The Forgotten Word

Only once by name, with passing scorn for "foolish adventures," did Dean Acheson in his Press Club speech mention Formosa. But the word had hissed like a hot coal on ice earlier in the week when he met for five hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and for four hours next day with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and it steamed all week in the speeches of a small but angry group of Republican critics.

To Acheson the problem of further aid to Formosa did not exist; the time was already past. Like China, argued the Secretary to the Congressmen, Formosa was all but lost, and to try to help Chiang Kai-shek on his final island bastion would jeopardize the whole U.S. stake in Asia.

What, the Congressmen demanded to know, did the Joint Chiefs of Staff think about it? When Acheson refused to speak for them, Senator Tom Connally, Democratic chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, yielded to Republican clamor and agreed to call Defense Secretary Louis Johnson and General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "I don't care one way or another," groused Texas Tom. "I'm agreeing to let them come in in order to give relief to these other gentlemen."

Connally's yielding and Acheson's scorn neither relieved nor silenced the Republicans. Ohio's Robert Taft read a 1,500-word statement to the Senate, instead of talking impromptu as he usually does. Said he: "There can be no crossing [by Communists to Formosa] if our Navy makes it clear that ships carrying troops will not be allowed to cross . . . Formosa is a place where a small amount of aid, and at very small cost, can prevent the further spread of Communism ..." New Hampshire's Styles Bridges cried out: "Are we men in Europe and mice in Asia?" Not all Republicans felt so strongly. Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, the party's chief spokesman on foreign policy, still shied from discussing Formosa "until all the facts are available." But he repeated an old theme: if there's to be genuine bipartisanship, the Republicans should be consulted on the take-offs as well as after the crashes of foreign policy.

At week's end, with the news of the Communist seizure of the U.S. consul general's office in Peking, California's Bill Knowland made the angriest demand of the week. He wanted all State Department officials responsible for China policy to resign. Did this mean Secretary Acheson? he was asked. "If the shoe fits," snapped Knowland.

How widespread was the public criticism of Administration policy on Formosa? The New York Times asked its correspondents across the U.S. to find out. Their conclusion: a general feeling that the Administration's "decision against military aid to Formosa was a hard choice, but probably the best one."

This week Dean Acheson would once again face his congressional critics in another closed-door session.

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