Backward Step

If there was one lesson that U.S. negotiators should have brought home from the unexpected successes of the NATO conference in Paris, it was that the future health of NATO depends on the vigor of the U.S. response to the Soviet Union's military and diplomatic challenges. One night last week President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles took to network television to report to the nation on the NATO conference. Their report showed neither vigor nor urgency, was poorly conceived, indifferently staged and dully performed.

The program was cast in a mold of informality, with Ike and Dulles discussing the Paris sessions, but it actually showed the President of the U.S. as master of ceremonies for the Secretary of State's featured role. Ike spoke briefly at the beginning and end of the program, reading from a rough text which he had written out during the afternoon. Said he of the NATO meeting: "There was one basic purpose implicit in every discussion and debate of the conference. That was the pursuit of a just peace. Not once during the week did I hear any slightest hint of saber-rattling or of aggressive intent. Of course, all of us were concerned with developing the necessary spiritual, economic and military strength of our defensive alliance."

Two-Sided Proposition. Then, while Dulles took over for 20 minutes the President sat in wan profile, self-consciously fiddling with his glasses or staring in painful attentiveness over Dulles' shoulder.

Dulles spoke informally from notes, but without achieving the desired effect of spontaneity. His major points: 1) although the U.S. is more than willing to go along with its NATO allies in talking disarmament with Russia, it still insists on the points of principle and procedure that would make U.S.-Russian disarmament a two-sided proposition; 2) the U.S., in its determination to match and surpass the Soviets in the missile race, can not afford to neglect such equally important phases of the cold war as foreign aid and liberalized foreign trade. The decisions of the NATO conference, said Dulles, add up "to quite a lot, assuming, of course, that they are carried out with vigor."

"Tired, Aging Men." Such steadfast Republicans as Senate Minority Leader William Knowland and New Jersey's H. Alexander Smith defended the Eisenhower-Dulles report as "informative" and "positive," but from the Republican-Portland Oregonian came a bitter criticism of "the spectacle of two tired, aging men talking about the gravely compromised half-measures which bind and separate America from its European allies." Among Democrats, Montana's Mike Mansfield wished the report "had spelled out the sacrifices the people will be required to make in the years ahead." Harry S. Truman, holidaying in Manhattan, snapped during an early-morning walk that he was "just about as thoroughly bored with Mr. Dulles as the President was." Truman also said that the television report had been "fixed up by BBDO"--which he defined as "bunko, bull, deceit and obfuscation." *

"The surprising reaction in Washington," wrote New York Timesman James Reston, "was that the two leaders made [the NATO meeting] sound worse than it really was." Even Columnist Doris Fleeson, whose ardent Stevensonian viewpoint would ordinarily give little reason for applauding anything done by Republican Dwight Eisenhower in Paris, noted that the Eisenhower-Dulles speeches "made the Paris results seem less effective than they actually were. For it is no mean feat to hold a defensive alliance together when an aggressor seems to be going strong. This was achieved in Paris against odds." Far from using the NATO conference as a springboard for progress, the television report was a faltering step backward.

Last week the President also:

P: Presided over Christmas dinner with the family, including grandchildren. Main item: a 42-lb. turkey.

P:Ordered Budget Director Percival Brundage to release a total of $177 million in appropriations previously frozen by the White House for commitment under the omnibus housing act of 1957. The act provided a total of $1,740,000,000 for various home-building programs, a sum that President Eisenhower declared high at the time. With recession causing concern (TIME, Dec. 30), the decision was made to pump the money into the economy. Biggest item: $107 million to help pay for mortgages on armed forces family housing.

P: Appointed Florida's moderately conservative former (1929-33) Governor Doyle Elam Carlton, 70, to the new Civil Rights Commission to fill the vacancy left by retired Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed (TIME, Dec. 16). Says Democrat Carlton, who keeps his sentiments on segregation largely to himself: "I will be sitting, in effect, as a judge and jury, and I want to pass honestly and fairly on every matter." Justice Reed's commission chairmanship went to Vice Chairman John A. Hannah, 55, president of Michigan State University.

P: Ordered an aircraft carrier, two destroyers, a seaplane tender and a group of Navy planes to Ceylon to aid 300,000 people left homeless as a result of disastrous floods.

P: Accepted the resignation of South Carolina's former Representative James P. Richards as special presidential assistant for the Middle East. Richards' primary job--that of selling the Eisenhower Doctrine to the Middle East--was done. In his letter to President Eisenhower, Democrat Richards paid tribute to Republican Dulles: "My work under the immediate direction of the Secretary of State, during this trying period of our foreign relations, has only increased my confidence in his courage, wisdom and integrity."

P:Departed for a holiday-season visit to his farm at Gettysburg, where he planned to combine rest with work on his State of the Union message.

* Manhattan ad agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, as though cut to its professional quick, hastily disclaimed any responsibility for so much as a comma of the Eisenhower-Dulles effort.

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