The Answer Is Yes

In the marble-walled Senate caucus room, crystal chandeliers shimmered in the kleig lights last week, and more than 500 spectators jammed together to see the show. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was beginning hearings on the North Atlantic Treaty and Secretary of State Dean Acheson was the first witness. As photographers flashed and popped, they noted that Acheson's mustache had been clipped down from its usual pukka sahib proportions. Finally, Chairman Tom Connally called a halt to their work with a cracker-barrel dictum. "You can snap," rumbled Connally, "but you can't bulb!"

Connally and his Senate colleagues had asked Acheson over to get some advice on what they should or should not do, in conscience, about the treaty. When Acheson finished reading a 40-minute summary of what the treaty was about, Connally asked the chief question that was bothering him and some of his friends. If a Senator voted for the pact, would he be committed to vote later for the $1.13 billion arms program to back it up?

"Less Freely." It was a blunt question and, by diplomatic standards, it got a blunt, affirmative answer. Replied Acheson: "There is something in this treaty that requires every member of the Senate, if you ratify it, when he comes to vote on military assistance, to exercise his judgment less freely than he would have exercised it if there had not been this treaty."

The "something" that Acheson referred to was Article 3 of the treaty, which commits all members to "selfhelp" and "mutual aid." Once the Senate approved the North Atlantic Treaty, said Acheson, it could not consistently repudiate the treaty's commitment to assist Western Europe with arms, but it could reserve the right to determine how much aid the U.S. should provide. The arms program, said Acheson, would be only one-sixth to one-seventh of what the treaty nations would provide for themselves.

"A Little Too Far." In their effort to line up a two-thirds majority for the treaty, Connally and Michigan's ranking Republican Arthur Vandenberg might have preferred a little less candor from the Secretary of State. Many a Senate fence-straddler, like Virginia's Harry F. Byrd, was willing to buy the pact if he could dodge paying the arms bill later. Pussyfooting Tom Connally thought Acheson went "a little too far," in his answer; a Senator's only voting guide was his "conviction and conscience." Vandenberg was afraid the Senate was getting its "eyes glued on a few million dollars' worth of rifles and knapsacks" instead of the treaty itself.

Their alarm was not shared by the New York Times's shrewd diplomatic correspondent, James Reston. Wrote Reston: "There are many ways in which a Secretary of State can present a treaty to the Senate but the best way is to tell the Senators everything. This astonishes them, then bores them stiff, and eventually minimizes the ordeal."

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