The Greater Danger

In a week in which the Administration was under heavy fire from its own leaders in Congress, it remained for a Democrat to speak up in defense of a key article of Dwight Eisenhower's foreign-policy faith: the touchy matter of extending aid to Communist Poland, which has established its independence from Moscow but is still within the Soviet orbit.

The speaker was Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, a much-talked-about contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. In a speech to a Jefferson-Jackson Day fund-raising dinner in Omaha, he called on the U.S. to help Communist Poland maintain its independence by granting the Poles' request for $200 million in U.S. agricultural surpluses (TIME, March 25). And in making his point, Democrat Kennedy took on the argument advanced by Senate Republican Leader Bill Knowland that such aid might strengthen the Communist bloc.

"I realize the dangers involved," he said, "[but if the U.S. rejects the Poles], we will either be forcing a suffering nation into a fruitless revolt or we will be forcing the Polish government to again become hopelessly dependent on Moscow. If we fail to help the Poles, who else in Germany, Czechoslovakia, or anywhere else behind the Iron Curtain will dare stand up to the Russians and look westward?"

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