CONFERENCE AT THE SUMMIT: WILL IT BRING PEACE;

REDS WILL NOT CHANGE

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

THE pressure for a meeting "at the summit" is almost entirely emotional. The feeling seems to be that if only President Eisenhower, Sir Anthony Eden, Premier Faure and Marshal Bulganin could meet face to face, and face to face meet the awful threat of hydrogen war their common humanity would compel them to lift this threat from the world. This is an understandably appealing idea. Yet the unhappy fact is that the idea is an illusion. The power to alleviate world tensions and restore the world to a semblance of peace and quiet rests wholly with the Communist bloc. If they change it will be because they have concluded it is smart to do so.

It does not follow that all types of conferences with Communists are useless or worse. An enemy must always be negotiated with sooner or later. We may hope that the Austrian negotiations will be successfully concluded and that it may be possible to arrange a ceasefire in Formosa Strait. We may hope that in time acceptable settlements of the German and Korean problems can be negotiated. This piecemeal approach is in all probability the only hope of achieving a general settlement of the East-West conflict. Each individual settlement will add to the pyramid of peace. Only when, if ever, the pyramid is finished will it be an appropriate gesture for the heads of state to meet, and then only to affirm the completion of the structure. Then they will in truth be meeting at the summit.

WEST MUST COMPROMISE

Britain's leftist NEW STATESMAN AND NATION :

THE Austrian settlement does suggest that Moscow is willing to bargain. Is the West? If its attitude is that strength is only now beginning to pay off and that consequently the correct approach to the Soviet Union is now simply to demand assent to Western terms, the four-power conferences had better never be held. An essential factor in their success is Western readiness to give something away if the Russians are really prepared to reciprocate.

OVERTURE, NOT A FINALE

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR:

CONFERENCES inevitably create hope. There is risk that the hopes engendered may be out of all proportion to the actual prospects for solution of the problems of keeping peace. Ordinarily a conference of chiefs of state would signify that their respective foreign offices had carried on a vast amount of preparatory work leading to a series of agreements practically ready to be signed. The very opposite is true in this case. An Austrian treaty is about to be signed by the foreign ministers, but beyond that the really huge questions between East and West are the future of Germany, control of atomic weapons, and perhaps a look at Asia. In view of these differences, the best that is likely to emerge from a meeting "at the summit" is an atmosphere of cordiality, reasonableness, and guarded trust in which the foreign ministers then can settle down to a year or two or three of working out practical details on which an era of peace and progress could rest. If a meeting of chiefs of state will facilitate that process, then by all means let it take place. But let us regard it as an overture, not expect a full-chorus finale in the first act.

U.S. NEEDS A PLAN

THE WASHINGTON NEWS:

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER says his ideas for the Big Four conference are "vague and rather generalized." He wants about three days of very general discussion. No agenda or plan. No subject barred but none listed. He hopes to sense the atmosphere in the Soviet delegation, clarify his own mind a bit, discover whether the new Soviet leaders are "sincerely hoping to relieve tensions." He wouldn't even have the men "at the summit" try to set up an agenda for the foreign ministers. He would only try to define the broad areas "in which people would start to work." This seems like a dangerously informal approach to the most important international conference in ten years. It defies all rules of diplomacy as well as all experience with the Soviets. The late President Roosevelt didn't want any agenda for his wartime meetings with Uncle Joe.

The recently published Yalta documents show the results.

The Soviet delegation will not arrive "at the summit" with any lack of plan.

The Soviets enter conferences as they enter military battles. They open with a major offensive. They shoot the diplomatic works at their opponents. And when the opponents stagger they shoot another round. The United States already is late in trying to grab the initiative for peace. The wheels for a "summit" meeting are turning fast. The President should find an early opportunity to restate America's position on all outstanding world problems--a restatement that vividly portrays America's peaceful aims. He should reconsider doing this at the tenth anniversary meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. He then could attend the Big Four mee'ting with something besides empty hands and hope.

WEST MUST NOT RELAX

THE ECONOMIST: THERE are two awkward facts about JL the proposal. Yearning for the summit has been, and still is, embarrassing for allied unity. The second is that since the death of Stalin it has been meaningless. Without taking at its face value all that the Russians say about collective leadership, it is still obvious that in Moscow now there is no "highest level." The mystical belief that a Churchill-Malenkov meeting could dissolve the solid differences that an Eden-Molotov meeting would merely register has lost all content today when the prospect is an Eden-Bulganin or Attlee-Bulganin meeting. No British government can undertake to ease an anxious world of its fears merely by convening a new conference. It obviously cannot liquidate the armed might or shatter the dogmatic ambitions of the Soviet system, and while these things remain there can be precious little relaxation for the democracies.

EXPECTATIONS ARE SMALL

THE CHICAGO DAILY NEWS:

IF the meeting accomplishes very much toward [relieving world tension] that result will be a surprise to President Eisenhower and the U.S. State Department. They have agreed to the meeting reluctantly and with profound skepticism. They have yielded to pressure from the governments of Great Britain and France. The responsible officials of those governments themselves do not believe the meeting is actually desirable from the standpoint of international relations. It is, however, politically necessary at home to the men in power. In both countries, people terrified at the possibility of atomic war have been demanding a top-level conference, expecting it to conjure some magic not workable by ordinary diplomatic procedure.

Eisenhower personally has great gifts as a negotiator. In his own way, he is as charming and persuasive an individual as Roosevelt ever was at his best. Fortunately, he lacks Roosevelt's dangerous delusions of infallibility and he surely has a sounder sense of military realities. No man in the world is better qualified to appraise them. We can hope for the best. If [the conference] achieves any good it will exceed most Washington expectations.

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