Crackdown

Aroused by Senator Joe McCarthy's sweeping assault on U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles last week spearheaded the Administration's decision to fight back. Had McCarthy limited his bid for power to the issue of Communists in Government. Dulles might not have felt compelled to act. But McCarthy in his nationwide radio-TV speech had also berated the Administration for sending "perfumed notes" to Allied nations, "following the style of the Truman-Acheson regime," while doing nothing about the Allies' trade with China.

Dulles drafted his counterattack and took it to the President, who gave it his enthusiastic endorsement. At his press conference, Dulles lashed out: "We do not propose to throw away those precious assets [of mutual respect and friendship] by blustering and domineering methods." Other free nations, he said, will be treated "as sovereign equals" and not as "our satellites." To dramatize the point to McCarthy's Wisconsin constituents. Dulles warned that Milwaukee and other cities "would be sitting ducks for atomic bombs" without early-warning radar "facilities in the friendly countries which are nearer the Soviet Union."

Joe's Gibraltar. The next day the President himself answered Challenger McCarthy. "I am in full accord with Secretary Dulles," he told newsmen. If the U.S.. he said, "should turn impatiently to coercion of other free nations [it] would be a mark of the imperialist rather than of the leader."

Having scored a direct hit on McCarthy's "foreign policy," Dwight Eisenhower opened fire on the Gibraltar of McCarthy's political arsenal, the suspicion that Communists will continue to hold Government jobs. Said the President: "Fear of Communists' actively undermining our Government will not be an issue in the 1954 elections. Long before then, this Administration "will have made such progress in rooting them out ... that this can no longer be considered a serious menace."

That left only the somewhat rhetorical question of who is in charge of the Republican Party, Dwight Eisenhower or Joe McCarthy. The President answered the question: "I am convinced that those who fight for the program that I shall soon submit to the Congress will deserve and will receive the respect and support of the American people."

Challenge Renewed. A less arrogant politician than Joe McCarthy would have accepted this as a warning to stay in line. To be sure, he protested against the "suggestion by our political enemies" that his criticism was meant as a challenge to the President's leadership. Then, as if to prove the "enemies" right, Joe McCarthy renewed the challenge: "I strongly urge every American who feels as I do about this blood trade with a mortal enemy [Red China] to write or wire the President."

Then Joe and White House spokesmen got into a running wrangle over how many telegrams came in response to Joe's appeal. About 1,500. said the first White House tally. More than 2,000, said Joe. The early trend was 2-1 in Joe's favor. Early this week the White House had received 21,217 telegrams. But this was not impressive, as trumped-up telegram campaigns go./- The Communist-inspired Save-the-Rosenbergs appeal drew 21,542 messages in the last week.

/- Franklin D. Roosevelt once got 3,000,000 letters in three months, a daily average of 33,000, in response to a March of Dimes campaign. Pas sage of the Taft-Hartley act yielded 20,000 to 30,000 messages a day. Within two days after Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, the White House had been peppered with 45,000 telegrams and letters, sent without any organized campaign.

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