SECOND THOUGHTS ON GENEVA

JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

The New York Herald Tribune's COLUMNIST ROSCOE DRUMMOND:

THERE is an important political postscript to be written out of the summit conference at Geneva. Have the Russians been able to persuade President Eisenhower to run in 1956? I am sure that he is nearer today to decision to stand for re-election than he was before he sat down at the conference table.

This conference put in train a series of big-power negotiations which will take two to four years to complete and which may determine the shape of the peace for a long time to come. If it is true--and I think it is--that Mr. Eisenhower will seek a second term only if he's convinced that through another four years in the White House he could make a contribution to peace peculiarly his own, then Geneva produced new factors which, far more than theoretical arguments, could be decisive. After the hardest days of the Big Four discussions, Mr. Eisenhower appeared more full of zest, more rested, more tranquil than I have seen him in many months. Why? Because he was doing the thing on which, above all else, his heart and mind are set: to try to set the world on the pathway to better peace and to build an unpassable roadblock in front of a possibly hydrogen war.

Scripps-Howard Foreign Editor Emeritus WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS:

THE United States and the West today face the most hazardous period since the end of World War II. Russia never has been as dangerous as she is right now. At this moment, even the best-informed can do no more than guess at Russia's real intentions. Everybody is saying: "Russia has changed." And so she has. Until a few weeks ago her face wore a perpetual scowl. Today it is all smiles.

But why? Nobody outside the Kremlin can say for sure. But there is every reason to believe her real, ultimate objective remains the same as always--to set up a universal Communist dictatorship run from Moscow. She thinks she can make better progress by concealing her bloodstained bludgeon under a pile of olive branches and trying the more subtle art of poison. By lulling the West she can revert to her early plot to gain control of the world by infiltration, through her fifth columns and similar subversive agents trained in Moscow.

By adopting a "new look" she can more easily beguile our European allies into believing Soviet Russia is more sinned against than sinning. She thus can elbow the United States out of the Eastern Hemisphere, dismember NATO, neutralize Western Europe, and put across her fake peace-and-disarmament plan which, once completed, would leave her mistress of the world.. Such is the peril. Fortunately, President Eisenhower sees it quite clearly.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE:

WE think that the principal result of the European sojourn has been to fortify Mr. Eisenhower's political position immeasurably. People are disposed to credit him with sincere and decent instincts, and if he accomplished nothing that is visible, at least he managed to extricate himself from a conference with the Russians without getting trimmed. In view of the performance of his predecessors, this is a feat that is not to be despised.

London's anti-American NEW STATESMAN AND NATION :

ERNEST Bevin would often remark that his one nightmare was lest the Americans should once again fall for the Russian bait [of appeasement]. "If the two of them gang up, there will be nothing left for anyone else." This may prove to be the broad outline of Geneva. Americans and Russians find it easy to jettison one set of principles and try another. British politicians, particularly British Socialists, are not so adaptable. Yet, if we read the meaning of Geneva aright, the feat must be undertaken.

In an era of peaceful co-existence [Britain] will be of dwindling value in the eyes of our American friends, who will also very quickly revert to their traditional distrust of colonial empires. Moreover, our economy has been more disturbed than any other by rearmament, and our trade more damaged by strategic embargoes. Both will need drastic reorganization if peace has indeed broken out. In brief, the economic and political independence which we forfeited as a result of the cold war is likely to be forced upon us very soon. In an era of American-Russian understanding, we shall have to fend for ourselves and make our own decisions, as we have not done for a decade.

LONDON ECONOMIST:

BY far the greatest danger that lurks in the path of further progress towards a secure peace is the tendency in the weeks and months to come [to] a great deal of talk about the need to preserve the "Geneva atmosphere" as if it were in a bottle. It can hardly be recalled too often that it is Western unity, of which NATO is the embodiment, that has brought us to the point where a meeting is possible, led the Soviet rulers to talk, and listen, politely to men for whom they formerly had nothing but abuse.

History is littered with the wrecks of great enterprises that failed simply because of their initial success--because, as things get easier, free peoples habitually slacken off. The Soviet technique at Geneva was to see to what extent outward bonhomie could save them from having to make real alterations in course.

If the free nations hold fast to their essential purposes, which are entirely peaceful and protective, they now have real hope of seeing the Russians translate their smiles into something more solid. Only if the democracies give way now is that hope likely to be dashed.

RICHARD GROSSMAN, left-wing Socialist M.P., in London's SUNDAY PICTORIAL: A HALFWAY house does not suit the American temperament. They must either fight a guy or be firm friends with him; either make war or make peace. After trying the halfway house of cold war for three years, Ike took one look at the H-bomb and decided that Americans really want peace.

It may well take several years and half a dozen conferences to settle the German problem and agree on a disarmament plan. But Americans and Russians resemble each other in one particular. Once they have changed their minds, they move fast. The British government will have to do some quick rethinking if it is not to be left behind in this race for peace.

Madrid's daily ABC: ANY way you look at it, you come to the same result: the mere fact that the democracies, and especially the Americans, have met with the Moscovites represents for [the Russians] a great gain, at least morally. They have been admitted to a club of gentlemen who have waived examination of their past and look only towards the future.

TSENG HSU-PAI, editor in chief of Nationalist China's CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY:

WHILE the democratic nations are intoxicated by this peace smoke screen, Soviet Russia is actively laying down its next step of aggression. Eventually it still wants to eliminate the capitalist nations and complete its aggressive plot of world revolution. In short, to liberate the Iron Curtain [countries] and forsake subversion are fundamental conditions for the realization of peace. Now that Bulganin has decisively refused to consider them, how could we coexist under such a peace?

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