Change of M'ind

For the U.S. State Department, the case of Dictator Franco's Fascist Spain had long been an embarrassing diplomatic anomaly.

In 1946, the U.S. voted for a United Nations resolution calling upon U.N. members to withdraw ambassadors from Madrid as evidence of disgust with the Franco dictatorship. Since then the U.S. Embassy has been manned by a career charge d'affaires whose attitude of official coolness was frequently compromised by junketing U.S. Congressmen and businessmen streaming through Madrid to shake hands with General Franco.

Last week, in a letter to four congressional leaders, Secretary of State Dean Acheson signaled for a change of mind--but not, he was quick to add, a change of heart. The U.S. was ready to vote in the U.N. for restoration of normal relationships with the Franco government (provided someone else would introduce a resolution). This, he added, did not mean approval of Franco. "It is difficult to envisage Spain as a full member of the free Western community without substantial advances in such directions as increased civil liberties, and as religious freedom and the freedom to exercise the elementary rights of organized labor," said he. (This part of his letter did not appear in Madrid newspapers.)

Some of the loud guns of the left, usually so quick to go off at the sound of the name of Franco, were strangely muffled. Reason: the same formula of relations-without-approval might some day be applied as well to recognition of the new Communist regime in China.

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