A Spectator's Notebook
1,()R ONE WHO is such a painstaking, not to say laborious, .student of foreign affairs, Mr. Dulles is astonishingly light- hearted when it comes to making a phrase or giving an answer 'AI the cuff. While his formulation of policy is usually canny enough, he thinks nothing of throwing away an extempore sentence which makes nonsense of his considered statements. sends a shudder up the backs of his friends abroad, and causes Iteutrals to pitch even higher the high moral tone in which they Customarily discourse on a divided world. There was a time When one of his offhand observations could set up a political ferment right round the world and produce a visible alarm and despondency throughout the Western alliance. Our reaction is 'IN quite so • violent now that we have learned, the hard way. that Mr. Dulles's bark is worse than'this bite. All the same, he greets the news that Russia proposes to reduce her :dined forces by a million or so with the statement that he ould 'prefer to have Russian soldiers standing about on guard i(Illty than making atomic bombs in factories,' I wish that some „n,eat.ls could be found of explaining to him why even his "IuMirers would sometimes like to see him tied up in a sound- 4r.°0f. sack. It is one thing to be properly sceptical about usstah assertions which may or may not be true, but quite hound to give the impression that whatever Russia does is to be wrong. No doubt that was not his deliberate inten- lui hr' One who should know gave me a plausible explanation of ttulles's peculiar lapses. When meeting other statesmen he never answers a question until he has done some pro- longed and serious doodling. But doodling and delay are not possible at press conferences; questions must be answered immediately and without these aids to thought Mr. Dulles puts his foot in it time and time again.
Previous page
