Cause for Alarm

The American pundits were trying to tell the U.S. something of first importance last week.

The men & women whose job it is to make close and penetrating analyses of national affairs had wrought certain inevitable conclusions out of their "studies of masses of conflicting facts and views. Conscious of their several responsibilities, and in the light of their various integrities, they wrote carefully and in low key. But their unanimity was unusual--and significant.

What the columnists and experts were saying--all across the board--was that the continuing lack of an American foreign policy is now cause for the gravest alarm.

Death of the Charter. The New York Times, never an idle rumormonger, and by reputation the U.S. newspaper most concerned with the conduct of foreign affairs, led the field in publication of discussion of the present dangers. But a variety of voices were heard. Columnist Dorothy Thompson, with rare lack of emotion, told the U.S. some news which Washington had carefully not released:

"Mr. Churchill buried the Atlantic Charter. Since the President, coauthor, has not taken issue . . . we may take it the abandonment of the Charter is established policy.

"Presumption of the Atlantic Charter was that its basic principles applied to all --victor & vanquished alike. . . . But [Mr. Churchill] made the flat statement that the Atlantic Charter does not apply in any sense to the enemy. 'Unconditional surrender' means we end the war, he explained, with no promises of any kind."

"Why," asked Dorothy Thompson, "do we want to free our hands? Is it because we have a plan for Germany and Europe which we prefer not to publicize? Or is it because we have no plan at all?

"Has the Soviet Union a plan? Yes--no doubt, several plans. . . . If we enter Europe without a plan, while the Soviets have a clear one in reserve, we stand to become caught in situations for which we are completely unprepared."

Apprehensions. Arthur Krock, able Washington analyst for the Times, and longtime friend and admirer of Secretary of State Hull, could let neither friendship nor personal admiration stand in the way of expressing his own alarm at the U.S. drift into danger. Arthur Krock had found on all sides such disturbing cause for concern that he insisted "only a clear and candid statement by the President or Mr. Hull can remove these apprehensions."

What were Mr. Krock's apprehensions? "Because of the fog that masks our policy and has produced diplomatic inaction . . . Soviet Russia will dominate the postwar structure . . . that domination exists superficially already.

"Since Mr. Hull's moral triumph at Moscow, the U.S. seems to have abandoned the diplomatic leadership of the United Nations--except with respect to swingback movements in South America."

Pundit Krock urged that "If we have a postwar policy toward Europe, including the disposition of Germany, the time is overdue to state it. If we have not yet formulated such policies, it should be done at once lest events, including strong moves by Soviet Russia, render them obsolete and ineffectual before they can be stated."

On this framework Mr. Krock now posed the fundamental problem:

"The third-term campaign of 1940 delayed the rearmament program by many months, impelled the President to give assurances against war involvement that the world situation refuted, and contributed disastrously to the unpreparedness psychology of the people. If the same political considerations, geared now to a fourth-term effort, are permitted to postpone or obscure candid postwar statements of national policy, the eventual cost may be even greater."

Owl-wise Anne O'Hare McCormick, foreign affairs expert, who has a special talent for the examination of Anglo-American relations, came in on the same beam:

"The belief spreads that the relations among the three Governments have deteriorated since Teheran.

"Specific questions must be faced without delay. ... Unless the British and American Governments reach joint decisions now there will be no chance of a joint guardianship of the peace."

The Problem of Tomorrow. At the same time the Times's London bureau chief, James B. Reston, managed to send through censorship several articles reporting concern that the U.S. is not taking a leading role in defining the shape of postwar Europe. He noted that "the great power of Soviet Russia in the political field is active, while the power of the American Republic is much more passive. . . . The silence of the United States on (European) topics is a source of a considerable amount of questioning" among Allied diplomats who must plan for the future.

The Times's military expert, Hanson W. Baldwin, simultaneously had discovered that "the political factors in the war today are more important than the purely military factors." Pondering this, he wrote:

"The major political problem of Europe is the problem of tomorrow. . .

"Since Teheran there have been many disturbing trends . . . the war strategy may be affected." Among such, he cited Russia's insistence on "multilateral settlements of problems in Western Europe but unilateral settlement--her own--of affairs in Eastern Europe."

The Scripps-Howard foreign expert, old (62) William Philip Simms, had been brooding in Washington over the mysterious vagueness of U.S. foreign policy. Of the Balkans, he wrote: "Anglo-American policy has reached such an obscure, undecipherable stage that United Nations circles here regard it as the prize mystery of the war."

He reminded readers of a United Press report from Ankara that the Turkish price for entering the war was 300 planes and 500 tanks, and that this "absolutely picayune" payment, this "inconsequential dribble" had not been made. "So far," the Ankara authority told U.P., "not a single tank or plane has been delivered. All we got were beautiful words."

Columnist Simms did not have to search far for a reason. He reported the Washington belief that "Russia is opposed to Anglo-American activities in the Balkans, and London and Washington deferred to her wishes." This seemed to him further evidence of Russian dominance, and American vagueness.

Mr. Simms considered the newest Polish partition, too, and then stated flatly: "If the Atlantic Charter is something that members of the Big Three can take or leave to suit themselves, but which smaller nations must accept whether they like it or not, the announced war aims of the United Nations become a shabby business."

These were only a few of the minds that by various paths were reaching the same conclusions. Even Columnist Sam Grafton, who blames President Roosevelt's State Department but never President Roosevelt, was expressing concern over the "enigma" of U.S. foreign policy. (This time Mr. Grafton blamed the U.S. people.) And such a heavyweight pundit as Walter Lippmann, apostle of power politics and exponent of expediency, was so freighted down with the seriousness of the crisis that he retreated, in a column titled "Jitter-Making," into a jittery warning that since no one knows all that is going on--not even he himself--no one should say anything in particular.

The U.S. citizenry might not yet be able to piece it all together. But they had at least been told--not by their still silent Government--that the Atlantic Charter is dead; that the relations of the Big Three are worse, not better, since Teheran; that the Administration's persistent inability to formulate a foreign policy was based on Term IV politics; and that this lack was so serious that it had begun to seem that World War II would settle nothing.

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