"You Can Count Upon Us"

Onto the nation's TV screens one evening last week flashed the large, homely figure of John Foster Dulles delivering his first report to the people as Secretary of State. Dulles' talk, made as a conversation with the U.S. people rather than as a formal speech, had been filmed in his office a day before, and it was made without a written text. It was broken by pauses for thought and marred by occasional slips in rhetoric, but it summarized the problems and potentialities of U.S. foreign policy with unpretentious clarity.

The Secretary began with a firm assurance to those who still fear a resurgence of U.S. isolationism. "In our own interest --our enlightened self-interest--we must pay close attention to what is going on in the rest of the world. And the reason for that is we have enemies who are plotting our destruction " . . The Soviet Communists . . . don't want to start an open war against us until they have got such overwhelming power that the result would not be in doubt. So their strategy has been to pick up one country after another by getting control of its government, by political warfare and by indirect aggression . . ."

Diplomatic Dynamite. As the TV camera flicked to a map on the wall behind him, Dulles began to tick off some of the areas where Communism is on the offensive. He started with Korea, pointing out that one objective of the Communist attack there was to make easy Russian or Chinese conquest of Japan and Japan's vast industrial capacity.

He went on to outline the Communist threat in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Moving across the map he came at last to Western Europe and the long-simmering plan , for creation of a single European Defense Community. Said he: "That's a good idea and it has had in this country bipartisan support. Unfortunately, the plan now seems to be somewhat stalled."

Then, in unemotional tones, the Secretary of State planted a stick of diplomatic dynamite: "The United States has made a big investment in Western Europe on the theory that there could be unity there. Of the $40 billion which we have sent abroad since the end of the Second World War, almost $30 billion have gone into Western Europe . . . If it appeared that there were no chance of getting effective-unity and if, in particular, France, Germany and England should go their separate ways, then certainly it would be necessary to give a little rethinking to America's own foreign policy in relation to Western Europe."

Dulles set forth two broad principles upon which the Eisenhower Administration's foreign policy is based. The first: "We will not try to meet the Soviet strategy of encirclement by ourselves starting a war." The Administration, he added, wall also do its best to end the wars in Indo-China and Korea, which are continuing "because the enemy thinks he's getting an advantage by continuing . . ."

Dulles' second principle: "to create in other peoples such a love and respect for freedom that they can never really be absorbed by the despotism, the totalitarian dictatorship of the Communist world ... So far as your Government is concerned you may be sure that it will not be intimidated, subverted or conquered. Our nation must stand as a solid rock in a storm-tossed world. To all those suffering under Communist slavery, to the timid and intimidated peoples of the world, let us say this: you can count upon us."

Criticism & Consequences. Next day Western Europe resounded with cries of outrage. Dulles' demand for faster progress toward European unity was no more than a restrained statement of views that most U.S. officials hold privately. But it was a sharp change from the flaccid U.S. diplomacy to which Europeans had become accustomed, and many of them behaved as though they had been wantonly assaulted with a blunt instrument. In London's Foreign Office there was muttering over "U.S. bulldozer tactics." In Paris, the left-wing newspaper Combat cried angrily: "Mr. Dulles . . . has been careful to notify the governments he is preparing to blackmail . . . that his pockets are empty . . ."

But the practical consequences of Dulles' much-deplored frankness were thoroughly encouraging. The day after his speech, the French government decided, after months of delay, to submit the European Army Treaty to Parliament for study. And in Bonn, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer seized on the Dulles talk as a weapon with which to club German opponents of the European Defense Community. If E.D.C. fails, warned Adenauer in a radio address, "America's interest in Germany will lag." Latin America's reception of the Dulles speech was as warm as Western Europe's was cold (see HEMISPHERE).

After six days in office, Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State had served clear notice that the U.S. now proposed to assume a degree of international leadership in keeping with its vast international responsibilities. Already, the Eisenhower-Dulles approach had begun to pay off.

After his speech Dulles, accompanied by Mutual Security Director Harold Scassen, set off on a ten-day airborne tour of seven West European capitals.

The first stop was Rome, where Dulles' parley with Premier Alcide de Gasperi dealt largely with the port of Trieste and other bones of contention between Italy and Yugoslavia. In Paris, the next stop, Dulles was met by Foreign Minister

Georges Bidault. After talking with the French, Dulles took a more cheerful view of problems there. This week, Dulles and Stassen fly to London to talk about Britain's aloofness toward the European Defense Community (France, West Germany, Italy, Benelux). They plan to go on to Bonn, The Hague, Brussels and Luxembourg before heading home.

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