Facts & a Symbol

Out of the tumult and shouting in the Formosa Strait last week, two facts came clear. One was that the U.S. and Nationalist China could not assure the supply of beleaguered Quemoy without massive ae rial bombardment of Red artillery positions on the Chinese mainland. The other was that, for all their bluster, the Chinese Communists could not hope to capture Quemoy by direct assault in the teeth of the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

For propaganda purposes, the rulers of the Communist world chose to overlook the reality of this standoff. Each time units of the Seventh Fleet ventured within Red China's self-proclaimed twelve-mile limit (TIME, Sept. 15), Peking issued a "serious warning." (By week's end Red China's Foreign Ministry was up to "the fifth serious warning.") In a wave of synthetic fury unmatched since Korean war days, millions of Chinese--205 million by Peking's count--docilely turned out to demonstrate against "U.S. armed provocations." Describing U.S. military bases abroad as "a noose around the neck of American imperialism," moonfaced Chairman Mao Tse-tung vaingloriously declared: "Nobody but the Americans themselves made these nooses, put them around their own necks and handed one end of the rope to the Chinese people."

Russia's Nikita Khrushchev fired off a tough-talking note to Dwight Eisenhower. He derided the Seventh Fleet ("In the age of nuclear and rocket weapons . . . these once formidable warships are fit for nothing but courtesy visits and gun salutes . . ."-), and warned: "An attack on the People's Republic of China ... is an attack on the Soviet Union." Ominous as this sounded, it did not escape the attention of the world's statesmen--presumably including Mao--that Khrushchev had chosen to make his gesture of solidarity with Red China only after Washington and Peking had both indicated their willingness to reopen talks in Warsaw.

Notably Noncommittal. U.S. allies, most of whom privately think the islands should have been relinquished to Red China long ago, were notably noncommittal. Harold Macmillan, caught in a journalistic trap (see Great Britain), felt obliged to state publicly: "Our American allies have neither sought nor received promises of military support from us in the Formosa area." On the Continent, France's De Gaulle and West Germany's Adenauer both maintained a disapproving silence. In Australia Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies, usually a staunch advocate of a united Western front, declared that his government had "no specific policy" on the offshore islands.

When Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed his tough "no appeasement" principle (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), most NATO and SEATO members dutifully applauded. But the heartfelt cheers came when Ike reiterated U.S. willingness to negotiate, and the State Department announced that U.S. Ambassador Jacob Beam and Red China's urbane Wang Ping-nan would meet in Warsaw's 18th century Myslewiki Palace at the beginning of this week.

Bitter Tea. The Warsaw talks were nothing new. Despite U.S. nonrecognition of Peking, U.S. and Red Chinese envoys met 73 times between August 1955 and December 1957, with the U.S. constantly pressing Red China to renounce the use of force in the Formosa Strait. What was negotiable that had not been before?

The answer was the status of the offshore islands. Given the military standoff on Quemoy, the U.S. now seemed willing to offer as its bargaining counter neutralization of the Nationalist-held islands along the China coast. Though it would not consider turning the islands over to Communist rule, the U.S. was prepared to contemplate an agreement under wliich Mao would commit himself to leave them alone and Chiang would cease to use them as bases.

In the present crisis, the islands had become a symbol of the principle that, in an orderly world, an aggressor cannot be allowed to assert territorial claims by force. That principle the U.S. was properly committed to defend--with a vigor that many of its allies could be grateful for but were too pusillanimous to join. An agreement on the islands' neutralization would be bitter tea for Chiang Kaishek, but it might also be the only way to remove what Dwight Eisenhower called "the thorn in the side of peace."

-An opinion which has not prevented the U.S.S.R. from steadily expanding its own fleet, both surface and undersea.

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