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Show " WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Truman Proposes Moscow Mission, Rocks Foundation of U. S. Policy; Russ Ask Big Four Parley Renewal . -By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Staff Writer ' (EDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) UijiftMii iUPWHW.ivmPHWllJWiP.l.l iWIUipBWUHlU'g.HVHJLJHkWlW..W,'.WIWW.'l-LllU l'l'milWH,. um . .... jM E ..-. .. 4. 4. ) Bi-partisan unity in the XJ. S. was grievously wounded by the knife-edged Berlin crisis when, on the one hand, President Truman called a private conference with Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett and Secretary of State George Marshall to mull over the situation . . . jlflll . . . and, on the other hand, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey summoned his foreign affairs advisor, John Foster Dulles, from Paris to find out for himself what was going on in Europe. CHURCHILL: Grim Accents At the British Conservative party's annual convention in Llandudno, Llan-dudno, Wales, Winston Churchill, never a man to deal in flimsy optimism op-timism when the going was tough, talked in grim accents about the world's peril. , HE WAS the old pre-war, no-appeasement no-appeasement Churchill as he warned against letting any French breach appear in the line of western resistance re-sistance to Soviet drives. To the United States he said, fa effect: Keep those atomic bombs. Destruction of the U. S. atomic arsenal ar-senal now would be tantamount to suicide. "If it were not for the stocks of atomic bombs now in the trusteeship trustee-ship of the United States there would be no means of stopping the subjugation of western Europe by Communist machinations backed by Russian armies and enforced by political parties. "BOLSHEVIK Russia is already heavily armed and her forces in Europe far exceed those of all the western countries put together. At the present time the only sure foundation foun-dation of peace and the prevention of actual war rests upon strength. He urged the West to "bring matters mat-ters to a head and make a final settlement" set-tlement" before Russia produces a usable bomb. Such a settlement, according to the views of the wartime British prime minister, could be arrived at only after the Russans had released re-leased their grip on satellite states, released the German and Japanese prisoners they "now hold as slaves," ceased to "oppress, torment tor-ment and exploit" those parts of Austria and Germany they hold and called a halt to disruptive operations opera-tions elsewhere in the- world. BUT CHURCHILL would not be a party to issuing any "false hopes of a friendly settlement with Soviet Russia." Actually, he said, the Berlin Ber-lin blockade may precipitate a war at any time. ALIENS: On the Job The U. S. is hiring scores of aliens, many of them in countries behind the iron curtain, to staff its 27-mil-lion-dollar international information program. Leland J. Barrows, deputy director direc-tor of the state department's office of information and education, told the senate appropriations committee commit-tee that the department planned to add 278 aliens and 60 Americans to overseas duty by the end of the 1948 fiscal year. WHAT WILL they do? Barrows said that the aliens 14 of whom will be added to the American embassy em-bassy in Moscow would bemused primarily as translators, clerks, messengers and in other work associated as-sociated with the U. S. foreign information in-formation program. Testimony before the committee showed that the state department gained the committee's reluctant approval of its foreign-hiring plan, despite the objections of Chairman Styles Bridges (R., N. H.) who contended con-tended that it would provide a fertile fer-tile field for Communist infiltration into government functions. GEORGE V. ALLEN, assistant secretary of state, countered that there were certain jobs that had to be performed overseas that could best be done by aliens. He said aliens could be employed much cheaper for certain tasks where they can be watched fairly easily, even though Americans may suspect their loyalty. This departure from the norm in the business of hiring federal employees em-ployees was a new wrinkle in the government that very probably will be attracting considerable public attention within the next few months. ANYTHING NEW, I What, No War? Answers to the question "Does Russia want war?" are a drug on the market, in informed and uninformed unin-formed circles alike, but now and then someone comes up with a reply that is a little more imaginative imagi-native than most. ONE OF this kind has been furnished fur-nished by an experienced professional profes-sional diplomat necessarily anonymous anony-mous lest his identity become know to the Russians who is attending at-tending the U. N. meetings in Paris. He said: "There will be no war soon. The reason is that Stalin, the head of the peace party, has just had Andrei Zhdanov, the head of the war party, murdered." (Zhdanov, who died several weeks ago, was one of the ranking members mem-bers of the politburo where he was almost on a par with Molotov in power and influence. He had been talked of as a possible successor to Stalin. His demise was mourned with parades, pageantry and ostentation os-tentation by Stalin, the boys in the Kremlin and the Russian people.) "HE (ZHDANOV) urged immediate immedi-ate war. He argued that if Russia was defeated militarily she would win politically, since the resulting horror and chaos would cause a new, irresistible wave of communism. commu-nism. "As long as Zhdanov was successful, success-ful, Stalin gave him his head. When