The Opposing View

The two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination paused in mid-campaign last week, drew solemn breath, and issued full-dress declarations on U.S. foreign policy. Adlai Stevenson, avoiding the quip, charged that the U.S. has "come dangerously close to losing, if indeed it has not lost, its leadership in the world." Estes Kefauver, avoiding the homily, charged that the Eisenhower Administration "has no faith in peace and no hope of achieving it in its time." Both men offered to correct the situation.

The Republican Administration, said Stevenson, speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, has denied to the U.S. public the truth about foreign policy. "We have been sold rather than told." He cited as an example Secretary Dulles' statement last year that "we have the initiative, very distinctly," in the Middle East and South Asia.

Touchy Issue. Israel, Algeria, Formosa, Indo-China, Indonesia, Kashmir, Cyprus and the whole NATO area are serious tension points, said Stevenson. "Today in the great arc from North Africa through Southeast Asia, the Russian challenge is developing rapidly and with great flexibility and force. Everywhere, people seeking a short cut to raise their own standards of life are told that the Soviet Union alone has mastered the secret of converting a peasant economy into a modern industrial state in a single generation. In the meantime we, whose position is fundamentally decent and honorable, have so mismanaged ourselves of late that we must now try to prove that we love peace as much as the Russians . . . On the one hand, we exhort the world about the virtues of the U.S. On the other hand, most of our official dealings seem to be in terms of military threats, military alliances and military values."

Stevenson clanged swords with the Administration on a perilous issue: the U.S. "should give prompt and earnest consideration to stopping further tests of the hydrogen bomb . . . As a layman I question the sense in multiplying and enlarging weapons of a destructive power already almost incomprehensible." Equally drastic was his proposal that the U.S. put greater reliance on the United Nations as the agency for passing out its economic aid, thereby removing "economic development from the arena of the cold war."

Giant Step. Kefauver donned the statesman's mantle at Los Angeles' Occidental College, blamed many a world problem on "our failure to stand up fair and square on the issue of colonialism." He, too, was concerned about the Middle East: "We delayed too long in seeking not just a cease-fire but a general settlement in the area. We waited long enough for the Soviet Union, with its offers of arms and economic aid, to become a party of interest in the Middle East . . . Thus, by our inaction, we have permitted the Soviet Union to take another giant step."

Kefauver promised, if elected President, to "reinstate not just a bipartisan foreign policy but a nonpartisan foreign policy." He urged less emphasis on "military might as our only method and our sole end in the world." As for Russia, the U.S. "must be prepared to meet all genuine offers of peaceful cooperation in the spirit in which they are given."

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