Dulles' Great Opportunity
The Progressive ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17_February, 1953__Number 2 Dulles' Great Opportunity IT IS one of the arresting ironies of our time that the...
...More recently, on a six-day visit to Chile, anti-American officials there broke precedent, protocol, and very nearly their necks, in an effort to entertain and please her...
...At least one college president has had the courage to say right out in public that nothing has disturbed him more in his dozen years as prexy than the increasing timidity of his faculty...
...Eisenhower or the size of the New York City welfare budget...
...There are no guaranteed dividends in pursuing such a course, but there is precious little to lose— except, perhaps, the reputation for opposing peace negotiations which the Soviets have succeeded in fastening on us...
...On the political level, Stevenson's principal concern for the moment seems to be to keep Stephen A. Mitchell as chairman of the Democratic National Committee as a symbol of the organization's "new face...
...Ill Dulles has shown a similar tendency to break out of another rut into which Acheson was lured by events...
...Note: Quite the opposite effect was achieved by Vice President Richard Nixon when he went to Mexico as one of our official representatives at the inauguration of President Adolfo Ruiz Cortinez...
...I came back from the Far East more convinced than ever that the Korean war was planned, or at least encouraged, by Russia for the sole purpose of preventing the Western powers from recognizing the new China and to fan the hatred of the yellow races for American and European imperialism...
...If we were sitting in Dulles' hot seat, we would invite Filion to Washington and pump him dry...
...At a time when freedom of action and freedom from destructive nagging are vital in pursuing a creative foreign policy, Dulles commands an extraordinary maneuverability which could prove decisive for pear.e if hitched to the right course of action...
...The more friendly put it down as inexperience...
...He is not opposed to admitting Red China to the United Nations if peace can be reached in Korea...
...For all the waywardness revealed in his dossier, Dulles is a Republican, a conservative, a Wall Street lawyer, a celebrated churchman...
...IV Dulles has shown a disturbing tendency to turn up on both sides of controversial issues...
...After pointing out that municipal law requires faculty members to answer questions about Communist Party membership when asked by a duly-constituted investigating body, and that there is a prohibition against attacking the race or religion of any student, Dr...
...Red China is in the Russian camp, but there is no guaranty that she is happy there...
...Meanwhile, he added, diplomatic and UN channels are always available for exchange of views "to find ways to promote peace and international goodwill...
...It will be a slow, uphill, and often painful road to travel, and it is bound to require a great deal of public reeducation...
...As Walter Lippmann put it, it was the reaction of a seasoned statesman who "has no compulsion to beat his breast, to declare, by gad, that he is not going to be taken in by that old trick...
...Hiss' complete loyalty to our American institutions...
...Budenz mentioned none of these facts in identifying McKay as a Communist recipient of a foundation grant...
...McCarthy and McCarran during the past few years...
...When the rulers of China declared they wanted to do business with America and Europe, that they had food products to exchange for tools and machinery...
...Joseph McCarthy's committee will concentrate on professors and students who have been guilty of "Communist thinking"— which in the McCarthy concept could include those who may at some time have entertained a doubt that Chiang Kai-shek was a wholly immaculate character or the suspicion that Louis Budenz may once have stretched the truth, as a boy...
...Contributed as late as 1951 to the Institute of Pacific Relations, then as now under fire on charges of pro-Sovietism...
...The $1 paper-backed book containing his campaign speeches is selling even better than it did during the campaign...
...The Progressive wants to hoist its hat to the Columbia Broadcasting System for daring to buck one of the biggest advertisers of them all, American Tobacco Company, makers of Lucky Strikes, in the now celebrated case of George Kaufman and Silent Night...
...24 on...
...What Budenz did not go on to say—but was left for a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Irv Kupcinet to reveal—were such trifling facts as these: McKay broke with Communism before Budenz did, became its bitter foe, told everything he knew about the comrades to the FBI, was converted to Catholicism by Bishop Sheil of Chicago, who delivered the euology at McKay's funeral, and became a target of the foulest Communist vituperation...
...He possesses room for maneuver with Russia which was denied to Acheson...
...In reeling off a list of 30 individuals he claimed were or are Communists who had received foundation grants, Budenz included the name of Claude McKay, the Negro poet, who died in 1948...
