Design Without Dust

While the pattern of the free world's defense has been firming in Europe and the Atlantic, it is still a very incomplete sketch in the Pacific. This year an outline began to shape up when the U.S. signed (but has yet to ratify) defense treaties with Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia.

To mold a strong structure from this design, Harry Truman last week found a man who was calling an Asiatic Communist a Communist when most of the U.S. State Department was still wiping dust from its eyes. Myron M. Cowen, 53, is an energetic lowan who left his Washington law practice in 1948 to become U.S. ambassador to Australia. Since March 1949, as ambassador to the Philippines-one of U.S. diplomacy's most ticklish posts-Cowen has made an impressive record. He worked hard for U.S. aid to the Philippines, but did it in a way that made Filipinos understand that the aid would not be forthcoming unless their government made some headway against Communist-led rebels and its own corrupt officials.

When he takes office as a special assistant to the Secretary of State with the rank of ambassador, Cowen will not have to ride herd on any complex bureaucracy such as Europe's NATO. He will be able to start much closer to the ground floor.

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