JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

RENE MACCOLL, in the London DAILY EXPRESS, after a swing around the U.S.:

THE mood of America has changed completely since February. In one of the greatest transformations that even the mercurial U.S.A. has ever provided, America today is calmer, more moderate --and more quietly self-confident than at any time since the war.

Gone the jitters which formerly hung in the rather feverish atmosphere. Gone the talk of "inevitable" war and calamity which until the other day was apt to lace nearly every conversation. Gone the talk of recessions, and depressions just around that corner. Today the mood everywhere is mild. But it is the mildness of the strong man who has little to fear.

Often in the past, Washington has appeared out of step with public opinion on vital questions. But today there is striking unanimity of opinion between Americans and their Government on the great issues of the time.

Prosperity is vast and growing vaster. Nobody seems to be left out of it. Eisenhower is very much to the people's liking. By hard work, drive, and an elasticity of approach rather rare in a professional soldier, he has fashioned himself into a highly effective President. His honesty and good will, as well as his strength, are there for all to see. American power and prosperity are a familiar story. But the miracle is within the mind. The giant has lost his jitters.

EISENHOWER HAS BROUGHT NEW ERA OF GOOD FEELING

Columnist JOSEPH ALSOP:

ANYONE who now takes stock of the national situation must first of all write down 1955 as the year when the Eisenhower administration found itself, and the American political process got back on the rails. It was like discovering a new country, to return to America after an absence of six months. The venom, the suspicion, the hatred that had so long been poisoning American political life, were purged and gone. The sewers of our politics were no longer running in the streets.

The Congress, after all but abandoning legislation in favor of investigation, had once again become a legislative body. Public debate, after remaining for years at the level of a mudslinging exchange of personal accusations, had once again become reasoned and sober and factual.

Partly, this immensely healthy change in the tone of American politics has to be attributed to Democratic Congressional leaders bent on proving their responsibility. Yet the key figure is still President Eisenhower. For the Democrats would never be so much on their good behavior if they did not feel a respect almost approaching awe for the President's standing before the country. And the President himself was the first to set the new tone in which the other parties to our political dialogue are at last responding to him.

Eisenhower, then, has got what he wanted from the first. He now presides over a new and desperately needed era of good feelings.

PUBLIC POWER FIGHT A GOOD 1956 ISSUE

Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE:

WHAT constitutes a good political issue--and which party is right in appraising the mood of the American people? This question has just been crystallized by the attitude taken by both parties toward the problem of government ownership of all electric power facilities. In Britain the public ownership fever, known as "nationalization," has about run its course. There are evidently leaders of the Democratic party who think they can strike pay dirt in the issue of public power. What needs to be re-examined is how far the Democratic party wants to go in committing itself to government ownership as a principle in national policy. The Democrats are toying openly with ideas of state socialism--they are still the radical party in America--and a showdown on such issues would be a healthy thing to bring about in the 1956 Presidential and Congressional campaign.

THE U.S. UNDERSELLS ITS ECONOMIC SYSTEM

The National Catholic Welfare Conference's MSGR. GEORGE G. HIGGINS:

AMERICAN management would be well advised, if only for the sake of America's reputation abroad, to distinguish more clearly in its propaganda between "capitalism" on the one hand and the present-day American economic system on the other. "Capitalism" has a bad reputation in Europe and Asia, deservedly so in many cases. Consequently, to advertise and to glorify our own economic system as "capitalism," without at the same time making a lot of distinctions and sub-distinctions, is, again, to play into the hands of the enemy. The American system has a number of weaknesses and imperfections, but surely it is much better in every respect than "capitalism" in the sense in which that word is understood or misunderstood in many parts of the world. It ought to be possible to make this point clear in our propaganda.

But in a recent pamphlet distributed by the United States Information Service in France, under the title "The American Economy, Beyond Capitalism," the statement is made that the American system "is no longer capitalism." Shortly after, the U.S.I.S. hastened to explain to the press that what the pamphlet really meant to say was not that capitalism is dead in the United States, but merely that the United States has evolved a new and dynamic form of capitalism to replace the type we knew in the 19th century.

We are willing to settle for that if it is the best, or the most, that can be said by a government agency in the political climate of 1955. But let's say it loud enough for the rest of the world to hear.

DESEGREGATION MEANS MORE RACIAL CLASHES

The JACKSON DAILY NEWS, Mississippi's second largest daily:

TELL the average Northerner that if integration is made effective in public schools, it will be followed by demands for integration in churches, in fraternities, in society--in other words, complete social equality--and that Northerner will give you a smile of derision or unbelief.

Nevertheless, that is what the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is even now demanding, and it is backed in the demand by the ever-increasing active forces of the Communist party.

Northerners who can see no harm in white and colored children going to the same schools ought to be looking ahead on this question. For them it will be as serious as it now is in the South--that is, unless they also favor intermarriage of races and complete mongrelization. The Negro is rapidly becoming a Northern as well as a Southern problem, even if Northerners do not recognize the fact.

In Harlem alone there are now more Negroes than in any Southern city.

The cold truth about complete integration, both North and South, is that it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to the Negro race. It would mean little Negro children coming home from school with complaints of being ignored, insulted, abused or beaten by white children. It would mean frequent racial clashes, not merely among children, but with adults of both races taking the active parts.

In days to come, the law-abiding Negroes of the nation will have good cause to curse the United States Supreme Court, as now constituted, for its segregation decision.

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