Lost Initiative

The Communist capture of Czechoslovakia last week stirred the uneasy memory of almost everyone. Nine years ago Nazi boots had stamped into Prague, and Czechoslovakia had fallen to Hitler. The steps heard in Prague last week came from the gumshoes of the Communist-controlled police; this time it was an inside job (see INTERNATIONAL).

The U.S. people, who had begun to think that the Marshall Plan would fix up everything, had trouble focusing their minds on this distant crisis. The President was sunning himself at Key West. State Department officials said they had known all along that it was going to happen; they were only surprised by its suddenness. But the upshot of the matter was just what it was nine years ago. Czechoslovakia had fallen--this time to Stalin.

Then, at week's end, came the report that the Finnish coup was all but accomplished.

The two events marked the end of twelve months of avowed U.S. policy to halt the spread of Communism. Judged by that aim, which the President had stated so boldly and so confidently in the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, the policy was a failure.

"Where Are You Going?" What had happened? After the State Department had abandoned "patience and firmness" for a more forthright policy of less patience and more firmness, the U.S. had appeared to be on the right road. Briefly, last summer, with the announcement of the Marshall Plan, the U.S. had held the initiative. Russia was in momentary retreat. Last week the Marshall Plan was still a going idea and would soon help bolster the rickety economy of Europe. U.S. Congressmen had largely abandoned old ideas of isolationism. To most observers basic U.S. policies seemed sound. Then what had gone wrong?

The failure was not so much in policy as in performance. Except for a few notable exceptions, U.S. leadership in world affairs had been unimaginative and uncertain. Time & again the U.S. had failed to grasp its opportunities. When Britain's Ernest Bevin suggested a union of Britain and Western Europe, the U.S. had cheered loudly, then sidestepped. The union idea died on the vine. In the U.N., around the anterooms and lounges, the most frequently heard complaint from delegates who looked to the U.S. for leadership was: "We would like to follow you but we don't know where you're going."

Washington had shown little sense of urgency, even less appreciation of the fact that the struggle in the world is for men's hearts and minds. The Marshall Plan had originally aimed to capture their hearts through their stomachs. But the cold hammering away on the plan's economic aspects had left it with about as much political appeal to an Italian peasant as a page from the Statistical Abstract. U.S. propaganda agencies abroad, limited in funds, were ineffectual. The U.S. spoke--when it spoke--from the other side of the Atlantic. Russia hollered right down the chimney.

The Signal. What could the U.S. do about Czechoslovakia? It joined France and Britain in condemning the coup. As for the crisis in Finland, at week's end Washington was officially silent.

Would the U.S. permit Russia to keep the initiative? The Soviet moves last week laid Austria, France and Italy wide open to the next Communist drive. Perhaps the most vulnerable was Red-ridden Italy, which will hold national elections on April 18.

In Rome, Ambassador James C. Dunn tried to make the best case he could for U.S. democracy. He pointed to U.S. generosity with money and supplies. But Washington gave no public sign that it would back the De Gasperi government up to the hilt against any attempted Communist coup. And yet a victory for Communism in Italy would mean that the cold war, which the U.S. once thought it was winning, would get uncomfortably warm.

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