...The Progressive ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17_February, 1953__Number 2 Dulles' Great Opportunity IT IS one of the arresting ironies of our time that the retirement of Dean Acheson, who was so villainously accused of softness toward the Soviets while Secretary of State, and his replacement by a conservative corporation lawyer of "impeccable patriotism," transfers the direction of American foreign policy to a man who— • Suggested Alger Hiss for the $20,000-a-year post as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and who clung to his choice despite warnings at that time that Hiss was a "sort of fellow-traveler...
...Arriving in Santiago for the inauguration of President Ibanez— who was elected on an anti-U...
...The result every time has been a great propaganda triumph for the Kremlin...
...In New York City, for instance, it is the best seller in some stores and is out-selling Dwight Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe in both the $5 and 50-cent edition...
...But it is permissible to hope—and mandatory to urge—that he will harness his great maneuverability to the development of a creative, affirmative American foreign policy, at least two principal ingredients of which are an open mind to the possibility of negotiation and a willingness to reexamine the whole complex problem of China and the Far East...
...Professional Witness at Work Louis Budenz, who has become a professional witness against his old Communist cronies, touched bottom recently when he appeared before a House committee investigating "subversives" in the educational and philanthropic foundations...
...The Progressive welcomes the appointment of Dulles precisely because we believe there is a chance he may try what the McCarthy-Mc-Carran crowd abhor—honorable negotiations with the Soviet Union...
...Our government has pursued the opposite course...
...The Progressive counseled from the beginning the path of recognizing the harsh reality of Red rule in China and by trade, normal diplomatic relations, and friendship for the people of China, attempt to win that country away from a firm alliance with the Soviet Union...
...Batten, Barton, Dur-stine & Osborne, the advertising agency representing Luckies, ordered Kaufman off the program despite his strong protest that he was speaking out only against "the overuse of the Christmas carol in connection with the sale on TV of commercial products...
...The Christian Science Monitor cautiously reported that Mrs...
...Acheson was barred by the past from presiding over any attempt to negotiate with any Communist-area country...
...when they said they wanted to industrialize their country and appealed for the help of Western technicians and scholars, I think they were sincere...
...In many instances it is the failure of simple schooling, for rejections run high among those who have difficulty reading, understanding words and their meanings, and doing arithmetic problems...
...The result has been to drive China more firmly into Russian arms and to create new and greater tensions in the Far East...
...Far from gazing upon willingness to share in student enthusiasm and even in student mistakes as an indication of brashness, I am hereby insisting to all chairmen and administrative officers that they look with special benevolence on those of the staff who do not succumb to current fears but who roll up their sleeves and go to work...
...On the personal level, Stevenson has assured his intimates he does not have marriage in mind, doesn't know where all the stories get started, and hasn't seen for ten years some of the women with whom his name has been linked...
...He is reported by friends to take a cool view toward too much activity by the Truman crowd and to prefer emphasis on a long-range research program rather than Truman's reported liking for a day-today, bang-bang opposition against the Republican regime...
...Several hundred persons objected to what they thought was an anti-religious crack...
...These facts from the dossier of John Foster Dulles, our new Secretary of State, add up to a far greater "affinity for Communist causes and beliefs" than was proven against many of the public servants, in far less sensitive posts, who were pilloried so wickedly by Sens...
...He has been besieged with just about a million dollars worth of offers to write books and articles, but he has declined to commit himself for the present...
...In her quiet, friendly way she has served her country as an ambassador of good-will without equal in our time...
...The difficulties . . . can be resolved only with great care and persistence by a President and a leadership which keeps insisting against people's emotional reactions that they must be responsible, and must give as well as take...
...S. plank—Mrs...
...In a series of articles for a group of distinguished American dailies, Filion pleaded with the West to reappraise its position toward China because there is a chance—perhaps no more than a slender chance, but still a chance— to drive a wedge between the two Red giants of the earth...
...24, 1948: "We can, in this respect, learn something from the Soviet system, which gives leadership to those who, on the one hand, believe devoutly in their system and who, on the other hand, are hard-headed, competent persons...
...The Country's Health The President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation, a distinguished group of physicians and laymen appointed by former President Truman, has reported officially what many Americans know from bitter experience—that existing medical facilities and insurance coverage are woefully inadequate to meet the country's needs...
