A Matter of Opinion

Last week the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee asked General Mark Clark for his opinion on the cold war. Said Clark: Russia should be ejected from the U.N. and diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. should be broken off. Next day, reporters at President Eisenhower's press conference asked him if he agreed. Clark, said the President, is an intimate personal friend of more than 40 years and an extremely capable soldier. But his views are by no means the views of Ike's Administration. He is quite certain, Ike said, that the U.N. must be retained as a world forum. The task is not to scuttle it but to make it work. The U.S., he added, cannot possibly serve its own best interests by cutting off diplomatic relations with its major antagonist.*

Another reporter then asked the President about suggestions that America launch a "preventive war" against the Communist world. Ike defined preventive war as waging some sort of quick police action to avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later. Under present conditions, said Ike, a preventive attack would inevitably result in atomic retaliation, leave cities in ruins, thousands dead or mangled. That isn't preventive war, the President said, that is war, and he would not even listen to anyone who came to talk with him about it. A reporter asked if his objection to preventive war was merely military. The President said that there were all sorts of reasons, moral and political, against the theory, but it was so completely unthinkable that there was no use to discuss it any further.

The President expressed optimism about the chances of avoiding a general war. Among his reasons: fighting has stopped in Korea and Indo-China; explosive disputes have been settled in Suez, Iran and Guatemala. He said that the settlements give the free world a better chance to "build a structure that will really be impervious to Communist assault." Said he: "I believe if we do this intelligently, work effectively toward the end, there will be no war."

Last week the President also:

P: Invited his Cabinet to a sport-shirt Cabinet meeting and picnic at Camp David, the presidential weekend retreat near Thurmont. Md.

P:Told West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the Administration does not favor any bills now before Congress that would restore German property seized during World War II to that nation.

* The President's words did not still another general. James A. Van Fleet. At week's end he subscribed to Clark's views about the Russians. Said Van Fleet: "We ought to kick them out [of the U.N.]."

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