Speak for Yourself

Two days before anybody knew what John Foster Dulles was going to say, Washington's pundits were debating another point: for whom was he talking? A State Department spokesman purposefully implied that State had nominated Republican Adviser Dulles to answer Republican ex-President Hoover. G.O.P. Chairman Guy Gabrielson said tartly that Dulles wasn't speaking for any Republicans that Gabrielson knew. Dulles himself got off a wire to Hoover saying that he did not intend to do battle with Hoover, though they might disagree in spots. Then he stepped before the microphones.

He did not mention Hoover by name as he condemned any plan for "an impregnable defense, a China Wall, a Maginot Line, a Rock of Gibraltar, an Atlantic and Pacific moat . . . The whole world can be confident that the U.S. will not at a moment of supreme danger shed allies who are endangered . . ."

For the Administration, he had general praise for the directions of the last five years' foreign policy, mild rebukes for "the faults and inadequacies of leadership," and the hope that the U.S. would get itself into no more Koreas.

On his own, he suggested a plan of "deterrent" power that hinted at something less than U.S. garrisoning of Western Europe: 1) build up "enough economic and political vigor, enough military strength" around "the captive world" to withstand Communist aggression by civil war "or even by satellite attacks"; 2) hold unswervingly to the Atlantic Treaty's promise to fight Russia if she started all-out war--but keep the freedom to counterattack wherever & whenever the U.S. thought it would do the most good.

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