Helping Hand

"It is time to rally from a frustrating confusion that has its roots in mistakes of the past rather than in the circumstances of the present."

In these words, Republican John Foster Dulles divorced himself last week from the wrangles over U.S. foreign policy that have recently obsessed Washington. The tall, solemn G.O.P. expert on foreign affairs took, a long step toward restoring the nation's bipartisan spirit in foreign policy by accepting an $11,000 job as a top consultant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Like the recent hiring of former Republican Senator John Cooper of Kentucky as a State Department advisor, Dulles' appointment was designed to quiet ruffled Republican tempers on Capitol Hill and restore some of the harmony which led to such bold undertakings as the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Treaty. His appointment was an act of prudence on the Administration's part, and his acceptance an act of political courage on his own.

Dulles' name had been proposed for the job by Michigan's ailing Arthur Vandenberg, the Republicans' chief architect of bipartisanship in foreign policy, and his selection was hailed by Vandenberg's hardy little group of Republicans in the Senate. But there were other Republicans who were not so happy at the idea. Bipartisanship, snapped Ohio's Robert Taft, "is not accomplished by the appointment of an individual Republican . . . Bipartisanship is being used by Mr. Truman as a slogan to condemn any Republican who disagrees with Mr. Truman's unilateral foreign policy, secretly initiated and put into effect without any real consultation with Congress . . ."

Dulles saw the problem in another way. "The United States is engaged in a cold war," he said. "Secretary Acheson, in his recent California speeches, discussed the nature of Soviet-American tensions in terms that were profound and enlightening and with which I am in full accord." Dulles thought that the times urgently called for unity against "the despotic danger."

That despotic danger might be checked for the moment in Europe, where things were serious but encouraging; but it was unchecked in Asia, where a vast continent and 1,240,000,000 people might soon be lost forever if the U.S. did not act with speed and resolution.

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