Stiffening Attitudes

A tiny red rosebud tucked into his lapel, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, down for seven days with an intestinal inflammation (see MEDICINE), left Walter Reed hospital and drove to the White House to confer with President Eisenhower about Berlin. From that conference came perhaps the hardest U.S. talk yet about Nikita Khrushchev's attempt to shout his way into control of Germany.

"A discouraging aspect of the international scene," said Dulles in a 400-word statement approved by the President, "is the disregard by the Soviet rulers of their pledged word . . . The Soviet rulers, in relation to Berlin, seek to repudiate a whole series of agreements. They seem to feel at liberty to denounce at their pleasure any agreements which they have made as soon as they feel that these agreements no longer serve their purposes."

Dulles' stiff statement came in a week of generally stiffening attitudes toward Berlin. Khrushchev began it with a brazen threat that any Western attempt to break through to West Berlin by force would bring nuclear war (see FOREIGN NEWS). In his press conference President Eisenhower promised: "We stand firm on the rights and the responsibilities that we have undertaken" on behalf of non-Communist Germany. And in a Washington speech to the National Press Club, West German Ambassador Wilhelm G. Grewe expressed his government's deep-seated doubt that the German crisis can somehow be solved by "new approaches" in diplomatic maneuver.

"There is not much to negotiate on Berlin," said Grewe. As one example, he took the idea of legally integrating West Berlin into West Germany and replacing allied forces with German troops. Said Grewe: "The presence of German forces in Berlin can never have the political and psychological effect which the presence of the Western forces has." West Berlin, he said, stands as "a gap in the Iron Curtain" and is thus "a permanent obstacle to the effectiveness of totalitarian rule in Eastern Germany." What is needed, Grewe concluded, is "a cool head, strong nerves, unity and mutual confidence among the allies and, with regard to the Soviets, preparedness for every reasonable talk, but, if necessary, preparedness to resist."

It was in that same spirit in the week of stiffened attitudes that Secretary Dulles left the White House, drove to the MATS Terminal at the Washington National Airport, flew off to Paris. There he, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, and West German Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano met, talked, and "reaffirmed the determination of their governments to maintain their position and their rights with respect to Berlin."

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