before the American Legion:

COMMUNISM has a world plan and it has been following a carefully set up timetable for the achievement of that plan. Red rulers know what they want with terrible clarity. Time is running out for us also, because, given the present pace of the Communist advance, it cannot be long before its encircling pincers will be turning upon ourselves. The danger of another Pearl Harbor embracing the whole American people is definitely possible and possibly imminent.

How can there be peaceful coexistence between two parties if one of them is continually clawing at the throat of the other? How does one peacefully coexist with men who mouth words of peace while waging treacherous war? A sentence of death has been passed upon us by the very power with whom we have been asked peacefully to coexist. We need to remember, as we have never remembered before, how fatal it would be to succumb to the temptation to place any trust in those evil leaders who have risen to their world position by reason of lies, duplicity and treason.

RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY DONS A NEW FACE

THE NEW LEADER, leftish anti-Communist weekly, finds Russian diplomacy in a new--and deceptive--stage.

SINCE Stalin's death, a new and defter hand has been clearly evident in Soviet political stagecraft. Gone is the Georgian villain of yesteryear. Instead, we have dapper Georgi Malenkov. Gone, too, are the declamations against mad-dog imperialist warmongers, to be replaced by soft asides, aimed straight at the hearts of susceptible Western Europeans. The ancient Kremlin fortress is no longer to house Soviet leaders. A few weeks ago, Soviet diplomats stepped out of their gaudy uniforms and into Western-style business suits. The Soviet Union is today trying to crash back into the polite diplomatic society of Western Europe, in the hope that the adroit maneuver and the courteous phrase will achieve what the mailed fist and the heavy-handed insult could not. It is hard to believe that a change of costume and decor in Moscow could fool anyone. Yet, millions of Western Europeans are only too willing to snatch at any sign that Stalin's death ushered in the millennium. And, all the while, the slow mobilization of "liberation armies" goes forward in Asia. America will need all the courage, ingenuity and moral purpose she can muster to check the spread of Communist power.

A CHRISTIAN STANDS ABOVE ANY SEGREGATION LAW

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES concluded its final statements at Evanston with a provocative message on race relations.

The hatreds, jealousies and suspicions with which the world has always been afflicted are deepened by racial prejudices and fears entrenched in law and custom. In some situations men come to accept race conflict as inevitable and lose hope of peaceful solution. Separation solely on the grounds of race is abhorrent. We seek to justify such exclusion on the grounds of difference of culture. We even say that we are willing to abandon all separations, but must retain them because so many others are unwilling to abandon them. We often make use of the unregenerateness of the world to excuse our own.

The church is called upon to set aside such excuses and to declare God's will both in words and deeds. The problems of race, difficult as they are, insoluble as they sometimes appear to be, provide an opportunity for Christians, Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian. The whole pattern of racial discrimination is an unutterable offense against God, to be endured no longer. It is the duty of the church to protest against any law or arrangement that is unjust to any human being. Some of its members may even feel bound to disobey such law. The church cannot approve of any law which discriminates on grounds of race.

While [we] can find in the Bible no clear justification or condemnation of intermarriage, [we] cannot approve any law against racial or ethnic intermarriage. Marriage involves primarily a decision between two individuals before God which goes beyond the jurisdiction of state or culture. There is no evidence that the children of such marriages are inherently inferior, and any treatment of them as such should be condemned.

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