he failed in Yugoslavia, Stalin told him to lay off. Zhdanov defiied the Soviet generalissimo. So Stalin got his head. "This means that Stalin's waiting tactics have prevailed. There will be no war soon." BIG FOUR: Come Again While the U. S. state department was exerting all its influence to prevent pre-vent a return to direct negotiations with Russia at this time, the Soviets were hammering away at the opposite op-posite course of action by demanding demand-ing that Big Four discussions of the Berlin issue be resumed. THE TWO viewpoints, starkly emphasized by the reception Mr. Truman's futile mission-to-Moscow idea received in the U. S., revealed with extreme clarity the broad gap now separating the East and West. Russia's demand wasn't new. It was a repetition of Moscow's now well-established tactics in East-West East-West relations. What' the Soviets wanted was simply that the Berlin question be removed from the agenda of the U. N. security council and that discussions among the Big Four be resumed where they were severed last August in Moscow. Andrei Y. Vishinsky, deputy Soviet foreign minister, handed a note to that effect to Juan A. Bra-muglia Bra-muglia of Argentina, acting president presi-dent of the security council, who separately informed the U. S., Brit-tish Brit-tish and French delegations. IT WAS all wasted effort as far as the western powers were concerned. con-cerned. Neither the U. S., Britain nor France wanted to get within shouting distance of direct negotiations negotia-tions with the Russians at this point. One western spokesman commented com-mented isimply, "The Russian reply is unhelpful." The Soviets, again, were making no concession to peace. DIPLOMACY: Trip Canceled To President Truman, for engineering engi-neering the abortive deal to send Chief Justice Fred Vinson to Moscow Mos-cow for personal talks with Kremlin Krem-lin leaders on the atomic bomb, went the credit for producing the most heroically proportioned diplomatic diplo-matic faux pas of the year. It happened very swiftly and very simply. Mr. Truman deciding suddenly sud-denly to try his own hand at straightening out the tangled foreign for-eign mess, started making preparations prepara-tions to send Vinson to Russia. THEN the state department heard about it. Robert Lovett, under-sec-retary of state, profoundly shocked, notified George Marshall who came winging frantically across the Atlantic At-lantic from Paris to stop the President Presi-dent from committing what he considered con-sidered a blunder of immense gravity. The Vinson trip was called off, of course, and President Truman backed hastily away from the whole business after issuing an abashed note of explanation. BUT THE memories lingered on. Mr.. Truman, in the minds of those who knew or thought they knew about the international situation, had gone completely beyond the pale with this momentary, headstrong head-strong effort. His campaign opponent, Gov. Thomas Dewey, at first wavered between be-tween righteous anger at what he obviously considered a deliberate flouting of the established bi-partisan foreign policy and elation that the Democratic candidate had made such a grievous tactical error. And although the Dewey camp was astute enough to realize that its cause would benefit more if it magnanimously ignored the affair than if it leaped in for the slaughter, it nevertheless redounds to the New York governor's credit that he did not take advantage of this internationally interna-tionally dangerous situation for his personal gain. Significance Why was President Truman so widely and thoroughly castigated for making what he undoubtedly looked upon as a sincere, constructive construc-tive attempt to clear up the Russians' Rus-sians' "misunderstanding" of the problem of atomic control? Because his intention of sending Chief Justice Vinson to Moscow represented rep-resented a serious divergence from the basic characteristic of U. S. foreign for-eign policy toughness with Russia. MR. TRUMAN'S proposal amounted amount-ed to a softening up of the labor!-1 ously built "get tough" attitude of the U. S. toward Moscow. It was tantamount to saying in a pleading voice, "Let's get together once more and try to talk this thing out." Current history has proved that the kind of personal diplomacy the President sought to institute in the Vinson trip has been completely unavailing un-availing in dealing with Russia since the war. Moreover, insofar as personal diplomacy always tends to bypass the United Nations, it usually usu-ally has an ill effect on international interna-tional relations in general. IN THE final analysis, a personal visit to the Kremlin by Vinson ' probably would have upset the entire, en-tire, carefully fabricated structure I of the policy upon which the U. S. I is depending to defeat Russia's aims in Europe. Reverse Russian 1 ' v '.am Constantine Boldyreff is a man who wants to take the classic Communist concept of the necessity of revolution and apply it to Russia itself. Claiming Claim-ing to represent a world-wide Russian anti-Communist organization organ-ization dedicated to the overthrow over-throw of the Stalin regime, Boldyreff believes that the great mass of Russia's 167 million people are ready for revolt. SUB RADAR: Sentry Duty A submarine with radar "eyes," a new unit in the nation's defense system, was scheduled to start op-perating op-perating in November to detect any hostile planes attempting a sneak approach across such remote reaches as the polar seas. The navy announced that the submarine sub-marine Tigrone, taken from the reserve fleet and converted into the first radar picket submarine, wag to be commissioned November 1. |
