Debate on Berlin

Without advance fanfare, and with almost no audience, the U.S. Senate sparked last week to one of the most important debates on U.S. foreign policy of the 1950s. Subject at issue: the crisis of Berlin. Key debater: Connecticut's white-maned Senator Thomas John Dodd, 51, freshman Democrat making his maiden speech. Dodd aimed eloquent oratorical guns at critics who "attack our policy as too rigid and inflexible," and those who sneer at a U.S. foreign policy based on moral principles. Before he had taken his seat, he had crossed swords with such eminent senior Democratic defenders of flexibility as Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Montana's Mike Mansfield, assistant majority leader. And he had provoked top-drawer praise from foreign-policy specialists on both sides of the aisle.

The chamber was almost deserted when Lawyer Dodd. veteran of two terms (1953-57) in the House, rose at his back-row desk, laid his speech on a lectern, and speaking in a clear, strong voice began working his way through his careful logic.

Concerning Flexibility. "There is no peculiar virtue in the concept of flexibility," said he. "To me, flexibility implies compromise and concession. When applied to fundamental principles--right principles--flexibility is not only without virtue; it becomes a vice . . . Have we forgotten the lessons of the Hitler era, with its compromises, concessions and flexibilities?"

Dodd dismissed as "insipid sentimentality" the idea that "soft words, smiles and geniality" on the part of Western leaders could make possible some kind of settlement with the Soviet leaders. "Any artificial accommodation which gives the appearance of agreement without the substance is a dangerous folly that can only disarm us and send us to our doom, comforted and reassured that all is well.

"Another assumption which enjoys wide currency is the argument that a divided Germany threatens us with World War III. Such reasoning, I think, overlooks the basic source of tension in the world. World Communism, and world Communism alone threatens us today with world war. Germany can be no more than a pretext for war. If war comes this year--God forbid--over the Berlin crisis, it will come as a deliberate, calculated stratagem of Red aggression. Berlin is just another phase of their long-term plan to subjugate the free world. The Berlin question is just a pawn in their hands, and will certainly not determine, of itself, whether there shall be peace or war."

"Tragically Unprepared." "There is, however, one circumstance which could give rise to a world war that no one wanted. If we, through the appearance of division, through weakness and lack of purpose, encourage the Communists to attempt some new act of aggression, this may well trigger off a war, and a war for which we are tragically unprepared. The hazards of flexibility and vacillation are far greater than those of strict adherence to right principles."

He did not mean that the nation is "tragically unprepared" in a strictly military sense. "I meant that I do not believe this country is prepared in the sense of the people being prepared. From what I hear every day on the street, people seem to be going along, not really aware of this grave danger." To make them aware, he urged a "go-day program of utmost urgency that will prepare the American people, the American economy and the American defenses for whatever demands that may be made upon them."

"One Day Longer." "The critics of our present Berlin policy argue that our position has failed for 14 years to bring either German reunification or free elections, and therefore it is a failure and should be reversed. But we cannot put a time limit on how long we shall stick with right policy.

"Fourteen years is a short time in the history of freedom. The struggle between freedom and Communism is not one of months, or even years. It may be a matter of decades or of generations . . .

"Assuming that our German policy is morally right and practically sound, as I believe it to be, we must persevere in it with the same tenacity with which the Communists pursue their evil program--that long, and then one day longer.

"With respect to almost every nation that has fallen victim to Communist aggression, there was one point in time, one occasion, when a courageous and vigorous free-world policy, based on the unselfish application of moral principles, could have prevented Communist aggression.

"That point in time for the Ukraine was 40 years ago. For Poland it was 13 years ago. For China it was ten years ago. For Indo-China it was five years ago. For Germany it is today.

"This may be our last chance to redeem our past errors. In a record filled with failures, compromises and concessions that spelled slavery for millions of people, we have preserved one last outpost of freedom within the Communist slave empire.

"That outpost is West Berlin. It must never be surrendered."

To make it clear that the U.S. will not surrender that outpost, Dodd urged the Senate to back up the Administration by voting a resolution declaring that:

P: No plan of German reunification is acceptable that does not provide for a freely elected government.

P: Western troops should stay on in Berlin until an acceptable settlement is reached.

P: The U.S. should "enforce its right of free access to West Berlin, in concert with its allies, by whatever means necessary."

Political Right & Wrong. When Dodd finished his speech, his fellow Senators stood up one by one to praise it. But Wyoming's Freshman Democrat Gale McGee raised the oft-raised Democratic question: Hasn't the U.S. "lost the initiative" in the cold war? To that, Kentucky's scholarly Republican John Sherman Cooper replied: "If we consider the American record in Berlin under the last two Administrations, I doubt if one can find any place where our position has been clearer, more courageous and more certain."

Freshman Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia drew on George Washington, the Psalms and Pericles to back up Dodd: "I say that nothing can be politically right if it is morally wrong. If there must be a showdown, it should be in our time, and not in the time of our children."

All Our Lives . . . The debate reached its argumentative climax when Foreign Relations Chairman Fulbright rose up to do battle on the point of morality. Dodd's claim that Berlin is a "moral issue," said Fulbright, "means, I take it, that political implications are secondary and that . . . evil is all that is involved. In that case I think there is no hope whatever for any kind of adjustment or compromise, and therefore we must reconcile ourselves to inevitable war ... I should like to proceed on the premise that it is possible to find some adjustment in time."

Dodd denied that a policy based on morality means inevitable war. "All our lives we fight, most of us, for the things that are right and good. We do not give up, and we do not do violence to those who oppose. We try always to convince those who are among them. There is always hope that the Russians will change. That is the first reason for continuing negotiations."

"This Critical Hour." "But the purpose for which I speak principally today is to point out that a lot of mumbo-jumbo and mental mush about rigidity and inflexibility and misunderstanding will never help us as we face this.critical hour.

''What we need to say, as American people, and say in unmistakable terms, is that we are right.We must tell the Russians why we cannot surrender Berlin. Let us not talk about standing firm, and then in mushy, soft words say that on some basis--somewhere, somehow--we will do something other than stand fast."

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