Taking Sides

For a few days last week, the U.S. Senate turned the clock back to the isolationist '303, and the nations of Western Europe had the sickening sensation of being left in the lurch.

The Senate was droning through the day's business when Missouri's plodding Republican Forrest Donnell rose, waving a newspaper clipping. The story, which he read, declared that the North Atlantic pact would constitute "a moral commitment to fight." Donnell demanded to know whether that was true. Did the pact infringe Congress' right to declare war?

Old Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, reacted like a punch-drunk fighter at the sound of a dinner bell. "Texas Tawm" was none too clear on what the Atlantic pact was supposed to do, but he yielded to no man in his jealousy of congressional prerogatives. Swinging wildly, he charged through the work of careful months of negotiation.

Horseback Altitude. Nothing in the Atlantic pact was going to imply a U.S. commitment to fight--"moral, legal, physical, or any other kind," he cried. "I do not believe in giving carte blanche assurance to these people. 'Do everything you want to do, you need not worry, as soon as anything happens, we will come over and fight your quarrel for you. In the meantime, you may have a good time and bask in the sunshine of leadership which you do not deserve' . . . We cannot be Sir Galahads, and every time we hear a gun fired, plunge into war and take sides without knowing what we are doing." That, said Tom Connally, was his "horseback attitude" at that moment.

Apparently Connally had been dozing up there on his horse all through the past ten years, still dreaming of the Europe of pocket armies and princely quarrels, blissfully unaware that the U.S. had "taken sides" long ago--with the airlift, the Marshall Plan, aid to Greece and Turkey. The Republicans' Arthur Vandenberg pointed out that the Atlantic pact was modeled on the Rio pact, which reserved to each nation the right of decision in case of armed attack. But when Donnell pressed him, he juggled uncertainly with the term "moral." There was no "automatic" commitment to go to war, he finally agreed.

Restraint Wanted. Western Union representatives took one dismayed look at this interchange and went scurrying to State Department, headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom. What the Senators had said was a long way from providing what Truman had called "unmistakable proof of the joint determination of the free countries to resist armed attack from any quarter." The foreign press was in an uproar. Was the U.S. welshing on the Atlantic pact? Secretary of State Acheson pleaded with reporters not to pry statements out of State officials, Congress, or foreign embassies. Said Acheson: "We've all got to be restrained."

Restraint was first applied to Tom Connally. Under the urging of Vandenberg and the State Department, Connally issued a clarifying statement. Congress alone, he insisted, retained the power to declare war, but he was not opposed to measures short of war. He suggested a provision that each signatory would "take such measures as it may deem necessary to maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." At his press conference, Acheson declared: "There are no real differences in regard to the objectives . . ."

War & History. Of course, the fact was that only Congress could declare war. But it was also a fact that a President, a treaty, or the mere pressure of events could commit the U.S. to war. The Monroe Doctrine had made it plain to Europe that any aggressive move in North or South America would be regarded by the U.S. as an invitation to arms, and had been so recognized by Europe for more than a century. (President Theodore Roosevelt once told the Kaiser that he would send a U.S. fleet to Venezuela to prevent any German encroachments there.) In 1846, President James K. Polk ordered the U.S. Army into territory which Mexico claimed, without consulting Congress; the declaration of war came later. Abraham Lincoln ordered troops into battle in 1861 and called up 75,000 volunteers before Congress declared war. Wilson ordered the Navy to shell Vera Cruz. Franklin Roosevelt sent troops to Iceland, ordered U.S. ships to sink German submarines on sight. The U.S. was at war the minute Pearl Harbor's guns fired on attacking Jap planes--though Congress did not declare a state of war until the next day.

By the judgment of many a sound constitutionalist, Congress had voted away some of its powers when it put the U.S. into the U.N. The act stated: "The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress to make available to the Security Council . . . the armed forces, facilities or assistance provided for" in the U.N. Charter. Nor did the Atlantic pact undertake anything more than the U.S. had already pledged under the U.N. Charter--mutual defense against aggression.

Although many a European statesman still had to be convinced of the fact, the discussion of last week was largely academic. Wrote the Washington Star: "The Senators must know that they are talking through their hats. They must know that treaty or no treaty, commitment or no commitment, we will be at war for our national existence the moment the Red Army begins to march ... If the Senators will stop quaking in their boots at the mere mention of a moral commitment, if they will resolve so far as legally possible to commit this country in advance to what it inevitably would have to do anyhow . . . the proposed 'security pact' can serve as a real deterrent to war. If we will not do this, then we ought to stop talking about a security pact."

With Teeth. The debate had helped clear the air. It had also raised--and apparently answered--a larger question. Was the U.S. prepared, in the age of atomic bombs and jet-propelled planes, to pledge armed support of Europe? The answer, after a few minutes' hesitation, seemed to be yes--even if it had to be qualified to fit the powers of Congress. In a Washington Post poll, 50 Senators declared they would vote to declare war if any country of the North Atlantic pact was attacked; only one of 88 polled indicated he probably would not.

Secretary Acheson met with the Foreign Relations Committee in secret session, spent three hours going over the working draft of the pact. The only suggested changes, said one Senator, were a "phrase here and a word there." At week's end, Acheson called in the ambassadors of the North Atlantic countries, told them that they would have a pact with teeth in it after all, and with the full knowledge and consent of the Foreign Relations Committee. And in Norway, the ruling Labor Party gave unmistakable evidence that it thoroughly understood the alarums and excursions of parliamentary government by voting overwhelmingly to support Foreign Minister Halvard Lange and his determination to join the North Atlantic alliance.

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