Acclaim & Misgivings

As the battle smoke and bitter cries of the crisis gave place last week to the buzz of debate, the world's gaze and the world's hope were directed toward Washington as rarely before. Hungarians, almost unreasoningly, sought the U.S.'s solace and help, some believing that the mere appearance of G.I. paratroopers in Budapest would have sent the Soviets scuttling. Arabs cheered the Stars & Stripes that fluttered from U.S. cars in Cairo and Port Said. Asians talked of Eisenhower's "honesty and integrity." The U.S., dedicated to freedom for all, was surrounded by staring millions who waited upon what it said, did, planned and thought.

In a sense, the prestige of the U.S. rose as that of its rivals fell. The myth of the Moscow mass man and Marxist benevolence lay buried in the rubble of Budapest, which Pope Pius XII called "the bloodstained proof of the ends to which atheist Marxism leads." The British and French, who had sought to make policy by reviving 19th century gunboat diplomacy, had temporarily lost their credentials for world statesmanship. But in another sense, the U.S. had earned the new regard by its own conduct. In time of crisis and threat of World War III, President Eisenhower had cast U.S. policy in a role to reflect the U.S.'s basic character--its insistence on justice, its desire for friendship, and its hatred of aggression and brutality.

Along with its new attention and acclaim the U.S. was confronted last week with searching questions that reflected, perhaps, the fact that one phase of its world role was passing and another beginning. In London the Economist expressed the best-intentioned British misgivings: "The charge that does stand, more accusing than ever, is that the Eisenhower Administration, while having a policy towards the world, has consistently lacked policies for particular parts of it. It has had an attitude, but no solutions--a diagnosis, but no remedies ... If the determination now reported from Washington to wrest out of the present smoldering embers a permanent settlement of Middle Eastern frontiers and refugees had been pressed before with wisdom and a consistent resolve, how different might our predicament have been today."

Such misgivings emphasized the need for better long-range policy planning, which the President recognized last week when he began to realign his foreign-policy staff. It remained for doubting friends to realize that a U.S. that acted with the sureness displayed since the start of 1956'$ crisis would never abandon its world mission for order and justice.

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