Two for the Book

Even before its publication date last week, a new, closely detailed biography of John Foster Dulles was embroiled in the kind of pundit-blown dust storm that recurrently swirls about the U.S. Secretary of State. Much of what is told in John Foster Dulles (Harper; $4.50), by John Robinson Beal (TIME'S diplomatic correspondent in Washington), had been told before, but two points in the book were enough to precipitate the storm. Reported Author Beal: P:Dulles last year canceled the proposed $56 million loan to help Egypt's Dictator Nasser build the Aswan Dam because "it was necessary to call Russia's hand in the game of economic competition. Dulles firmly believed the Soviet Union was not in a position to deliver effectively on all her economic propaganda offers. It was necessary to demonstrate to friendly nations, by act rather than by oral explanation, that U.S. tolerance of nations which felt it necessary to stay out of Western defensive alliances could not brook the kind of insult which Nasser presented in his repeated and accumulated unfriendly gestures . . . Nasser combined the right timing, the right geography, and the right order of magnitude for a truly major gambit in the cold war."

P:President Eisenhower in 1955 sent his "personal assurance" to Nationalist China's President Chiang Kaishek, thereby "satisfying him" that the U.S. would help defend Quemoy and Matsu, the islands in the Strait of Formosa off the Red Chinese mainland.

Some pundits immediately pounced on these two assertions in a manner that prompted the Christian Science Monitor to observe that "many of the news reports and comments on the book kidnaped fragments from the text and lugged them off to some private chopping block where they were enthusiastically minced." At the Secretary of State's news conference, reporters promptly threw the book at Dulles.

Q. Did you make a decision to cancel the offer of aid on the Aswan Dam in order to force a showdown with the Soviet Union in the Middle East?

A. I think that question could be answered in the negative. There were, of course, a number of reasons which dictated our declining to go ahead with the Aswan proposal. There was, perhaps first of all and most imperative, the fact that the Appropriations Committee of the Senate had unanimously passed a resolution providing that none of the 1957 funds could be used for the Aswan Dam. There was the fact that we had come to the feeling in our own mind that it was very dubious whether a project of this magnitude could be carried through with mutual advantage . . . Then there was the further fact that the Egyptians had . . . been developing ever-closer relations with the Soviet bloc countries . . . And in that way the Egyptians, in a sense, forced upon us an issue to which I think there was only one proper response. That issue was: Do nations which play both sides get better treatment than nations which are stalwart and work with us?

The other point was taken directly to President Eisenhower's news conference.

Q. Mr. President, have you given any personal assurance or made any commitment to Chiang Kai-shek that we would help defend Quemoy and Matsu if those islands were attacked?

A. I have never given any assurance to anybody in the foreign area that goes beyond the law and the intent of the Congress or of treaties made thereunder. I have never given any kind of private assurance of the kind you refer to.

From these exchanges, some pundits drew the conclusion that the Secretary of State and the President had knocked down Author Beal's two points. Taking a cool look at the week's furor, however, the New York Times concluded that Secretary of State Dulles had "left Mr. Beal's central thesis substantially unchallenged.'' As for the Quemoy-Matsu question, the Times pointed out: "Mr. Beal's book did not say that President Eisenhower had made a 'commitment.' The burden of Mr. Beal's report was that Chiang had misgivings about U.S. intentions and that President Eisenhower had been able to mollify him with a personal letter."

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