Geneva: Questions & Answers

"For the last three weeks I've been negotiating with the Russians at Geneva," said John Foster Dulles on a nationwide radio and television broadcast, "and that's quite a job. As I expect you know, this Geneva meeting didn't get us very far . . . In fact it didn't get us anywhere at all . . . Now the ex planation as I see it is this: the Soviet leaders appear to want certain results, but they are not yet willing to pay the price."

Lawyer Dulles, a great popularizer and simplifier, then told the U.S. what happened at Geneva in terms of the agenda.

ITEM 1: Reunification of Germany and the security of Europe. No agreement. "We do not believe that solid peace in Europe can be based on the injustice of a divided Germany. The Soviet proposals were based on preserving the Soviet puppet regime in East Germany ... at least until Soviet control could be extended to all Germany. We tried very hard, but in vain . . . For obviously if Germany were reunified by free elections that would mean the end of the Soviet puppet regime. And this fall of the East German regime would in turn have serious repercussions on the other satellite states of East Europe. There the Soviet-controlled governments are facing rising pressure. Many within the satellite countries believe that the spirit of Geneva meant something for them."

ITEM 2: Limitation of arms. No agreement. "The Soviet Union . . . continues to urge agreements to do one thing or another, even though there would be no way to check up whether these agreements were in fact being fulfilled."

ITEM 3: Development of East-West contacts. Some agreement had been expected, but none materialized. "The Western powers put forward 17 proposals . . . Every one of these proposals the Soviet delegation rejected. It was willing to have some contacts which would enable it to garner technical know-how from other countries. It was willing to send and receive persons under conditions it could closely control. But it reacted most violently against anything that smacked of the elimination of barriers to the freer exchange of ideas . . . After a generation of fanatical indoctrination the So viet rulers can hardly bring themselves to loosen their existing thought controls so as to permit a freer contact with the free world."

Dulles next asked himself several questions, the kind that any citizen would ask, and gave his answers.

Is the spirit of Geneva dead? "The Soviet leaders would like to have at least the appearance of cooperative relations with the Western nations. [But] they are not yet ready to create the indispensable conditions for a secure peace . . . They have seriously set back the confidence that the free world can justifiably place on Soviet promises . . . However, it does seem that they do not want to revert to their earlier reliance on threats and invective. In that respect the spirit of Geneva still survives."

Is there any new danger of war? He did not think so.

Will there be a resumption of the cold war? "The cold war in the sense of peaceful competition will inevitably go on. The spirit of Geneva could not and did not change that fact. Moreover we must assume that the Soviet Union will continue its efforts by means short of war to make its system prevail, as it has done in the past. We can, however, hope that this competition will not entail the same hostility and animosity that so defiled the relations in the past between us."

Will the U.S. now have to increase its defense programs? "No. We have not lowered our guard . . . We're on what we call a long-haul basis. Our military strength . . . cannot vary with their smiles or with their frowns."

Does the end of Geneva mean an end to negotiations with the Communists? "It need not be an end . . . We know that conditions change, because change is the law of life."

Dulles concluded with a message from President Eisenhower. Said the President:

"I know that no setback, no obstacle to progress will ever deter this Government and our people from the great effort to establish a just and durable peace. Success may be long in coming, but there is no temporal force so capable of helping to achieve it as the strength, the might, the spirit of 165 million free Americans. In striving toward this shining goal, this country will never admit defeat."

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