Wake Up & Act

President Eisenhower's illness and convalescence brought no visible damage in the domestic sphere. The Administration's goals and standards were set and clear. When circumstances called for the generation of new policy (e.g., the soil bank program), Eisenhower aides went ahead with the necessary plans.

Not so in foreign policy. After the Communists returned to their tough line at the second Geneva conference in October, a restatement of U.S. international attitudes, goals and policies was needed. To be effective, such redefinition had to come from the President.

Instead, initiative passed to Communist hands in the last months of 1955. Secretary Dulles and others now seem to sense this. The U.S. delegation to the U.N. sent Dulles a ringing call for a more dynamic U.S. approach to world economic policy. Last week Dulles released this document, saying that he and the President fully agreed with it.

The message had a tone of great urgency. It concluded: "We could lose this economic contest [with Communism] unless the country as a whole wakes up to all its implications." The urgent tone is justified by current facts. But there is no evidence that it is "the country as a whole" that needs to wake or act. The public has not dragged its heels in this decade on any foreign policy effort.

Now that the need for action is recognized in Washington, the next step is for the State Department and the President to spell out "the implications" in terms of a specific program. The country as a whole can hardly do that for them.

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