None Can Live Alone

To no one's surprise, the first name mentioned at President Eisenhower's press conference last week was "Senator Taft." As soon as Eisenhower had finished a few preliminary remarks, United Press's Merriman Smith popped everybody's question: "Do you share Senator Taft's view that we should forget the United Nations so far as the Korean war is concerned?"

The President shot back an emphatic "No!" He paused to take breath while the single word sank home. Then, with apologies for being "just a bit verbose," he launched into an even-tempered, carefully considered answer.

Compromises for Free Men. "If you are going to go it alone one place," said he, "You of course have to go it alone everywhere. If you are going to try to develop a coalition of understanding based upon decency, on ideas of justice, common concepts of governments, established by the will of free men, then you have got to make compromises. You have got to find the way in between the conflicting partisan considerations that will serve the best good of all.

"Now, that is what we are up against today, because our whole policy is based on this theory: no single free nation can live alone in the world. We have to have friends. Those friends have got to be tied to you in some form or another. We have to have that unity in basic purposes that comes from a recognition of common interests. That is what we are up against."

Barb for Hecklers. Then, in words which seemed to combine a tolerance for Taft with a special barb for U.S. hecklers in Britain, the President continued: "Now, not being a particularly patient man, I share the irritations and the sense of frustration that comes to everybody who is working for what he believes to be a decent purpose and finds himself balked by what he thinks is the ignorance, or the errors, of someone who is otherwise his friend." He could well understand, he went on, the resentment that came at times when we knew we were trying to do right and we got slapped in the face.

"I understand those things, but I will tell you, only patience, only determination, only optimism and only a very deep faith can carry America forward."

For his answer to Taft the President relaxed press conference rules to permit direct quotation. For the rest of the conference, he reverted to the time-honored paraphrase. Other questions and answers, in essence, made these points:

Q. Should the U.S. oppose Communist China's admission to the U.N.?

A. Red China should not be admitted under the conditions and circumstances that now exist, believing, as we do, that Red China is subservient to Moscow.

Q. What about the Senate Appropriations Committee vote to cancel U.S. funds for the U.N. if Red China is admitted?

A. They propose a very, very drastic sort of cure for something the President would consider a very grave error. He needed time to think that over.

Q. Has the defense budget fallen below what the Joint Chiefs individually believe necessary for the security of the U.S.?

A. He has no doubt about that. Starting as a major he used to have to prepare the reports that went before the Appropriations Committee. All his life he had pointed out where there had been great danger, but no one could assume that any amount of actual military strength was a guarantee against risk . . . It is his own deep conviction that what we are now doing is going to give us the greatest ultimate and bearable strength over the years that he sees ahead.

Q. Will the Big Three conference in Bermuda lead to a Big Four conference with Russia included?

A. Not necessarily. The Bermuda meeting will be beneficial in itself; if it leads to a meeting of the four or a later meeting, it would be because of some development which would seem to justify it.

Q. Should the U.S. accept a Korean truce opposed by the South Koreans?

A. We certainly should never adopt a solution that 'at least our own conscience told us was unfair to South Korea.

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