A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS WOULD TRY TO WRECK IKE

JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

ARTHUR KROCK, New York Times political pundit:

ASSUMING that [Adlai] Stevenson is employing the [present] Congressional campaign as a springboard to the Democratic renomination for President two years hence, it seems obvious that a Democratic Congress would spend the next two years in trying to persuade the voters not only that the Republican party is unfit to govern but also that the President is a failure as Chief Executive and party leader and has permitted "Big Business" to take over the country. This strategy, indeed, is already apparent in the campaign overtures sounded by all Democratic leaders.

Since the President is ex officio the nation's leader this is fundamentally an attack on him and notice that a Democratic Congress will carry on the process. This in itself is enough to paralyze the Democratic argument that voters who desire to help the President should put his opposition in control at the Capitol. The Democrats want primarily to advance their own political fortunes, and both common sense and the requirements of the two-party system are served thereby. If the opposition carries Congress, the goal of its entire effort, as of Stevenson's, will, of course, be the Presidency in 1956. This goal has never yet been attained by building up a President of the other party.

FIGHT NOW, IF NECESSARY, TO STOP COMMUNISTS

WILLIAM F. KNOWLAND, Senate majority leader, in Collier's:

THE most ominous fact in the world today is the growing strength of the Communists. The abandonment of north Vietnam to the Reds and the collapse of the Korean peace talks at Geneva leave us with these alternatives --to halt the Communists where they are, or to surrender first Southeast Asia, then all the rest of the continent and nearby islands to the Reds, giving them such a heavy preponderance of power that they would be ready to move in Europe. The free nations should let Red China know that if she invades--directly as in Korea, or indirectly as in Indo-China--any territory we have undertaken to defend, she must take the consequences not only on the violated land, but on her own mainland. Such a decision would involve risk, but there is no course we can follow without risk. To avoid a Communist world, we of the United States and other free nations must be willing to fight--now, if necessary.

The Communist objective always has been, and still is, domination of the world. It will no more change than a leopard's spots. In my opinion, the best chance--if not the only chance--we have for peace now and over the long stretch is to stop Communism in its tracks. If we do nothing, the Reds will merely follow their own program for involving us in war and, they hope, crushing defeat.

KEEPING REDS "GUESSING" A DANGEROUS POLICY

JOHN KNIGHT, publisher of four dailies (Chicago Daily News, Akron Beacon-Journal, Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald), in his "Editor's Notebook."

THE American people are entitled to hear from the President of the United States just what it is we intend to do in case [Formosa] is besieged by the Chinese Reds. While Dulles has said Formosa will be defended, he has not told the nation that such an at tack is equivalent to an attack on the United States. He has not said that the United States will go to war, if necessary, over Formosa. When asked by reporters in Washington if the United States plans to keep Communist China guessing as to what we intend to do, the Secretary replied: "Yes, and you too."

In keeping the Communists "guessing," we may only be fooling ourselves. Formosa is vital to our Pacific defenses. If it came under Communist occupation, both Japan and the Philippines would be outflanked. Should we allow it to fall, friendly nations would conclude that our noble utterances were only empty words. Formosa can be defended. It must be defended. Why, then, don't we say that any aggressor moving against Formosa does so at his own risk? Instead of feeding the people a lot of double talk about "military decisions" and "defending the vital interests of the United States," let the President speak up and say that any attack on Formosa means war with the United States.

CHINESE REDS & RUSSIANS ARE NOT SPLITTING

ANEURIN BEVAN, left-wing Laborite M.P., writing in Tokyo's Asahi Shimbun after his tour of Communist China:

SOME people look for evidence of disagreement and even of antagonism between the Soviet Union and New China. Naturally, their enemies would like to see this. To my mind this view is superficial. It ignores contemporary realities. Especially, it takes too little account of the fact that both countries have accomplished their revolutions under the inspiration of the same philosophy--Marxism. This gives their behavior a common stamp. The political leaders of the two countries are guided by the same political blueprints and use the same terminology. They are conscious of the same compulsions and are driving towards the same social destinations. This is particularly true of international policy. What Chairman Mao told us is repeated word for word by Communists throughout the world. It bore the stamp of a common origin and concerted plan. To have looked for anything else would have been to fail to appreciate the deep intellectual affinities of Communists everywhere.

MENDES WILL COME BACK EVEN IF OVERTHROWN MAX LERNER, New Dealing New York Post columnist reporting from Paris:

IT has become a bad Dulles habit to yield to the temptation of playing politics inside the political systems of our European Allies. Dulles has done it in Italy and Germany and is trying to do it in France, too. There is impressive agreement among both the supporters and the enemies of the Mendes-France regime that one of Dulles' aims is the overthrow of the Mendes cabinet. The hope in anti-Mendes quarters [is] that a continued policy of American hostility will destroy what is to them the Mendes nightmare and bring back Bidault. If Dulles lends himself to these hopes, what are his chances of success? Mendes can be overthrown temporarily but in time he would come back into power probably with redoubled strength.

No governmental leader of our time has had so much popular support as Mendes has, but few have had so little support in the Assembly itself, and among the party leaders that is the prime paradox of French politics today. The people like Mendes' fire and courage, and the more strongly Adenauer and Eisenhower attack him the more cohesively do the French people rally to his support. But the Assembly members form a majority against him. Mendes [could be overthrown] but no other cabinet could govern the French effectively today and after the Bidaults and Reynauds and Laniels and Mayers had made their blundering entrance again on the stage of history the curtain would have to be lowered and Mendes recalled to find new solutions for new disasters.

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