THE DULLES-BEVAN AXIS
pRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S great speech of April 16th' expressed so exactly a truly enlightened attitude to the new situation created by the death of Stalin and by the decision of his successors to abandon immediately some of the outward manifestations of Stalinism that it deserves all the praise it has received in the past week. • It was the answer to those who, suddenly faced with the possibility of a major change in Russian policy, realised that, if that possibility be- comes actuality, there will be corresponding need for a change in Western attitude, after seven years of deepening suspicions and increasing preoccupation with defence. The attitude of mind which the President's speech expressed was both sincere and practical. The timing of the speech was exactly right. It cut short the rising doubt as to the will and ability of the new American Administration to make positive use of the oppor- tunity with which the new Russian moves had presented it. It satisfied the need for an authoritative Western initiative. And it provided the explicit programme of future action which pro- vides the true and objective measure of the Russians' sincerity and intentions.
So far the only changes in Communist behaviour, apart from the first exchange of prisoners at Panmunjom, have been a matter of words and gestures. These may be small things in themselves but they are obviously to be welcomed and recipro- cated. President Eisenhower has in fact matched fair words with fair words. That rather loose phrase " meeting the Com- munists half-way " has at least a precise meaning here. On civilities we are all square. That fact should not be dismissed as unimportant—least of all in the present-day political context. It needed boldness and imagination on President Eisenhower's part to run so fast and so far ahead of the main body of opinion within the Republican Party. The speech of April 16th left Mr. Dulles a little breathless in the rear, and Mr. Taft and the Senate foreign relations committee well down the course. This is the biggest risk the President has yet taken on the strength of the assumption that the American people elected not the Republican Party but General Eisenhower last November. He deserves praise not least for his political courage.
It is hard to see how anyone, least of all anyone in the positions of power and responsibility, could miss the signifi- cance of this speech or fail to grasp the sincerity and imagina- tion which inspired it. Yet two prominent public men seem to have managed this feat of misunderstanding.. They are a curiously assorted pair—Mr. John Foster Dulles and Mr. Aneurin Bevan. Hardly were the wise words out of President Eisenhower's mouth before Mr. Dulles was underestimating their practical importance. He told the Senate foreign relations committee on April 17th that " it is very obvious that unless there is a. very prompt response it will be quite apparent that it will be necessary to move ahead on all fronts, east and west, to develop a strong position." He argued with himself before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 19th as to whether the Russian move was a "peace offensive" or a peace defensive "—a barren argument if ever there was one. But it is possible to make some allowances for Mr. Dulles. He occupies an uneasy position half way between the White House and Republican Party headquarters, uncertain whether to race ahead with the President or fall back with the flagging Old Guard. He may even have to bear some of the burdens of a political scapegoat, saying the wrong things for the benefit of the party while the President says the right things for the benefit of humanity. His position is obviously a difficult one, as he himself has demonstrated in Europe as well as in the United States by being much more reasonable and enlightened in private than he appears to be in public. It is possible to be too hard on Mr. Dulles.
But what excuse can be made for Mr. Bevan, whose public pronouncements, different as they are from those of the American Secretary of State, have the same effect of misinter- preting and misjudging the importance of what President Eisenhower is saying and doing ? Mr. Bevan has said that President Eisenhower's speech was badly phrased and badly advised. He has described some of the items in the President's suggested programme of Russian action—things like the release of prisoners of World War II and effective steps towards dis- armament—as " a whole range of humiliating conditions " for which nothing is offered in return. All these remarks could be taken to suggest that Mr. Bevan had not read the speech; or that, having read it, he had misunderstood it; or that he does not recognise sincerity and statesmanship when he sees them. Such interpretations might be plausible but for one considera- tion—and that is that, whatever else Mr. Bevan may be, he is not a fool. If he is deliberately misusing the new situation created by President Eisenhower's attempt to seize a golden opportunity for world peace for the mean purposes of party politics, then in this respect at least he must be contrasted with Mr. Dulles, who has not quite come to that.
In fact what Mr. Dulles and Mr. Bevan have in common is not a moral attitude, but inadequate appreciation of an act of 'enlightenment. They both fail to appreciate the real value of President Eisenhower's policy. The chances are that in this respect they are not representative of the people who elected them. In the United States, just as it is possible to distinguish between the policies of the President and those of the Republican political leaders, so it is possible to go a stage further and distinguish between those same party professionals and the millions of Americans who voted for Eisenhower, the man, at the Presidential election. In Britain, Mr. Churchill, who makes few mistakes in his assessment of the greatest historical events, was truly representative of his countrymen when he welcomed President Eisenhower's " massive and mag- nificent statement of our case"; and it is obvious that Mr. Herbert Morrison's sober welcome for the Prime Minister's statement in the Commons on Monday was a truer expression of feeling in the country than Mr. Bevan's wild words. It should be obvious that the duty of responsible leaders now is to try to understand the true nature and potentialitieS of the new international situation. Those who fail in that duty, either through their own insufficiencies or through an infirmity of will, had better stand aside. They are only obstructing the light.
The really essential tasks arising now are all strictly practical. The immediate minimum programme of action for which _ President Eisenhower called was the conclusion of an armistice in Korea, the signature of the peace treaty with Austria and the release of all prisoners of- World War II. Neither of these three items presents any great complication in itself. But it is necessary to ensure that complications are not imported into . them. Senator Taft has said, for example, that the particular case of the Korean armistice ought to be wrapped up with the whole Far Eastern settlement. At the best this is a piece of sheer silliness (of a kind which, incidentally, has long been fashionable in certain left-wing circles in this country); and at the worst it is an extremely dangerous suggestion which could only result in the prolongation of the war in Korea. Mr. Walter Lippmann has already said that such a course would be so disastrous that Mr. Taft could not possibly have meant exactly what he said. That is the charitable attitude to take to Mr. Taft. It is also the charitable attitude to take to Mr. Dulles. Both of them would be better employed, for the time being, in the exact study of the content and tone of President Eisenhower's speech than in making speeches on their own account. So, although this is no doubt too much to hope for, would Mr. Bevan.
But the thorough absorption of the President's wise words is only a beginning. The second stage is the close examination of every Russian move frdm now on. The third is the calculation of the right point at which to begin to modify the actual con- tent of Western policy. That stage has not yet been reached. The Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is meet- ing in Paris, and it is still, necessarily and rightly, devoting its attention to the building up of effective defence. The time to alter that has not yet come. It may never come. But the time for assuming that every Russian overture must be automatically repelled, and that every Western response must be either suspect in itself or doomed to failure, has gone. We must prepare for action by the East and reciprocal action by the West. And so far as the public at large is concerned that means first of all preparing our minds for it.
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