Foreign Policy Debate

In his main speech last week--at San Francisco--Adlai Stevenson widened the gap between himself and Eisenhower on their attitudes toward the struggle with world Communism. Stevenson's key words were "endurance," "patience," "compromise," "negotiation" and "adjustment."

Said Stevenson: "With 85% of our budget allocated to defense, it is the Soviet Union which now fixes the level of our defense expenditures and thus our tax rates. The only way to emancipate ourselves from this foreign control ... is first to develop our strength, and then to find the means of ending the armament race."

Stevenson said that it "would be foolish to try to predict how & when the peaceful purpose of our power will succeed in creating a just and durable peace." Apparently, such a result is not to be expected soon: "The contest with tyranny is not a hundred-yard dash--it is a test of endurance."

Meanwhile, "coexistence is not a form of passive acquiescence in things as they are. It is waging the contest between freedom and tyranny by peaceful means. It will involve negotiation and adjustment --compromise but never appeasement--and I will never shrink from these if they advance the world toward secure peace."

Stevenson has on several previous occasions used such words as negotiation in reference to what the U.S. should do about Communism. Last May he deplored the prospect of a political campaign in which possible U.S. concessions would not be discussed. To date, he has not indicated what these concessions might be.

He turned to Asia with the standard Democratic formula: economic aid, land reform, resistance to armed aggression. He deplored the fact that "some men in this country seem to think that if a definitive victory [in Korea] cannot be won, we should either take reckless military action or give the whole thing up.-Such advice plays into the enemies' hands."

So in his discussion, Stevenson has not

*The number of people who think something like that about the Korean war may be larger than Candidate Stevenson thinks. This week Elmo Roper's public-opinion poll published the following results of what percentage of Americans agree with the following statements on what the U.S. should do in Korea:

Keep on negotiating 22%

Knock the Communists out of

Korea once & for all 53

Pull out of Korea--12 yet dealt with a point which is recognized by Democratic and Republican experts in dealing with the Communists. The point: concessions to Communists have almost always made coexistence with them harder, not easier.

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