The Whistle

Just when most Republican critics had muted their demands for Dean Acheson's head, the silence was broken by a new clamor. New York's middle-of-the-road, internationalist Republican Senator Irving Ives was for getting his colleagues together in a formal demand that the Secretary of State be sacked.

"We, the Republican members of the U.S. Senate, call upon the President to appoint a new Secretary of State at the earliest possible time," wrote Ives in a resolution submitted to the Republican policy committee. ". . . Unless this change ... is made, our efforts to cooperate must prove futile and national disunity and lack of confidence are likely to increase." In the House, Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott, onetime national chairman of the party, echoed the demand--without the threat implied in Ives's "efforts to cooperate" clause.

Practical Matters. The gist of the Ives draft was in the newspapers before Republican strategists decided what to do about it. Then Bob Taft and the policy committee whistled for a halt. They smothered Ives's resolution, set him to work with such wily oldtimers (and Acheson enemies) as Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry and Colorado's Eugene Millikin to work out a more diplomatic draft.

Taft made it clear that he was not doing this out of any sympathy for Dean Acheson. Obviously, the Republicans were worried about more practical considerations. They feared that the Ives resolution, whether Ives intended it so or not, suggested a Republican sitdown strike in the face of war. Since Harry Truman, and not the Republicans, would pick the next Secretary, they wondered what kind of man the nation was apt to get. Most talked of possibilities: Chief Justice Fred Vinson, ex-ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman, Defense Deputy Secretary Bob Lovett, John Foster Dulles, Presidential Adviser Averell Harriman. In Republican eyes most of these possibilities would be preferable to Acheson, though Harriman, snorted Ohio's John Bricker, was just "a dumb Acheson."

Not the Time. But, reasoned G.O.P. strategists, why be blamed for killing off Acheson when a good many Democrats were working to the same end? Some lame-duck Democratic casualties had already made it plain to Harry Truman that Acheson had hurt their party badly. In the House there was a small rear-guard defense by a loyal handful ("He and his accomplishments will live in history long after the names of his detractors are forgotten," said Missouri's 34-year-old Congressman Richard Boiling, an ex-G.L), but in the Senate, not one Democrat rose last week to defend Acheson.

Most Republicans were agreed, for one reason or another, that Ives had the right idea but the wrong timing. "I have been the severest critic in the country of the national Administration's policies in the Far East," said New York's Governor Tom Dewey after he came back from a Florida vacation. "But this moment is not the time for further criticism." Said Irving Ives: "I still believe that Secretary Acheson should be replaced. But... I certainly don't want to force any action that will occasion disunity."

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