Division on Berlin

While Democratic leaders of Congress formed solid ranks behind President Eisenhower's leadership in the Berlin crisis, other key Democrats tramped off in assorted directions. Among them:

Adlai E. Stevenson told a Boston Democratic fund-raising dinner ($25 a plate) that the President "speaks for all of us" in refusing to be forced out of Berlin. But calling upon his party "to make good the perilous deficiencies of the executive branch," Stevenson suggested that the West can afford to negotiate toward disengagement in Central Europe. "We must face the fact that no Russian withdrawal can be secured without a modification of the Western position," he said. "In order to take, we will have to give."

William Fulbright, new chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, endorsed "the principle of considering proposals for thinning out or disengaging." Such disengagement would have to be negotiated in summit sessions with Premier Nikita Khrushchev, thought Fulbright, since Russia's power structure makes him its only decision maker. So Fulbright called for ''summit conferences as a regular thing, maybe twice a year, and approach them without expecting them to settle anything. I always feel squeamish about always saying, 'No, no, no, we don't want to talk,' " said he. "It leaves the impression that we are afraid of them, or that we don't have anything to say. Actually we have a lot to say."

Dean Acheson, who as Under Secretary (1945-47) and Secretary of State (1949-53) helped fashion the NATO defense system and recommended sending troops into Korea, wrote in the Saturday Evening Post that Berlin may test the West's will more than Korea did. He ridiculed the notion that Khrushchev will "be put off by talk." He rejected a new Berlin airlift as nothing more than "another formula for putting off the evil day" when the Russians either take over or are engaged "where the problem must be faced," on the ground.

Acheson's "only visible alternative": "The Soviets must be convinced that we are genuinely determined to keep [air and ground] traffic to Berlin open, at whatever risk, rather than abandon the people of Berlin and permit the whole Western position to crumble. To that end, there is much to be done between now and the end of May--a real concerting of plans with our allies, a building up of NATO power in Europe, an increase in American troop strength and a return of British and French divisions to the continent, possibly Turkish and Italian reinforcements, and a strengthening of NATO's tactical air force. At home the unwise demobilization of our Army strength since Korea should be reversed and a crash ICBM program put into immediate effect."

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