ACHESON TALKS ABOUT THE PACT
STOUT, JONATHAN
Washington and the Nation Acheson Talks About the Pact By Jonathan Stout New Leader Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C. At Secretary of State Aeheson's press conference following...
...It is fascinating to see how those who clumber aboard a bandwagon sing the same popular tune...
...4 * IT WAS IN this difference that there appeared to emerge an appearance of evasion...
...Pen Points Israel's Prime Minister asserts his country is trying to cooperate with both the United States and the Soviet Union...
...The conflict between the two concepts of the Communist Party is a selfevident thing...
...It was a striking and noteworthy point that came out of the Secretary's press conference that the Pact should be able to Tfind such precise language and definition for one form of aggression, while it used undefined and vague language for another form of aggression...
...It is also self-evident that because of this still unresolved conflict it r3« mains possible for the Soviet Uniort to maintain fifth columns within the free, democratic nations...
...and the Communist Party enjoys the same legal status as the Democratic or Republican or Socialist parties...
...its activities are accepted as the normal political activities of any political party...
...Tho President of the United States refer:) to the American Communist leader:) who made similar statements as "traitors...
...The western world appears to cling to the ancient definition that an act of war can only be an armed attack carried out by uniformed sodiers in short, a military army...
...THERE IS m this a difference of view between the Kremlin and the West...
...French "thank-yon" train is symptomatic of Franco-American goodwill...
...Border-line actviiiy is often nerveracking and unsettling...
...DOMESTICALLY, all the western nations today are struggling with the parallel dilemma of how properly Id evaluate the Communist parties in our midst...
...But then he went on to explain about Article 4 of the Pact, quoting with an ;;ir of great reserve: "The parties will consult together whenever, in \\\s < pinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence insecurity of any of the parties is threatened...
...Acheson had pointed out that the Atlantic Pact operated as a regional agreement under the United Nations charter, similarly to the Western Hemisphere pact and the impending South Asia regional agreement...
...Many governments have suddenly discovered thai Isruvl is a going concern und have recognized her...
...It is ready to make the attack with a political army of fifth columnists masquerading as rebels in a civil war . , . or it can make the attack with an economic army which aims at undermining the opposition and making it too weak to defend itself . . . or it can throw its divisions across boundary lines, as it did to Poland in its alliance- with Hitler...
...THE SECRETARY didn't say so, but it was evident that in case Moscow's Fifth Column agents were to foment civil war in, say, Norway or Ply, these countries could either deal with the matter themselves as an internal police problem, or if they could net - they could call for a "consultation," the result of which would be military aid from the other Pact countries...
...It is not necessarily a criticism to note that the Secretary's answer was both a reply and not a reply...
...The qualify oj "mcrci" is not strained...
...He then went on to say that under the new Pact, as, indeed, under the U.N...
...As a practical matter, this procedure, of course, would enable the Pact nations to deal effectively with the Communist threats of civil war...
...AND THAT brings us back to Secretary Aeheson's pi ess conference...
...For years he has contended it was not a going, much less a running, concern...
...They still do not appear to know how to evaluate political and economic armies as weapons of war...
...For instance, Article <i defines as an act of war "an unreel attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian departments of France, on the occupation forces of any Party on Europe, on the islands under the jurisdiction of any Party in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer-, or on the vessels or aircraft in this area of any of the Parties...
...This brings to focus one of the difficulties which for some time have confronted the processes of logic in the democratic world...
...Testimony that the long Island Rail Road, long criticized for very poor service, is on the verge of bankruptcy, came as no surprise to the...
...Morris B. Chapman...
...l.uiior lost its battle for a new law iii tun stages when Congress adopted the one-package proposal...
...The Kremlin is much more' flexible in its methods of capturing or seizing what it wants...
...That evidently is the something that is rotten in the State of Denmark...
...Duly the western nations still place their sole reliance on military unifies as a weapon of war...
...It explains why he found himself com* polled to answer the question about fomented civil war with vague inferences, whereas he was able to answer questions about armed attack with precise and definite language...
...harassed committer...
...Tliey know that good tilings come in small imckayes because bulky ones are often mutilated...
...In one aspect the Pact appears uncertain as to how to deal with the new techniques of aggression which during the past quarter century have been uniquely the contribution of the Kremlin to the complicated ait of modern warfare...
...The Pact, therefore, appears to infer that there is some real difference between enemy troops in unform and enemy troops without uniform...
...For until the West is able to rciolvo its philosophical inner conflict.} by finding a realistic and common geiiso definition for the Kremlin's contributions to modern warfare—to regard these new techniques an aggressions and acts of war in the same category as an armed attai ks just so long will the western woi Id find itself under tho necessity of writing its pacts with vagueness and inference in dealing with them...
...The spokesmen of these purties openly threaten civil war and sabotage in favor of the Soviet Union and against their own countries...
...For a brief moment that sounded as though the abandonment of China was th$ pattern to oe followed...
...Gaining recognition as a state was a simple feat in contrast to this rope-walking stunt...
...It has not yet assimilated what is essentially the unique contribution of the Kremlin — that there can be political armies and economic armies a.s well as military armies, and that each of them is capable of an act of war...
...As a matter of cold logic, the Pat t evades defining the fomenting of, let us say, civil war in Norway by the Soviet Union as clearly an act of war as the crossing of Norway's bolder by Soviet troops...
...charter, there was no intention to interfere in the internal affairs of nations...
...This would not, perhaps, be too important in a practical sense, if it were not for the noteworthy fact that the western world shows the same lack of decisiveness in other, related fields...
...She feels jirit better for the soldiefs to' srrurifc than to burn...
...But the Pact does not deal with this form of aggression with the franknesi that it does with the standard forms of aggression...
...And it is also aelfi evident that the- American people, just as the: French, Italian, British and Norwegian people, have noV yet been ubla to resolve it...
...As a gesture of good-will and to ease tension, Israel permitted cigarettes to be included In the rations for the trapped Egyptian garrison at Faluja...
...Washington and the Nation Acheson Talks About the Pact By Jonathan Stout New Leader Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C. At Secretary of State Aeheson's press conference following publication of the Atlantic Security Pact the high point was reached and the electricstillness that awaited Aeheson's reply was pi oof of the general awarenesswhen it was asked what would happen under the terms of the Fact if the Soviet Union or its fifth column agents' carried out their recent threats of striking at the Atlantic Pact nations with the weapons of civil war, as in the eases of Greece and China...
...The western nations have not yet found, apparently, the proper categories of definition for the inventions of the Kremlin in the new techniques of modern warfare...
...The common sense of the people describes the Communists as foicign agents of the Soviet Union...
...9 The dread shadow of Soviet threats hangs over Danish interest in the North Atlantic Pact...
...9 * * The warm reception accorded tin...
...Communist North Korean troops are believed to be probing the border for a possible invasion...
...Then, on the other hand, the Communist Party is accepted as a legal political party...
Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 13
