Enlightened Peace for Japan

John Foster Dulles, in charge of drafting a peace treaty with Japan, last week outlined a "peace of reconciliation" which promised to be a great act of U.S. statesmanship. The main terms:

Territory: Japan will renounce all claims to Korea, Formosa, the Pescadores and Antarctic area. U.N.-U.S. trusteeship may continue in the Ryukyu and Bonin Islands. The Yalta cession to Russia of the southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands will be recognized as permanent only if Russia signs the treaty as a whole.

Economics: There will be no major reparations either from capital goods or from current production, because the Japanese economy could not sustain them. Said Dulles: The U.S. is not willing "to put into Japan what reparations creditors would take out."

Security: The treaty will recognize Japan's "inherent right" to self-defense and Japan's duty to contribute to the common defense in the Pacific, but it will contain safeguards against "unbridled rearmament" and aggression. Until Japan can defend itself, U.S. armed forces will remain "in and about Japan."

Concluded Dulles: "The peace would be a peace of trust, not because the past justifies trust, but because the act of extending trust usually evokes an effort to merit trust . . ."

Dulles said that the U.S.'s allies, though some had favored far harsher terms, now agree substantially with the U.S. draft--except the Russians, who at first cooperated with the Dulles mission, then drew back. "When peace is far off," said Dulles, "the Russian leaders speak lovingly of peace. But when peace comes near, they shun peace like the plague . . . Fortunately, however, Soviet participation is not indispensable. The Soviet Union has no legal power to veto. It has no moral due-bills, for its vast takings in Manchuria, Port Arthur, Dairen, Sakhalin and the Kuriles repay it a thousand-fold for its six days of nominal belligerency."

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