Last Thoughts

In all the months that the North Atlantic Treaty has been before Congress and the U.S. public, there has been a surprising lack of real feeling about it. Presumably, then, most people were for this radical shift in traditional U.S. diplomacy?

Last week, in the closing days of debate, the Senate suddenly burst out in confused soul-searching and stubborn reservations. Proponents like Iowa's Guy Gillette announced support "with the greatest reluctance, with deep misgivings, with grave doubts and qualms." Ohio's Robert Taft, who had announced his opposition "with the greatest discomfort," suggested extending the Monroe Doctrine to Western Europe instead.

Taft's position was a little hard to follow: he wanted the U.S. to announce that it would fight if Russia made an aggressive move in Europe, but was unwilling to sign a treaty which said the same thing in a more carefully hedged way.

Freshman on the Floor. In response to Taft's alarms, the Senate was treated to as remarkable a show by a freshman as it had seen in many a year. New York's John Foster Dulles, standing in the well of the chamber and pacing back & forth like a lawyer before a jury, delivered a point-by-point reply, then handled a two-hour grilling from his fellow Republicans with adroitness and composure.

The pact carried no commitment to rearm Europe nation by nation, said Dulles firmly. Under its terms, a council and defense committee would make recommendations. "If the recommendations seem to be advantageous, I assume we will accept them. If they appear to be disadvantageous, we are certainly free to reject them ... I think it is worth something to us that there are brave people close to danger who are willing, if need be, to absorb the first shock of devastating attack ... It is not right to treat such people as mendicants." As for an armament race, "that cannot occur under the treaty without our consent, and the Congress, through its control of appropriations, has that situation under its control."

Taft was quickly on his feet. He asked if Dulles knew that the President was about to submit an arms program as "an implementation of the Atlantic pact." Dulles knew no such thing: "I do understand that there is a program . . . which was worked out entirely independently of any treaty ... I see in the treaty no legal or moral obligation to vote any arms program which is not defensible on its own merits."

Would Dulles be willing to put such a reservation into the pact? "No ... In the first place, it is unnecessary; and in the second place, it is untimely."

Museum Piece? The real objection, in many Senators' minds, was not to the pact but to the arms program. Dulles and Arthur Vandenberg said they were two separate matters. The State Department thought they were linked by implication but actually independent.

Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse thought they were--and should be--bound together. Said he: "I am going to vote for the pact enthusiastically, because I believe it carries along with it the . . . military implementation for stopping Joe Stalin in his tracks . . . Unless that is ... the meaning of the pact, it is already a museum piece for Stalin's repository of diplomatic scalps."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.