Editorial

...Dulles every way he turned, brought utter confusion...

...When Army counsel John Adams revealed that he had met with Sherman Adams, Herbert Brownell and Henry Cabot Lodge to map anti-McCarthy strategy, the White House seemed about to administer the coup de grace to McCarthy...

...First, the argument that Constitutional separation of powers was involved is disingenuous: That conference was not held to formulate national policy in any acceptable sense of the term...

...Surely the exigencies of patronage do not require such a callous disregard for common decencies...

...We'll treat these in ascending order of importance...

...Congress says we won't fight alone, and won't send ground troops unless we get Allied backing more substantial than we got in Korea...

...many will ascribe it to fear that the White House's relations with McCarthy cannot bear public scrutiny...

...As its legislative program continued to be stalled, three stories this week demonstrated how the advice of shortsighted politicians was undermining public respect for the Administration...

...Everything else has been muddled in a welter of confusing statements, speeches and press releases by numerous Administration spokesmen, official and self-proclaimed...

...Therefore, at the risk of disrupting the harmony of our party, we decided —with the full knowledge and consent of the President, that the best interests of the United States required that we present the record to the American people...

...Geneva...

...Just as Secretary Stevens was allowed to take the rap at the famous "chicken luncheon," now he was persuaded to make the flimsy claim that he alone was responsible for the anti-McCarthy fight...

...It was the moment for the top Administration leaders to go before Congress and tell this story: "We tried to give the Senator from Wisconsin no legitimate grievance against the Executive Branch of the Government...

...But, in the execution, those efforts, plus the incontinence of Republican Congressmen who verbally undercut Mr...

...This type of cautious politics is neither more nor less than an open invitation to McCarthy to drag the Administration down with him...

...A magnificent opportunity for bipartisanship was lost when the Administration failed to reappoint Gordon R. Clapp as chairman of the TVA board of directors...

...The French say they can't fight alone...

...Gordon Clapp...

...We overlooked many skirmishes in the continuous guerrilla warfare he waged against the Executive departments...

...Finally, it is difficult to see legitimate political reasons for the Administration's reticence...

...The Eisenhower-Brownell attempt to "classify" the Adams-Brownell-Lodge conference was a tragic blunder...

...tremendously popular and universally respected by the people of the Tennessee Valley after 21 years of faithful service to the TVA, Clapp was a unique public servant whose only real "party" was the TVA...

...It is very difficult to write about the Indo-China crisis, because only one fact seems indisputable: The Communist armies are on the offensive...

...The McCarthy Hearings...

...In the event that no armistice is now concluded at Geneva, what will we do...

...Yet, even if the Eisenhower team wished to bestow the TVA job on a deserving Republican party worker, its failure to bid Clapp adieu with appropriate grace left a bad taste...

...Thereupon, the Administration could have fought it out not so much on the basis of Private Schine as on the basis of McCarthy's injurious smears against the Foreign Service, the Voice of America, the Army and the Federal Telecommunications Laboratory...

...At this point, a dynamic policy of containment would be preferable to this stagnant version of "liberation," but even that now seems very, very difficult to achieve...

...Britain's extravagant hopes for the Geneva negotiations, hopes which led her to defer all plans for united action, will undoubtedly be dimmed...

...it was, as the presence of Ambassador Lodge showed, a caucus of Republican party leaders considering steps against a party rebel...

...But his conduct at Fort Monmouth, and the manner in which he tried to bully the Army, finally convinced us that no honorable conciliation was possible...

...Second, the Eisenhower-Brownell order will strike many as an attempt to carry water on both shoulders, making Stevens a hero to anti-McCarthy Republicans and independents while enabling local GOP chiefs to unleash Joe against the Democrats as they see fit...

...Instead, cautious politicians advised the Administration to pull in its horns...

...This lack of realism on the part of our allies makes the efforts of Secretary Dulles to meet the Indo-China crisis commendable and, in principle, praiseworthy...

...Britain, tied up in Malaya, seems reluctant to go very far in the way of united action, and is offended that we publicly considered action without her...

...France certainly deserves criticism for her seven-year denial that there was an Indo-Chinese crisis, her seven-year opposition to internationalizing the struggle, and her continuing resistance to Indo-Chinese independence under representative government...