'STANDING FIRM' IN BERLIN

...Far from insisting that West Berlin, "the bone in my throat," be taken over by Communist East Germany, Khrushchev has called for the establishment of a free city whose freedom would be guaranteed not only by Western powers, but by neutrals under the United Nations...

...PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" 'Standing Firm9 in Berlin THE CURRENT crisis over Berlin, . triggered by the Soviet Union's needling insistence on a German settlement, has provoked a perilous war of nerves in which both sides seem to reject an atttmpt at settlement by rules of reason...

...But this phase of the Soviet presentation was buried or ignored in much of the American press, which deceitfully created the impression that Khrushchev had thrown down a warlike ultimatum which we could not in honor accept...

...And Speaker Sam Rayburn, UPI reported, insisted we must hold onto West Berlin "even if it means a nuclear war with Russia...

...But the Soviet leader's proposals, however distasteful, were nothing of the sort...

...As a guarantor of the free city, token contingents [which is all we have now] of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union could be stationed in West Berlin...

...The U.S.S.R.," read the relevant passage, "proposes that the most reliable guarantees should be established against intervention in the affairs of the free city by any state...

...It seems to me that if we are to be not merely courageous, but intelligently courageous, that is precisely the course we must pursue...

...object to the stationing in West Berlin of troops of neutral countries under United Nations auspices for the same purpose...

...I don't agree with people who think we have to go out and shed a little blood to prove we're virile men...

...For all its sly ambiguities, this clearly is not the language of an ultimatum...

...The Soviet side agrees to discuss any other measures which could guarantee the freedom and independence of West Berlin as a free city...

...The range of this commitment extends from a beginning of words of firmness, to a midpoint of immense resources and enormous taxes and other sacrifices, to a final pledge of the lives and fortunes of every man, woman, and child in the nation...

...In a memorable speech that somberly weighed the "ultimate implication" of "standing firm" in Berlin, the Montana Senator unequivocally spurned unilateral Soviet dictation of a Berlin settlement, and then warned his colleagues: "We would prove little more than the inertia of Western leadership . . . if we insist that the status quo in Berlin is sacrosanct...

...Now, one need not accept any or all of Khrushchev's scheme to recognize that, with all its booby-traps, it represents an offer to negotiate—not an ultimatum...

...The concept of an interim free city for all Berlin is an arresting and imaginative proposal...

...Newsweek magazine, in a report of secret Pentagon deliberations that was so accurate President Kennedy turned the FBI loose to locate the source of the leak, reported the government was prepared to back up its position on Berlin "even at the risk of nuclear war...

...They had better be understood now...

...We prove little more than the sterility of our diplomacy if we insist that the status quo in Berlin cannot be changed even by mutual agreement leading to a new situation, which is neither that which exists nor the alternative which the Soviet Union propounds...

...While we have grave doubts that such a free city could be made a viable economic entity, we believe the concept is worth exploring, as is any proposal that will lower the tension temperature...

...Perhaps they can find needed support in the response made by Walter Lippmann (see Page 18) when asked if his emphasis on negotiation might not lead to charges of appeasement...

...What we like most about Mansfield's suggestion is its recognition that we have to rethink the whole problem in fresh terms, that we can no longer cling to rigid positions that defy the law of change, and that the only hope of steering a course that avoids the "ultimate implication" of deadlock— nuclear war—is to develop affirmative alternatives for the bargaining table...

...Columnist Joseph Alsop, for example, spoke for many of his colleagues when he demanded "all possible preparations for war if need be...

...Too many Americans, including members of Congress, have been intimidated by the fear of being labeled appeasers if they dared raise their voices to challenge the everlasting sanctity of the status quo in Berlin...

...It was with just this in mind that Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield braved the wrath of those who would—and did—call him appeaser by rising in the Senate to reject the concept that the present status of Berlin must remain forever frozen...

...it is a challenge to negotiate...

...The reason, we are told, was the harsh, uncompromising character of Khrushchev's "ultimatum...

...The responsibility is to seek to determine whether or not there is a third way on Berlin which corresponds more accurately to the needs of Germany today, Europe today, and the world today— indeed, a third way which meets more fully the contemporary needs of both the Soviet Union and ourselves...

...Chicken,' it may be recalled, is the perverse and juvenile sport of driving two automobiles head on at each other to see which driver flinches first...

...The responsibility which we have, and which the Soviet Union has," he said, "is not merely to reassert positions already assumed and which are obviously irreconcilable...

...Both East and West, fearful that reasonableness will be interpreted as appeasement and surrender, are indulging in reckless rhetoric and assuming stubborn stances...

...Richard Strout reported to the Christian Science Monitor that Secretary of State Dean Rusk "and other top officials now are warning selected groups that the nation is perhaps closer to nuclear war today than at any time since World War II...

...Or does this from Khrushchev: "Let us sit down at a table and calmly discuss all questions without resorting to threats...

