The Newport Warning

Hatless and prop-washed, John Foster Dulles stooped under the spinning rotor blades of the Marine helicopter that set him down on tiny Coaster's Harbor Island in Narragansett Bay one morning last week. Rested from a recent vacation week, he made his way up the lawn into the headquarters building of Newport Naval Base and into President Eisenhower's vacation office. The Secretary of State drew a chair up to the left of the President's desk, reported that he had finished drafting the statement that they had been planning by phone for three days. "Let's have a look at it," said Ike.

An hour and 45 minutes later, a few words edited to his liking, the President told Dulles to go ahead and release the historic 800-word document. Its clearly phrased message: the U.S. would fight if the Chinese Communists should move in on Quemoy, Little Quemoy or the Matsus.

No Paper Tiger. Dulles went upstairs to a room crowded with 42 correspondents, adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses, and read the Newport Warning straight through. Then he made the message even plainer in a "background briefing" under the standard ground rule that he would be quoted only as an unnamed "high official," until, two days later, angry ex-Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced to one and all the identity of the briefing officer.

By written or spoken word, Dulles laid down these points:

P: The U.S. intends to go to the aid of the Chinese Nationalists "with fighting men" if Quemoy and Matsu are attacked, "would not wait until the situation was in extremis" before going in. One reason: the Communists have made clear that the offshore islands are but the first step to Formosa. Though the U.S. would obviously not fight over possession of the tiniest islands, "perhaps awash part of the time," it had drawn its no-trespassing line to include the ones that counted.

P: The U.S. would ignore the Chinese Communist ploy (see FOREIGN NEWS) of claiming sovereignty over sea space twelve miles off its shore instead of within the normal three-mile limit.

P: The U.S., if forced into counterattacks, would give back more than it got. If Communist aircraft attacked Quemoy or Formosa, U.S. forces might follow in hot pursuit to Communist mainland bases, might well bomb these bases.

P: Similar retaliation would meet any hostile move against U.S. ships convoying Nationalist men and supplies through the Red picket line around Quemoy. The news behind this promise: orders had already gone out to the Seventh Fleet to break the blockade by escorting Nationalist supply ships to within three miles of Quemoy--and perhaps all the way to the beach if Chiang's gunboats failed to beat off Red raiders.

P: The possibility that a counterattack on Red China might provoke the Russians had been weighed and allowed for before the Quemoy decisions were made.

"If I were on the Chinese Communist side," summed up "Anonymous Spokesman" Dulles, "I would think very hard before I went ahead on the face of this statement." He also offered the diplomatic carrot: if the Reds would renounce force, the U.S. was willing to continue efforts to negotiate a Formosan cease-fire (the subject of 54 of the 73 Geneva sessions), would consider Peking's claims, "however ill-founded as we may deem them to be."

Welcome Decision. Except for a bitter attack by ex-Secretary of State Acheson ("We seem to be drifting, either dazed or indifferent, toward war with China, a war without friends or allies"), the Newport

Warning provoked surprisingly little home-front criticism. And the message got through to Peking. Within two days, while the Reds eased off on their artillery barrages against Quemoy, Premier Chou En-lai picked up the Dulles proposal to negotiate, called for new diplomatic talks at the ambassadorial level.

News reports of Chou's offer reached the White House just before the President flew into Washington for the day from Newport. After a two-hour luncheon session with all available National Security Council members, he and Dulles drafted a reply. Jacob Beam, U.S. Ambassador to Warsaw, was available to reopen talks with his Chinese opposite number, they wrote. "If the Chinese Communists are now prepared to respond, the United States welcomes that decision . . . Naturally ... we will not in these talks be a party to any arrangement which would prejudice the rights of our ally, the Republic of China."

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