The World Changes

So swiftly is the cold war moving that the President of the U.S., only 22 days confined to Walter Reed Hospital, came out to find a changed world scene. Workers protesting Communist rule in Poznan, Poland locked arms and marched into the fire of Communist police and militiamen, shouting "We want bread!" and "We want freedom!" (see FOREIGN NEWS). The Poznan revolt clearly heralded more trouble to come for the Communists as their Big Thaw got out of hand. Criticism was pouring into the Kremlin from Communist parties in Britain, Italy, Canada, East Germany, France, the U.S., Belgium; the Kremlin nonetheless kept up the momentum of its demolition of Stalin and, with that, of the iconography of the Communist way of life for the past 30 years.

In a sense, the U.S. had helped touch off the Communist time of troubles by publishing the Khrushchev speech that confessed the violent crimes of the Stalin era (TIME. June11). Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had since reiterated that although Khrushchev damned despotism, the speech clearly revealed Khrushchev as a despot too -and this line has been echoed by bemused Communists throughout the West. "International Communism is in a state of perplexity and at internal odds," said Dulles at his press conference last week, "because certain basic truths have caught up with it . . . This is, above all, a time for the free nations to remain strong in their unity."

While the U.S. could take some satisfaction from seeing Communism boring into itself from within, there were other great issues that sorely needed presidential tending in the free half of the world. Priority for Ike during the weeks ahead: 1) restoring the cement and the feel of Western unity, 2) framing something better than the U.S.'s day-to-day policy in the Middle East, 3) articulating a world economic policy to fit, in today's international framework, the funds to be voted by Congress (see The Congress) for foreign aid.

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