Beware of Interlopers By RICHARD H. ROVERE T ERE will, of
course, be changes, and im- iortant ones, in American diplomacy now Christian Herter has replaced John Poster Dulles. The administration insists that nothing new in the way of policy is to be expected. It all depends, obviously, on what is covered by policy. In the- broadest terms, American policy has not been changed since 1947. In terms of middling breadth, it has been changed a half-dozen times since 1954. In the narrowest terms, it changes from month to month, and this pace is likely to be accelerated with a change in Secretaries.
What is certain at the moment is that there will be changes in form; what seems more likely than not is that changes in form will lead to changes in substance. For the past four or five years, Mr. Dulles wrote his own ticket. He went around the world dealing with the head men in every country and improvising a good deal as he went. The President allowed and approved this. Even if he were to grant Mr. Herter the same initiative, Mr. Herter would be unlikely to use it. For one thing, he lacks Mr. Dulles's experience—not only in negotiating abroad but in dealing with Mr. Eisenhower. For another, he lacks Mr. Dulles's massive self-assurance. For still another, he happens to be far more of a Department man than his predecessor. As he said the other night, he is accustomed to 'team play.'
And there may be still another factor of great importance. Mr. Dulles was sworn in last week as a 'Special Consultant' to the President on foreign policy. In the pictures taken in his hos-
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pital room, he looked dreadfully frail and spent. It is hard to believe that he will be able to do much of anything. But his mere presence skill be felt and will limit Mr. Herter's initiative. Many people here and abroad are likely to feel, when they are dissatisfied with what Mr. Herter has said or done. that the thing to do is to direct an appeal to John Foster Dulles. Mr. Dulles last week advised Mr. Herter to beware of 'inter- lopers,' by which he seemed to mean people getting between the President and the Secretary. He evidently had no sense, proud man that he is, of the irony of his counsel.
Mr. Dulles ran his show without much advice or assistance from the President. Ambassadors he simply ignored, and the hordes of State De- partment experts on this, that. and the other thing did a lot of thumb-twiddling. There were some good consequences and some that were lament- able. Problems that struck the Secretary as being of the first importance were attended to. His sense of proportion was generally sound. Matters of lesser importance were largely neglected. Under Mr. Herter, it may be that the largest questions will wait upon the small. Ambassadors may be empowered to straighten things out in Peru and Switzerland, but there may be a lack of authority in dealing with Germany, the United Kingdom and the USSR. To be sure, the President has been trying to fill in for his stricken adviser, or mentor, and Mr. Herter is a man of conscience' and in- dustry. Between them, though, they have not yet been able to dispel the feeling on almost every hand that American policy at the moment lacks the firmness and direction it had when Mr. Dulles was in better health.
If, as the French and the Germans seem to believe, the Russians are not serious about the forthcoming negotiations, then, of course, it scarcely matters who represents the United States at Foreign Ministers' meetings or who sits at the President's side on the summit, if there is to be a summit. But if there are to be serious nego- tiations or if the opportunity exists for bringing about serious negotiations, then Mr. Dulles's presence will be greatly missed, at least by his countrymen. Most of us, in the last couple of years, had come to have the respect for him that only 'a few had earlier. Some of us, perhaps mistakenly, feel that it was he rather than we who have changed. His arrogance, we felt, lessened greatly in the second Eisenhower ad- ministration. His language became less provoca- tive. Though he didn't listen much to his sub- ordinates in the State Department and the embassies, he came to have more respect for the opinions of other people in general. Where once the President seemed the more flexible and prudent of the two, it came, particularly in the very recent past, to appear as if the Secretary had a firmer grasp on the realities of each situation and was less the prisoner of his own past and platitudes. The American view now is that not only this country but the whole Western alliance is the poorer for losing him.
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