Who's Got the Ball?

The State Department found itself last week in the position of a quarterback who hasn't noticed that his team has possession of the ball. While opportunities for progress against world Communism seethed about them, U.S. public policy spokesmen remained on the defensive, snarled in the wrangle with Syngman Rhee and the "book-burning" controversy.

Russia's troubles in Eastern Europe provided the first great test of the "liberation policy" advocated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. At various times since 1950, Dulles has said:

P: "It is time to think in terms of taking the offensive in the world struggle for freedom and of rolling back the engulfing tide of despotism . . . Even today the Communist structure is overextended, overrigid and ill-founded. It could be shaken if the difficulties that are latent are activated."

P: "It is ironic and wrong that we who believe in the boundless power of human freedom should so long have accepted a static political role."

P:"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."

The fluid situation which had developed in the Communist world since Stalin's death seemed to be just what the new U.S. administration was waiting for--a first-class internal crisis in the Soviet empire. This week Russian tanks alone maintained Communist rule in East Berlin. In Czechoslovakia, nearly half the miners in the North Bohemian coal fields refused to report for work. Rumors of wholesale rioting drifted out of Poland. In Hungary, a new Premier tried to placate the people with a promise to pay more attention to the welfare of farmers and consumers. Nervously, the Soviet government ordered its ambassadors and proconsular in Washington, London, Paris and East Germany to come home to Moscow for a policy conference. And in the Far East, an opportunity to press Russia's Chinese allies had been frittered away in truce negotiations that led to the dangerous and demoralizing conflict between the U.S. and Syngman Rhee--a conflict which Senator Knowland this week blamed on the failure of both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to consult with Rhee.

It was possible (though not probable) that the U.S. was exploiting this unrest by means of wide-scale clandestine activities that could not be openly discussed. One of the principles of the Dulles liberation theory, however, is that by its public actions the U.S. Government could aid and intensify resistance to Communist tyranny. Yet now that resistance had arisen, the U.S. Government seemed unwilling to risk any public action more effective than an expression of sympathy for the East German rebels.

In Bonn and Berlin, U.S. authorities were hastily hammering together the elements of a psychological offensive against the U.S.S.R. in East Germany. This beginning was nearly three weeks after the East Berlin uprising and four months after Stalin's death opened a bag of Communist troubles.

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