THE U.N. MEETING AND AFTER: CHANCES FOR PEACE

WAR IS IMPOSSIBLE

COLUMNIST WALTER LIPPMANN: WITHIN recent weeks it has beW come clear that all [the] principal [world] powers are in basic agreement on three general propositions. The first is that war, which now means thermonuclear war, is impossible. The second is that while the great powers must not wage war, they cannot now make the concessions. The third proposition is that, unable to fight and unable to settle, they must nevertheless find ways to relax the. most severe and dangerous of the tensions. Under the constraints of the military stalemate, all the principal powers are impelled to stay more or less where they are now, to live with their differences, hoping somehow to outgrow them or to outlive them.

If this is the kind of result that the governments expect and are hoping for, they might do well to say so; to make it their avowed, instead of only their implicit policy. They could then worry less than they do about the people's expecting too much. The people would know what to expect, which is nothing momentous in itself, but a lot of little things that could add up to a good deal.

NO CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM

WALL STREET JOURNAL: THE United Nations meeting was getting so bullish about "real" peace that it is probably a healthy thing the Russian bear caused a reaction to set in.

Molotov's speech contained all the familiar Soviet demands. It is possible, of course, that what Molotov said in San Francisco is not the last Soviet word.

It may be merely the initial bargaining position from which the Soviets might conceivably be willing to retreat at the summit meeting in Geneva and the subsequent foreign ministers' meetings.

Meantime his bucket of ice water should serve to dampen the optimism of even the most optimistic--in San Francisco and elsewhere. For that unintended good deed, the West can be duly grateful.

SHADOW OR SUBSTANCE?

The New York Herald Tribune's COLUMNIST ROSCOE DRUMMOND: DEAR Mr. President: Don't give us what we want--if you have the merest, lingering, flickering doubt that the Soviets are offering more the shadow than the substance of a safer world.

Yes, we all want to put behind us this terrible preoccupation with things destructive; we all want, as you remarked at the U.N., to "dismantle the terrible apparatus" of tension, mistrust and nuclear fear. But, Mr. President, don't feel that we so impatiently, so yearningly want these things that you need have any compulsion or temptation of any kind whatsoever to put your signature --at Geneva or afterward--to a commitment that could have any effect other than to strengthen the cause of freedom--of free peoples and free nations.

NO CHANCE FOR SUCCESS

CHICAGO TRIBUNE:

IT is a measure of the irony of this hollow "celebration" that Mr. Eisenhower should come to it fresh from a rehearsal for atomic panic, and that his next stop will be at a big four conference at Geneva, which recognizes the futility of U.N. as a forum for international conciliation by excluding 56 of the 60 member nations and fixes its deliberations entirely outside of the framework of U.N. As a fetish, U.N. commands enormous internationalist devotion. In 1919, the elder Henry Cabot Lodge drew a distinction between taking a suitable part in world affairs, and exposing the United States to every controversy and conflict on the face of the globe. He quoted from Browning: " 'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls. And matter enough to save one's own." Despite the oratory, this is still the most appropriate verdict on the practical chances of achieving a millennial reform of human nature.

1945 ISSUES STILL REMAIN

The New York Times's COLUMNIST ARTHUR KROCK :

THE tenth anniversary celebration at San Francisco is demonstrating the durability of the French proverb that the more things change the more they remain the same. Many of the immediate issues on which the delegates of 1945 divided have disappeared from the troubled agenda of the world. But their roots have not. Ten years ago these roots were the postwar foreign policy of Russia, the governing arrangements for territories captured by the United States and its allies from the Central Powers and Japan and the standing of the Peron dictatorship in Argentina with the other Pan-American nations. Ten years afterward they are the same. That is being proved every day.

[I] wrote from San Francisco ten years ago that "the fine professions of the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations will exist for a long time as words only." That remains true. But they have been useful and rewarding words which fused a belief among informed persons of goodwill all over the earth that a third world war could be averted, and bred in them a determination to avert it. How surely these words reflected the strength of that spirit is manifest in the very fact of the gathering at San Francisco a decade after they were published.

POSITIVE ACTS NEEDED

Britain's moderate weekly SPECTATOR :

IT was always up to Russia to signify a change in policy by certain positive acts. Some of these have now been made with startling rapidity. This is all to the good. But what we do not yet know is how far Russia is prepared to go toward a European settlement that would be reasonably acceptable to all concerned. One thing is certain: that no magic will be found at Geneva to abolish overnight the many problems which divide East and West and bedevil their relations. Another thing is essential: that the Western Powers should go to Geneva determined to stand their ground. What is dangerous is that Western statesmen and journalists should lead the public to expect too much, too soon, too easily.

SMOOTHING THE EDGES

BALTIMORE SUN:

IN San Francisco, President Eisenhower expressed the world's longing for peace. He referred, inevitably, to the meeting of the Big Four in Geneva next month. But he prudently refrained from stimulating an excess of hope by promising big results. Peace is what we want. But let us not be too discontented if the coming meeting merely succeeds in smoothing off some of the rough edges and bringing about a condition of unwar a little less anxiety-ridden than that of the last few years.

COEXISTENCE POSSIBLE

Britain's pinko NEW STATESMAN AND NATION :

THE moment platitudes about peace JL and coexistence give way to definition of specific issues, we see how complex the problems of coexistence really are. The Big Four will find agreement on disarmament and compromises over Formosa and Germany difficult enough. But if coexistence is to be more than a temporary relaxation of tension, it must also mean the extension of large areas which are less and less dominated by the great power blocs. There cannot long be coexistence between two vast, armed monolithic groups unless between them there are continental areas like India and Southeast Asia in the east, and Germany and Central Europe in the west which, though perhaps armed, are not militarily committed and not available as great-power bases.

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