Where the News Ends

...One familiar form of such invitations is to reproach our diplomacy for being harsh, rigid, unyielding...

...which settled for a draw in Korea without using atomic weapons...

...which made only the minimum token gestures of sympathy with the people of Hungary...

...Instead of actively encouraging Yugoslavia to increase her influence in orbit countries (and in Moscow), some United States officials look askance at each Yugoslav move and worry whether Marshal Tito isn't 'going back to the Russians.' "So long as the West cold-shoulders Kadar, the Yugoslavs believe, he will be forced into greater dependence upon the Russians...

...Nor how non-recognition of Premier Kadar is expected to help either Hungary or the United States...

...And, if only there could be another Geneva, all would be well—and think of the tax money we could save...

...The only effect would be the loss of America's credit with the non-Communist majorities of the peoples of the satellite countries...

...Here is Salisbury's position, as stated in his own words: "No [American] official can explain precisely what diplomatic non-recognition of Albania, Bulgaria and East Germany is supposed to achieve...

...The Yugoslavs who told Salisbury that Kadar would be forced into greater dependence on Russia by "Western cold-shouldering" must have been laughing up their sleeves...

...Harrison Salisbury, correspondent of the New York Times, recently ended a generally excellent reporting job on the Soviet satellite countries with some highly questionable recommendations that the United States should go in for wholesale coddling of the Soviet satellite regimes in Eastern Europe...

...a promising start has already been made in this direction in Poland...

...Readers of this column may recall that a year ago I was extremely critical of the manner in which Washington met the tests posed by Hungary and Suez...

...There may be a case for American diplomatic representation in Bulgaria and Albania...

...To be effective, United States influence must be exercised through those channels where power actually exists—through the cultivation of friendly contacts with the Communist rulers, closer association with opinion-making members of the intelligentsia, training and technical guidance of the new technological cadres...

...These cries are as automatic as the clamor of the alumni for the scalp of the football coach when dear old Siwash loses its big game...

...That such voices should again be heard, after Munich, Yalta and Geneva, is the latest and saddest proof that all we learn from history is that men learn nothing from history...

...The valid criticism of our policy vis-a-vis Kadar is that we did not take the lead in suspending Hungarian representation in the UN until a government representative of the Hungarian people again exists...

...quite the contrary...

...Nor is the cultivation of friendly contacts with the Communist rulers of the satellite states either feasible or desirable...

...He saw no reason why the Soviet leaders should not be trusted—a truly ghastly confession of political illiteracy...

...The only effect of such recognition would be to inflict a stab in the back on one of our strongest Continental allies, the Federal Republic of Germany...

...Friendly contacts with the peoples of these countries, on the other hand, should be promoted and encouraged so far as their rulers permit...

...This seems a strange, unrealistic reproach to address to a foreign policy which, whether carried out by Truman and Acheson or by Eisenhower and Dulles, has been very much on the defensive—which resorted to the expensive airlift rather than challenge the Soviet blockade of Berlin by sending convoys...

...But my criticisms and suggestions for alternative action at that time were certainly not pointed in the direction of appeasing Soviet Communism...

...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin New Invitations To Appeasement Whenever there is an unpleasant surprise in international affairs, like the recent Soviet "first" in the conquest of outer space, cries are heard that our foreign policy has failed and should be changed...

...Now invitations to appeasement are coming from many quarters, all under the guise of improving a foreign policy that has supposedly failed...

...Certainly our foreign policy would benefit from improvement in design and implementation, especially in the qualities of boldness and imagination...

...And what, except disgrace abounding, would we gain by cosying up to the Quisling Kadar in Hungary...

...But any United States diplomatic official who cannot "explain precisely" why we should not recognize the Soviet puppet regime in the Soviet Zone should be fired for gross incompetence...

...For Kadar has no support in Hungary whatever, except what he received in the beginning from Soviet tanks and later from the thugs and bullies whom he recruited for his revived terrorist police...

...Another bad counselor in foreign relations is Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, who recently came up with the breathtaking idea, in the face of Khrushchev's rocket-rattling threats, that what is really needed is a more conciliatory attitude toward the Soviet rulers...