...In the field of venereal diseases, the area of medicine where there has been the most "socialism" —i.e., public health study and treatment—the rate of rejection is now only one in 1,000, compared to 80 out of 1,000 for eye troubles, 119 out of 1,000 for bone and muscular defects, and 160 out of 1,000 for heart and circulatory diseases...
...Overshadowing the other 49 delegations present, Mrs...
...We may not like that fact...
...Many of them are afflicted with ailments that are directly the result of inadequate medical attention...
...Almost always during the past, the Tru-man-Acheson reaction was one of icy aloofness, followed invariably by a cry of "trap...
...Happily, several hundred other persons, including some distinguished clergymen, refused to take this without fighting back...
...In this they are right for once, although doubtless for the wrong reasons...
...During the late holidays, appearing as a regular member of the panel of "This Is Show Business" on CBS television, George S. Kaufman, the noted playwright, gave out with this quip: "Let's make this one program on which no one sings Silent Night...
...And yet neither of the inquisitors has risen in wrath, or risen at all, to challenge the appointment...
...The Selective Service report is a powerful indictment of the inadequacy of the nation's educational plant as well as its health facilities...
...Roosevelt so completely won him over that he threw the rule-book out of the window and attended her official reception, and obviously didn't care who saw him chatting cordially with her...
...If we can ask a Marine to go up a Korean hill with a grenade in his hand, we can surely expect an instructor in Hunter College not to tremble for the safety of his wife and children if he sits down of an evening and listens to students discuss Gen...
...The Stevenson Corner Adlai Stevenson, in defeat and private life, remains one of the most appealing of Americans...
...Too often a tiny minority of cranks, crackpots, and witch-hunters succeed in enforcing a flagrant censorship because those in the great majority are too lazy, indifferent, or timorous to fight back...
...News from inside Red China is meager and contradictory, but even if we accept without any discount the most depressing reports of brutality, regimentation, and suffering, it would still seem to be the wiser and more realistic course to admit her to the family of nations, as part of a general Far Eastern settlement to be negotiated in connection with a Korean truce, rather than to continue to play into Soviet hands by isolating her from the free world...
...Recently, a Canadian journalist, Gerard Filion, editor of the Catholic Le Devoir of Montreal, had a rare opportunity to travel in Red China...
...China, said Filion, is "not a Russian satellite, strictly speaking...
...Of course, it's a long-range objective that would take plenty of patience and tact, but I am convinced it is worth trying...
...More than 100,000 letters and telegrams, from every state and a score of foreign countries, have poured into his office in the past two months...
...This is not the first time, of course, that Stalin has tossed a teaser of this kind .at us...
...is protected by the past from the charge of ap-peaser...
...Mental defects produce more rejections than all physical disabilities combined...
...Joseph C. Harsch, able diplomatic correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, summed it up this way several weeks ago: "Mr...
...First Lady The retirement of Eleanor Roosevelt as a U. S. representative to the UN seems a timely point at which to observe that few Americans appreciate the enormous influence for good she has been in world affairs...
...Acheson has been so frequently accused of irir-clination towards softness to Russia that in the end he had no room left for maneuver...
...George Schuster, president of New York City's Hunter College, became so "troubled and annoyed" over the quailing character of his faculty that he wrote them a letter that might well be nailed to the bulletin board of every American college...
...The American Medical Association poked its head out of the sand just long enough to issue a derisive statement, but a little publicized study by Selective Service underscored, factually, the urgent reality of the Commission's findings...
...Our congratulations to CBS—and to those who took the time and trouble to write the network...
...Dulles, if he chose, could negotiate with anyone, even the Communists, without being open to the immediate suspicion of appeasement...
...They will be hunting for subversive characters in general, although Sen...
...Suppose the situation does involve certain dangers...
...Worldover Press reported Nixon created so "bad an impression" that our next ambassador will have to undo the damage...
...Schuster added: "In every other respect the faculty should not only feel entirely free to act as responsible citizens, but, indeed, must be convinced that such conduct is indispensable...
...Dulles' unassailable credentials enable him to say and do sensible things which his predecessor felt he could not...
...Declared at the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam Aug...
...I am almost convinced that if China had access to foreign markets, and was given international assistance, she gradually would secede from Moscow...