...For all the crude bombast and reckless belligerence that characterized some of his speeches on the Berlin crisis, Khrushchev was scrupulously careful on every occasion to leave the door open for negotiation...

...Khrushchev's reactions, whatever they may be, he said in pounding home a point long emphasized in The Progressive, "do not absolve us from our rational responsibilities to ourselves and to the world in this situation...

...Senator Mansfield emphasized a concept almost wholly ignored by our press and our politicians in their single-minded insistence on "standing firm," whatever the consequences...

...Both East and West," wrote C. L. Sulzberger, European correspondent for the New York Times, "give every sign of being convinced that if they respectively show signs of reason these will be interpreted as signs of weakness...

...This, of course, is doubtless his ultimate goal, but we have no right to refuse to negotiate on the fallacious premise that this is what he demands now...

...The tragedy of the past few months is that there has been so little that could pass as debate of a great public issue...

...Senator Mansfield was speaking for himself, not the Kennedy Administration, when he made his speech in the Senate...

...You can't decide those questions of life or death for the world by epithets like appeasement," he said...

...In what history will surely regard as the midsummer madness of 1961, both sides have quickened the arms race and hurled threats of nuclear warfare at each other...

...Not content merely to argue the need for a third way, Senator Mansfield proposed his own plan for a solution—the creation of a free city of both Berlins, East and West, "to be held in trust and in peace by some international authority until such time as it is again the capital of [a united] Germany...

...In this day and age and in this situation, the words 'standing firm' carry no other than this ultimate implication...

...We are not engaged at Berlin with the fast draw and wax bullets of television anymore than the Russians are engaged in a harmless game of chess...

...Does that sound like an ultimatum...

...Mansfield was quick to anticipate the argument that Khrushchev would not consent...

...In the last analysis we are engaged now, as we have been in Berlin, with the whole future of the United States...

...Let this interim status of free city be guaranteed by the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries...

...The Wall Street Journal contended that the West must take its stand on Berlin, "even risking war if it comes to that...

...It is the opposite...

...Nor would the U.S.S.R...

...We can conceive of no more hopeful development in the Administration's conduct of foreign affairs than for it to embrace the motives that moved the Senator and the spirit in which he called for public debate and advanced the basis for fruitful discussion...

...What had happened to explode this outbreak of comment so incendiary that its authors could contemplate the holocaust of nuclear war as a solution to the conflict over Berlin...

...and that it is not a wholly one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it Soviet grab of West Berlin...

...Let the routes of access to this whole city be garrisoned by international peace teams in the effective pattern of those now operating between Israel and the Arab States...

...that it holds out concessions to Western sensibilities and responsibilities...

...We propose the convocation of a peace conference and we shall go there with our draft treaty...

...The status of the free city could be appropriately registered at the United Nations and sealed with the authority of that international organization...

...Many Americans are convinced from what they read in their papers and hear on radio and television that Khrushchev has insisted that the West must withdraw from West Berlin and allow it to be swallowed up by East Germany...

...They called for an early settlement of the problems of Berlin and a German peace treaty, but went on to say: "If for one reason or another, the government of the United Stites and other Western powers are not yet ready for this, an interim solution could be adopted for a definite period...

...The vital consideration is that it keeps the door open to negotiation and to the proffer of creative alternatives by the West...

...The Pentagon, of course, concurred...

...Columnists and commentators were so carried away by their own distortions that they called for immediate military mobilization...

...Unlike so many of his colleagues, and indeed President Kennedy as well, who talk so easily of "standing firm" over Berlin, the Montana Democrat soberly called on Congress and the country to evaluate the meaning of such a position...

...The full implication of these four words—stand firm at Berlin," he warned, "had better be understood in the Senate, in the Congress, and in the nation...

...The result is a game- of 'chicken' played with nuclear implications...

...Both sides, the Soviets and ourselves, he insisted, must reexamine the positions they have taken on Berlin in an effort to break free from the frozen patterns of the past...

...We shall discuss all proposals and accept those which will in the best way facilitate the strengthening of peace and which pay due regard to the interests and sovereignty of all states...

...Let the Western powers make their proposals, submit their drafts for a peace settlement...

...But having paid his critical respects to the intransigence on both sides, the careful observer, it seems to us, must concede in all fairness that unlike his conduct on so many previous occasions, the Soviet Union's Premier Nikita Khrushchev has displayed a greater degree of flexibility and an increased willingness to negotiate this conflict than one might suspect from the distorted reports in substantial portions of the American press and the warlike utterances of some of our more trigger-happy politicians...

...To talk of military mobilization and to accept the imminence of nuclear war in response to these statements by Khrushchev seems*to us the most reckless sort of rocket-rattling which, incidentally, plays squarely into Khrushchev's hands in his quest to mobilize world opinion behind the Soviet position...

...We must seek a third way in Berlin which may better serve the interests of all the parties concerned...