On the Two Fronts

On the Two Fronts From across the Atlantic the U.S. drew a heartening sense of security and achievement. In Lisbon, the 14 nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed on a pattern for a new European Army which will include the forces of Western Germany (see INTERNATIONAL). Before the European Army becomes a fact, there are still some difficult parliamentary hurdles to be crossed and ancient rivalries to be soothed. Nonetheless, the Lisbon agreement rose last week as a historic landmark in the defense of free men--and an impressive accomplishment of U.S. diplomacy.

It was the very sheen of the achievement that exposed the shabbiness of Western diplomacy across the Pacific. In Korea, the major allies of triumphant Lisbon listlessly pursued a stalemate. In Indo-China, French forces fell back from the hard-won gains made by the late General de Lattre de Tassigny. On Washington's high levels there was talk that sounded like defeatism for the Pacific, e.g., that U.S. air power lies virtually at the mercy of a Chinese Communist buildup which now numbers 1,700 planes (including 900 jets).

U.S. Diplomat John Foster Dulles warned tellingly of the free world's vulnerability in the Far East. "There is no area," he said, "where unity is so greatly needed or where lack of it is so dangerous." In an address at Princeton University, Dulles pressed the thought further: "The attitude of the free peoples is almost wholly defensive . . . The Communism of Soviet Russia and its satellites represents today the active, dynamic element and the free world represents the static, passive element... The U.S. ... can be destroyed by forces that, in themselves, seem weak --if those forces are active and if we are passive."

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