One Long Whine

Like a fiery djinn, the hydrogen bomb hung over the House of Commons, shaping every speech, tingeing every mind. Reporting on his "diplomatic weekend" in Washington, Churchill admitted that the H-bomb had been the reason for it. He had been astonished and shocked at its devastating power. He had learned about it only last February from a speech by a U.S. Congressman.*

Churchill's prime achievement in Washington, he thought, was Eisenhower's statement that "the hope of the world lies in peaceful coexistence," which, nevertheless, "must not lead to appeasement that compels any nation to submit to foreign domination." Cried Churchill: "What a vast ideological gulf there is between the idea of peaceful coexistence vigilantly safeguarded, and the mood of forcibly extirpating the Communist fallacy and heresy . . . This statement is a recognition of the appalling character which war has now assumed and that its fearful consequences go even beyond the difficulties and dangers of dwelling side by side with Communist states."

The Test Is China. Two days later, the diplomatic galleries were jammed, queues lengthened into the street, as Clement Attlee opened a foreign policy debate for Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

With his old-fashioned gold spectacles planted firmly on his nose, Socialist Attlee spoke in his flat, toneless voice. The friendship of the U.S. was essential, he said. But "if there are differences, they should be stated." His theme was that vigorous U.S. policies in Asia might rile the touchy Communists and set off a world war with H-bombs. Said Attlee: "We are as anti-Communist as the U.S. . . . We oppose aggression, we oppose Communist infiltration tactics, we recognize the need for adequate strength; but we stand for peaceful coexistence."

The test, said Attlee, is "the attitude towards China." Why are settlements so difficult in Korea and Indo-China? Because "at the back of their minds, the Chinese regard it as an imperialistic attack upon them." If the U.S. would recognize Red China's right to sit in the U.N., and turn over Formosa as a trusteeship, the Chinese fears would be set at rest, he implied, and settlements would come as a matter of course.

"I can understand perfectly the American fear of militant Communism and of possible Chinese aggression throughout Asia," said Attlee, as if the Chinese invasion of North Korea were a figment of American imagination. But, he added in the most astonishing remark of the day, "here is a revolutionary government which is undoubtedly supported by the mass of the people . . . The Communists have offered China Nationalism and the land.

"There is no doubt an obligation to Chiang Kai-shek," Attlee said. "However, he is getting an old man now* and he commands aging forces. I think it is time that they, the leaders, were pensioned off, and I believe the mass of the rank and file would be glad to return to China." Attlee dismissed any suggestion that Mao Tse-tung's China was "a mere tool" of Soviet Russia: "When one is in a difficulty like that, one is apt to seek the nearest help. The U.S. revolution was very glad of the help of Republican France, though no one suggests that Washington and Jefferson approved of the Terror in Paris."/-

The Guatemala Putsch. Attlee had other complaints. He wanted an immediate meeting with Malenkov on the hydrogen bomb--"It is no good putting this thing off." And he was incensed about Guatemala. "The fact is that this was a plain matter of aggression, and one cannot take one line on aggression in Asia and another line in Central America. I confess I was rather shocked at the joy and approval of the American Secretary of State at the success of this putsch . . . There was a principle involved, and that principle was the responsibility of the United Nations. I think it was a mistake in those circumstances to try to hand it over to a regional body . . . Guatemala has left a rather unpleasant taste in one's mouth because, to illustrate the theme I was putting, it seems in some instances that the acceptance of the principles of the United Nations is subordinated to a hatred of Communism."

Socialist Attlee sat down to a flurry of congratulations from his own party. The tone of his speech had forestalled even Nye Bevan, who afterward admitted to friends, "Clem said all I would have said."

Area of Agreement. Churchill lumbered to his feet to reply: "My general impression of his speech was that it was one long whine of criticism against the U.S. ["Scandalous," cried a Labor M.P.] and, of course, of advancing the importance if not the virtues of Communist China ["Nonsense," cried Laborites]."

Then Winston Churchill began agreeing with Attlee, Bevan & Co.

"In principle one cannot conceive that China would be forever excluded from the U.N.," he said, but it cannot be admitted just now when it is still "technically" at war with the U.N. in Korea, and "when it is at this moment going to achieve a resounding triumph by the success of the stimulated war in Indo-China." Churchill agreed, too, that he did not "see any reason why at some subsequent date Formosa should not be treated in the manner" suggested by Attlee.

Though Labor members had approved of Attlee's criticisms of the U.S., they resented Churchill's suggestion that they were basically anti-American. In the debate that followed, speaker after speaker from both sides emphasized the importance of U.S.-British alliance. Cried Laborite S. N. Evans roundly: "Do not let us forget that EDC and the American bases and NATO and the hydrogen bomb are not the causes of international tension: they are the end product, the inevitable consequence of Stalin's postwar madman's dream of a new Communist Roman Empire . . . Without American military and industrial strength . . . the U.N. organization would be dead; there would be no Geneva negotiations and there would be little hope of peace anywhere in the world."

Scarcely a Bevanite raised a voice. But at week's end, Nye himself was heard. Churchill, as War Secretary in 1919, had tried to stop the Russian revolution by armed intervention and by starving it out, and now he was trying to do the same thing with the Chinese revolution, he charged. "Churchill is as stupid in 1954" as he was then, cried Bevan. "We shall bring upon us a third and last world war by not realizing that you cannot do anything with these revolutionaries except to work with them, help them through their difficulties, and not make it necessary for them to oppress their own people."

* New York's W. Sterling Cole, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, speaking to a Chicago convention of sand, gravel and ready-mixed concrete dealers. * Chiang is 66, Attlee 71. /- The France of Louis XVI helped the 13 colonies win their independence; the French revolution came six years after the 13 colonies made peace, the Terror ten years after.

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