Operation in a Gale
By ROBERT WAITHMAN Washington THE kind of admiration that is normally felt for a ship's doctor who performs a delicate operation while the ship is rolling and pitching its way through a howling Atlantic gale should not be withheld, it seems to me, from the American Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Acheson. It is quite an operation that he is being called on to do, and it is quite a gale that is now blowing all around the State Department. The substantial difference between the respective positions of the ship's doctor and Mr. Acheson, however, is that the gale that the ship's doctor has to contend with is an Act of God. The wind and waves that are battering the State Department are an act of the Republican Party, conducted under a set of political rules which—particularly in an election year—sometimes produce a feeling of sick revulsion in America's best friends.
There are many signs in Washington and Moscow that prepara- tions are being made for a fresh diplomatic probing of the deadlock that has produced the cold war. The signs seem not yet to be conclusive ; the enterprise could be called off. But there is a belief that for several weeks or months the resources of Western and Eastern diplomacy will be employed upon a slow and careful ex- ploration of the doctrine of Peaceful Co-existence—that is to say, of the notion that the Soviet Union and the free Western nations might create conditions in which both could contemplate with advantage a long period of living together (as Mr. Acheson has put it), " if not with mutual respect at least in reasonable security."
It is now apparent that during the last few weeks Mr. Stalin end his colleagues have been employing the peculiar sign-language of diplomacy to make it known that they would like a party to begin, and that Jhey have in mind a big party—a Peaceful Co- existence party such as would seem by definition to admit of examination of a wide,variety of East-West differences. With con- siderable skill and eloquence Mr. Acheson has replied in the same language to the effect that; while the United States will not refuse an invitation to any promising party under respectable auspices, it is in no mood to encourage the triumph of hope over experience.
'This is a free interpretation of what Mr. Acheson said in his second speech in California. He did not make this speech until after the Russians had (a) passed through the censorship articles by the New York Times Moscow correspondent reporting an im- pending Soviet willingness to talk, and (b) spelled out the Peaceful Co-existence theme in a series of election addresses by Molotov, Malenkov, Voroshilov and Beria. To make it easier for the Kremlin to understand the American frame of mind (and no doubt also to provide a rough working-paper for the Western Allies, their states- men, diplomats and permanent officials), Mr. Acheson went to the trouble of providing a list of the subjects the United States would want to talk about at any Peaceful Co-existence party that might eventually be arranged.
The list, enumerating points one to seven, is very comprehensive. It takes in the question of a unified free Germany " under inter- national supervision," the question of a workable agreement on atomic weapons and arms limitation, and the question of Soviet behaviour in the United Nations ; it ranges over the whole technique of Soviet imperialism and Cominform subversion. There is the possibility that it will turn out to be too comprehensive for the Kremlin, and that the Russian conception of the party will be sharply modified. " I see no evidence," Mr. Acheson said, " that the Soviet leaders will change their conduct until the progress of the free world convinces them that they cannot profit from a con- tinuation of these tensions." Nor does anyone else here—not even those (and they do not seem to be in a majority) who are ready to breast the current tide of gloom, alarm and woe, and to wonder whether the emergence of the Peaceful Co-existence theme isn't an indication of the discovery by the Kremlin that it will take longer than expected to consolidate the satellite countries and China.
What will come out of all this, if anything at all, is known to
nobody. One of the few propositions that can be advanced without any grave fear of contradiction, however, is that a Secretary of State who is immersed in this difficult and nerve-wracking operation would derive a good deal of benefit from peace and quiet and from the steady political support that would give him a chance to con- centrate on the job. But there has been, and it looks as though there is to be, neither peace nor quiet for Mr. Acheson. He is being harassed, provoked, attacked and insulted. In a little over a year, since his appointment to the high and exacting office he holds, he has shown himself (as it seems to many observers in Washington who are not politicians) to be one of the most con- siderable Secretaries of State this country has ever had. Yet he is being treated by some members of Congress with less respect, in Mr. Walter Lippmann's phrase, than would normally be extended to a convicted horse-thief.
President Truman has given every indication that he has con- fidence and faith in Mr. Acheson, and the President's standards of loyalty seem to make it unlikely that he would ever willingly throw Mr. Acheson to the political wolves. Beyond that, beyond the devotion of those who work with him, beyond the unorganised and so far unmeasured support of Americans who feel in their bones that he is following a good and wise course, Mr. Acheson is on his own. There is no mystery why a number of the Democratic Party politicians, notable among them some of those who will have to stand for re-electiori in November this year, are not throwing themselves into the fight on his side. Alger Hiss, a former State Department official and a friend of Mr. Acheson's, has been con- victed of perjury ; that, is to say, a jury at a second trial (the first jury having failed to agree) has believed the story of Whittaker Chambers, a refo'rmed Communist spy, that Hiss at one period betrayed his country by giving secret State Department documents to an espionage organisation for transmission to Russia.
After Hiss had been convicted, Mr. Acheson said publicly: " I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss." If it was not clear at the time, Mr. Acheson has certainly made it clear since that he was not either condoning perjury or challenging the verdict of a court. He was announcing a personal decision based upon what he conceived to be the Christian duty of one man to a friend in deep trouble. But there is now abundant evidence to show that this distinction has not been drawn or perhaps even understood by a substantial segment of the voting public that reaches from the more worldly-wise east across the cities and small towns and prairies and mountains to the Pacific. It is reported that members of Congress are receiving angry letters and petitions in their mail. Resolutions demanding his resignation have been passed.
And now a Republican Senator, Mr. McCarthy, of Wisconsin, has compelled the opening of a Congressional investigation into his charges that the State Department is employing numbers of " pro-Communists " or " Leftists " or " bad security risks." The implication is that this is the fault of Mr Acheson, and somehow it is contrived that a number of different things—including his refusal to embark upon an American rescue expedition to save Chiang Kai-shek and Formosa from the`Communists—are rolled together and shaped into the vague and thoroughly outrageous allegation that the Secretary of State is not quite reliable on the subject of Communism.
Mr. Acheson is about as clear-sighted, as pro-American and as anti-Communist as it is possible for one man to be. But Senator McCarthy has not finished the presentation of his charges against the State Department (as this article is written) ; and, though much of what he has said is demonstrably inaccurate, almost nobody in Washington is prepared, as things stand now, to predict who in the last analysis is going to come out on top of the investigation. " In this climate of opinion," someone sagely observed, " it just has to be shown that one of the cases is proved. Dozens of Senator McCarthy's charges could be disproved, but if one were proved— then what ? "
There is this to be said for being a ship's doctor, operating in an Atlantic gale. It is' unlikely that during a crucial phase of the operation anyone would want to come up behind him, slug him over the head, carry him out and replace him with a fresh doctor.
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