...Confronted with the same kind of tantalizing invitation for his chief, Dulles calmly and sensibly replied that he had read the published account of Stalin's views and "if these mean that Mr...
...An American diplomat explained Red reticence this way: "They were too smart to fool around with such high-quality dynamite...
...When I hear that young members of the staff, particularly those without tenure, are warned not to act as faculty advisers to student clubs having a political character, I am deeply shocked...
...Roosevelt so completely captivated the Chileans that even the Communists dared not criticize her, but instead maintained a total silence...
...Notes in the News THREE separate committees of Congress are poised on their broom-sticks, jostling each other to be first to take off on the great witch-hunt of American colleges and universities...
...The experience might strengthen his expressed resolve to reexamine the tough, critical problem of China, and in so doing, unlock at least one of the doors that has barred the way to a Korean settlement...
...Stalin has concrete proposals to make to the new Administration after it takes office, he can rest assured that they will be seriously and sympathetically received...
...No victory the Communist Party could possibly win in this country would be more decisive than would be success in depriving young instructors of opportunity to give the leadership which only they can provide...
...In fact, he affirmatively called for that action in his book, War or Peace, published in 1950, when he said that the test should be what it always has been—whether the government can rule without serious domestic resistance...
...indeed, we do not like it at all...
...Affirmed his belief three years ago that Communist China should be admitted to the United Nations...
...Although he is continually bombarded with speaking invitations, Stevenson said recently he expects to speak out "infrequently—whenever a suitable occasion and having something useful to say converge...
...Salute to CBS Radio and television networks are notoriously responsive to the most trivial whims of advertisers who, in turn, are almost pathologically sensitive to any audience criticism, however trifling or unjustified...
...Roosevelt scored "a tremendous personal triumph and boosted the American stock from a low ebb...
...But if we want to have a world organization, then it should be representative of the world as it is...
...II A striking example of Dulles' greater freedom of maneuver occurred even before the Eisenhower Administration formally took over command of the government...
...Dulles can find no better text as he embarks on an assignment that carries such fateful consequences for all of us...
...Nor did he bother to tell the Congressional investigators that when McKay exposed Red treachery among the Negroes of Harlem, he was venomously denounced by the Daily WbrArer—whose managing editor at the time was Louis Budenz...
...In replying to questions put to him by James Reston, diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, Premier Stalin said he would welcome a conference with President Eisenhower to seek a negotiated settlement of world tensions...
...Asserted to the Bond Club of New York City May 6, 1948, that "the long-range social ends which the Soviet leaders profess are in many respects similar to those which Christians seek...
...Then he added: "Communist governments today dominate more than 30 per cent of the population of the world...
...Draft statistics show that one out of every three men called to the colors are rejected for physical or mental reasons...
...Hard-boiled correspondents in India still talk awesomely of the way she won the hearts of the people of India on a brief visit last year...
...Acheson was so relentlessly hounded and harried by the forces of McCarthyism that, in the effort to establish his anti-Communism, he lost the initiative in foreign affairs...
...The only policy he could pursue was one of belligerency...
...There has always been a great deal of honest difference of opinion, among sincere anti-Communists, over what course we should have followed in dealing with Communist China during its first and habit-forming years...
...If the reports filtering out of many a campus are at all trustworthy, the Congressional investigators may find the colleges more -cowed than Communist...
...The Nixon visit was a total flop, for the Mexicans found him cool, uncomfortable in their presence, and too clearly expecting to be treated as a big shot...
...No one understood this better than Adlai Stevenson when he said before he became a candidate: "There has been so much emphasis on keeping Congress quiet, getting appropriations approved, and showing a stern, tough face to the Russians, that there has been little useful discussion of the bargaining alternatives...
...This conduct was motivated in part by a corrosive fear of the way in which any willingness to negotiate would be distorted by the political hatchet-men, and in part by a genuine concern that Stalin would send them home without shirts if they sat down across the bargaining table from him...
...Emboldened by this counter protest, CBS told BBDGO that since it owned the program, it was withdrawing "This Is Show Business" from American Tobacco Company sponsorship and would present it as a sustaining show from Jan...
...Refused to accept Hiss' resignation while the latter was under investigation because there was, he said, "no reason to doubt Mr...
Vol. 17 • February 1953 • No. 2
