KHRUSHCHEV'S LIES NEW SOVIET LOW

THE ECONOMIST:

MR. KHRUSHCHEV is a notorious dropper of bricks. But no mere slip of his fidgety tongue can explain away his fantastic charge that the British, the French and the Americans had "started the second world war, sent troops against our country, and these troops were the troops of Hitlerite Germany."

Mr. Khrushchev, an exemplary product of Stalin's schooling, seems to learn more slowly and painfully than did Frankenstein's laboratory-built monster. Perhaps he really has no idea that, long before Mr. Molotov's incredible announcement (on June 14, 1941) warnings of a German attack on Russia were being put out by "the forces arrayed against the Soviet Union and the Great German Reich," Indians were fighting and dying alongside British, Australian, French and other comrades to protect Egypt and the Arab world and to set Ethiopia free. An obscure party employee in those days, [Khrushchev] was probably never allowed to know that Stalin did not even acknowledge Mr. Churchill's repeated warnings of the impending Nazi attack. A devout ignoramus today, he would be the last man to heed the thought that the allies' Thermopylaean resistance in the Balkans, which forced an infuriated Hitler to postpone invading Russia for over a month, quite possibly saved Moscow. Excuses may be made for childish ignorance and even for narrow racialist arrogance. But there is no excusing a cold, venomous lie. Whatever the motive, Mr. Khrushchev has deliberately chosen to bring Soviet relations with the western democracies down to the lowest level.

JUNKETING RUSSIANS EMBARRASSED HOSTS

Britain's SPECTATOR :

IN the Russian mind, much broad talk of love is entirely consonant with much narrow practice of hatred; but Khrushchev, for all the verbal virtuosity of his performance, for-all the too-familiar clasping of Asia to his bosom, has been treating the intelligence of his hosts with no little contempt if he imagines that his torrent of words is enough to sweep them off their feet.

There is little enough cause for alarm, so manifestly grotesque has been the contrast between Khrushchev's extravagant protestations of affection for his Asian hosts, and his no less extravagant denunciations of the West; between his fantasies on the theme of Communist

Russia, and the reality of the rat-race which it is. In so far as he thought, by wild flatteries and wilder lies, to knock in a wedge of misunderstanding between India and the West, his attempt has been a failure; and all that he has done in Burma has been to embarrass his hosts to the point of stupefaction. Mr. Khrushchev had better watch out when he gets back to Moscow, for he has spun enough rope on this excursion to hang a dozen men of his girth.

KHRUSHCHEV CLAIMS SHOCK ONLY THE NAIVE

THE NEW STATESMAN & NATION : IT is naive of western politicians and papers to be shocked by the strange statements of Khrushchev and Bulganin in their Eastern tour. Molotov made it only too clear at Geneva that the decision not to threaten the world with war did not include any serious intention to lift the iron curtain. Clearly we must take it for granted that the Russian leaders will follow the usual lines of political warfare and select their facts to suit their audiences. It is conceivable that Mr. Khrushchev did not realize that the British have for at least two generations ceased to be crass enough to call the Burmese "barbarians." But that does not alter the fact that the Russians undoubtedly won an immense response from multitudes of people in South-East Asia to whom colonialism still remains, by the fault of the West, the real enemy.

RUSSIA IS AHEAD IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR

Correspondent NEAL STANFORD in the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: THE anomaly of the current world scene is that while the United States seems to be winning the cold war it may be losing the psychological war.

The United States is writing alliances all the way from Portugal to Japan. It is spending $100 for every $1 the Soviets put up and $10 for every $1 the Soviets promise. It is directing a diplomatic offensive. But on the psychological front the United States is on the defensive. Washington spends its time reacting to Soviet actions and Soviet propaganda, while the Soviets are busy turning up new schemes to embarrass the West. Moscow is waging psychological warfare day and night in Europe, Asia, Africa, bluntly, blatantly, busily.

The trouble is not that the United States does not have a good case; but the United States too often does not present a good case. It spends its time weighing, pondering, considering; and in the meantime the opportunity for scoring a psychological victory is past. Or it plays the ostrich game; buries its head in the sand and refuses to admit anything has happened. You don't counter something with nothing; you counter something with something better. You intercept the pass and run with the opponent's ball.

The President's aerial inspection plan and his exchange of blueprints proposal are perhaps the most startling, daring, and imaginative ideas to come out of the Eisenhower administration. But the United States hasn't begun to squeeze the psychological value out of them that is there.

There may be reasons which do not appear that keep Washington officials from making the most of it. One could be an unwillingness to engage in a game of bluff. Involved, too, it seems, is the inertia of bureaucracy, the latent fear of miscalculation, a belief that doing nothing is apt to be safer than doing something. In psychological warfare the imponderables predominate. However, that is not an argument for doing nothing, but for doing what needs to be done promptly, thoroughly, and effectively.

U.S. MARINES ARE NEEDED IN ISRAEL

Editor MAX ASCOLI in THE REPORTER: COMMUNISM is now on the rampage in the Middle East, fanning the kind of war best suited to upset our alliances and our own people--a war from which we cannot escape involvement and yet so primitive as to give us no chance of using massive retaliation, or even our tiniest atomic tactical weapons.

The danger is such that peace at the Israeli-Arab borders demands something more than the reiteration of already existing guarantees or mixed Soviet-NATO patrols. It demands a few battalions of U.S. Marines, plus proportionate contingents from NATO allies--enough troops to keep an active watch so that no attack is launched by either side.

The U.N. can come into the picture after the presence of token allied contingents has dramatized the western powers' repeated guarantees to the Israeli state. The U.N., which is responsible for the creation of Israel, and for years has been debating the control of armaments, cannot let the peace of the world be threatened by the armament race between minor countries entirely dependent on the great powers. Since no atomic stockpiles are involved, there could be no better experimental ground for U.N. control of armament--just as there could be no better chance for us to stop the bootlegging of minor wars by the Soviet peace lovers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.