More Than a Hope

Against the dark background of the Soviet satellite, Russia's diplomatic rocket-rattling and fear of weakness in the free world's leadership, President Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan met last week in Washington. They took an idea, which at first was little more than a hope. In their hours of sober consultation they shaped it, giving it life. The idea was simply that man's future lay not only in answering Soviet missiles with more missiles, but in the pooling of every moral and material resource that 50 free nations could bring to bear against despotism.

As a positive start toward what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called "tying the whole free world together." the U.S. and United Kingdom NATO representatives agreed to "urge an enlarged Atlantic effort in scientific research and development in support of greater collective security." President Eisenhower promised to ask Congress to amend the Atomic Energy Act so as to permit "close and fruitful" sharing of nuclear secrets between the U.S., Great Britain and "other friendly countries."

But the Washington conference went far beyond even these specifics. Said the postconference communique: "We recognize that our collective security efforts must be supported by cooperative economic action.* The present offers a challenging opportunity for improvement of trading conditions and the expansion of trade throughout the free world." In sum, the conference proposed taking the fullest advantage of an all-important fact: "The free nations possess vast assets, both material and moral. These, in the aggregate, are far greater than those of the Communist world."

"All Free Nations." From the moment that he met Macmillan (and 17 aides) at the MATS Air Terminal, Foster Dulles insisted that the Washington conference be more than a mere show of Anglo-American solidarity. Instead, Dulles told Macmillan, the meeting was a chance "to tie together not just two nations, not just the U.S. and the Commonwealth nations, but all free nations."

That was the idea--but it was hardly more than an idea. It came to substance during conferences around the octagonal table in the White House Cabinet Room. There Ike sat in his regular chair, back to the French doors leading to the Rose Garden. Across from him, in the chair usually reserved for Vice President Nixon, sat Harold Macmillan, a maroon cardigan sweater buttoned under his grey sack suit, the stump of a dead cigar in his hand. Their relationship, long friendly, grew closer during the week (although Ike called him "Harold," Macmillan stuck to "Mr. President"). So it was at other levels, e.g, as between Dulles and Great Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd (who, after ten rough days in the U.S., preparing for and participating in the conferences, joked to Dulles: "You know, I've been here long enough to take out my first papers").

"All Three Ideas." The talks began on the subject of Anglo-American scientific sharing. "Harold," said the President, "you know I cruised briefly last summer on our newest aircraft carrier, the Saratoga. And I found myself particularly interested in three things--the angled deck, the mirror landing system and the steam catapult. The angled deck and catapult have made our carriers much more effective, and the landing system has saved lives of our men. I found also that all three of them were British ideas, British inventions." Macmillan was more than willing to agree on the mutual benefits of scientific cooperation; such a sharing has long been a cardinal point of British foreign policy.

The Washington conference would have been far less of a success if it had stopped there. Time and time again. President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles drove home their point that the full resources--not just armies and weapons--of all free nations must be marshaled against Communism. They found in Harold Macmillan a man of like mind. ("Such a conference," said one of the participants, "never would have been possible with either Anthony Eden or Winston Churchill.") And as the men at the Washington conference talked, they found their spirits surging with enthusiasm to make the total alliance a reality.

The Glory of Freedom. It was into this atmosphere that NATO Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak stepped one afternoon with a blunt suggestion: As a next step, why shouldn't Ike and Macmillan both attend the NATO conference in Paris next December? Both probably will.

In its final form, the Washington conference communique produced an eloquent restatement of the principles that guided it: "Despotisms have often been able to produce spectacular monuments. But the price has been heavy. For all peoples yearn for intellectual and economic freedom, the more so if from their bondage they see others manifest the glory of freedom. Even despots are forced to permit freedom to grow by an evolutionary process, or in time there will be violent revolution."

As an actual gathering of freedom's resources, the Washington conference may have been only the beginning of a beginning. But if its principles are put to work, it will long be remembered.

* The U.S. reported this week that it had loaned and granted $4,750,000,000 in goods, services and cash to foreign nations during the fiscal year ending last June 30. The total was 7% less than in fiscal 1956.

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