Gimmick & Drift

Just as Washington uneasily predicted, the Russians--having just completed their test series of nuclear weapons in Siberia --proclaimed that they were suspending nuclear tests unilaterally, and called on the U.S. to do likewise. Failing this, Moscow added, "the U.S.S.R. will naturally be free to act."

Just as the Administration feared, the strength-through-propaganda set began acknowledging a major U.S. defeat. "Russia's announcement," said the Washington Post and Times Herald, "places the U.S. in an extremely ugly position before world opinion." "Like Carmen Basilic," said the New York Times's James Reston, "the U.S. has taken a terrible beating.'' The St. Louis Post-Dispatch talked of "an unnecessary loss of initiative in peace negotiations." Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who had unavailingly proposed in his 1956 campaign that the U.S. suspend its own nuclear tests unilaterally, feared that the U.S.S.R.'s move might "deprive us of the moral leadership."

Vital Samplings. Prodded at his news conference. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles fell into the hole, conceded that the U.S.S.R. had won "a certain propaganda victory." But, said Dulles, the President had been forewarned about the Kremlin's move, had consulted with senior officials (Dulles, Deputy Defense Secretary Donald Quarles, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss) on whether "to try to steal a march on the Soviet" by announcing a suspension of U.S. nuclear tests. He had decided that this summer's tests of "clean." i.e., low-fallout, nuclear weapons at Eniwetok Atoll were essential to U.S. security. Said Dulles: "We decided that we could not, in fairness to our responsibilities and our duties to the American people, perhaps to humanity, desist in a program which we believe to be sound merely for propaganda purposes."

Next day the President took over the offensive. He told his news conference that the U.S.S.R.'s move was "just a side issue. I think it is a gimmick, and I don't think it is to be taken seriously." And soon overseas reports showed that, from Canada to France to Japan, there was much more suspicion and skepticism about the Kremlin's intentions than had been expected (see FOREIGN NEWS). The Christian Science Monitor summed up its own samplings thus: "People aren't fools. We believe that the Kremlin has underestimated the intelligence of today's world, that it has been a bit too clever, and that its insincerity can be exposed."

Vital Shiftings. But such healthy anti-propaganda propaganda was not to be allowed to win so easily. In that strange, baffling process that occurs when the U.S. --but not Russia--is about to test nuclear weapons, the stop-the-tests hue and cry began to rise. A group that included Caltech's Chemist Linus Pauling and Britain's Philosopher Bertrand Russell brought suit in Federal District Court in Washington to enjoin Defense Secretary McElroy and members of the AEC from holding more nuclear tests. They promised to try to bring suit in British and Russian courts, too. Ban-the-bomb marchers in Manhattan and London got a joint four-column headline, two-column picture, on Page One of the august New York Times--"PEACE WALKERS" SCORE NUCLEAR ARMS.

For all of its brave words in public, the Administration began shifting uneasily in private under the propaganda, considered an offer to negotiate an end to nuclear tests, with inspection, after the U.S. test series at Eniwetok. Even Secretary Dulles, who had argued that unwarranted U.S. concessions in the dangerous field of disarmament might weaken Western resolution, thought the time had come for second thought. At week's end President Eisenhower set in motion a review of the U.S. position on disarmament to be ready within three weeks.

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