Blood & Water

New York Times Columnist (and foreign correspondent) C. L. Sulzberger was shaken with despair. "So terribly much has happened," he wrote last week, "so terribly much is happening, and all with such terrible speed, that it is difficult to foresee where we are headed. The men who fancy themselves in control of events are no longer really in control. Meanwhile, the steady thud of nuclear explosions deafens the eastern atmosphere while spinning far beyond and trembling below the rocky formations of the West."

In his moment of doubt, Timesman Sulzberger was not alone among U.S. columnists--nor for that matter, among editorial cartoonists, both in the U.S. and abroad (see cuts). The dark clouds gathering above Berlin, the deadly mushrooms sprouting above the Siberian testing ground at Novaya Zemlya all combined to give some journalists the visible shakes. Many a pundit, in fact, seemed to be out of touch with the national mood, which was one of determination in the face of freshening danger (see THE NATION).

Concession to Russia. Few seemed more flustered than the New York Herald Tribune's Syndicated Columnist John Crosby, who last October promoted himself from television reviewing to patrolling a cosmic beat: "Mr. Kennedy says Berlin is not negotiable. Why isn't it? Why isn't anything negotiable rather than thermonuclear war? Are we going to wipe out two-and-a-half billion years of slow biological improvement? Over what--Berlin? I agree with Nehru that to go to war under any circumstances for anything at all in our world in our time is utter absurdity. I certainly think Berlin is negotiable, and, as a matter of fact, Khrushchev is not even asking very much."*

The New York Post's Paris correspondent. Joseph Barry, shared Crosby's conviction that backing down on Berlin was the only thing to do. Noting that "ninety-five per cent of all traffic to West Berlin is under the control of East German officials," Barry asked: "To what order of magnitude are those who want a showdown over control of 5 per cent of a traffic, 95 per cent of which has already been conceded, willing to allow their belligerency to take them?" Barry's proposal on Berlin ("already an aging, dying city"): "recognition of the fact of two Germa-nys"--in short, concession to Russia.

Practical Nuclear Politics. On the same paper, Columnist Max Lerner was lost in admiration of "the brilliance of Khrushchev's performance in the use of nuclear diplomacy." But Lerner was fearful just the same: "The still unanswered question is whether there is not a demon driving Khrushchev and world communism which will not stop because it cannot." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Marquis Childs wondered if the "world will survive," pinned his personal hopes on the U.S.'s new disarmament agency--a small-bore institution ($10,000,000 to work with) as yet unborn. Chronically gloomy Joe Alsop warned his readers to face the unpalatable truth: "For the first time in America, one or two voices are beginning to be heard, arguing that what ought to be done is to surrender. Their arguments will not commend themselves to many Americans; yet what may be called the practical, political morals of this fearful question genuinely deserve investigation." After all, said Alsop--who does his doomsaying with a stiff upper lip--worse was yet to come: "The rule is that you must always be ready for the world to go on, even if you suspect the world may end next week."

"EverPresent Possibility." In contrast, Walter Lippmann, 72, elder statesman of the U.S. columnists, had a clear and unblinking view: "A full nuclear war would produce by far the biggest convulsion which has ever occurred since man appeared on this planet. In saying this, my object is not to add to the general creepiness. But we cannot understand the realities unless we remind ourselves that nuclear war is not just another war, but a wholly new order of violence.

"In cold blood, no government can, no government will, start a nuclear war with an equally great power. Only a moral idiot would press the button. The poor dears among us who say that they have had enough and now let us drop the bomb have no idea what they are talking about. Nevertheless, though a nuclear war would be lunacy, and is unlikely, it is an ever-present possibility. There is a line of intolerable provocation beyond which the reactions are uncontrollable. The governments must know where that line is and they must stay well back of it. This being the nuclear age it is the paramount rule of international politics that a great nuclear power must not put another great nuclear power in a position where it must choose between suicide and surrender."

* The Herald Trib did not agree. In a footnote printed below the column, the paper took angry exception to Crosby's "loosely-considered notion that surrender is the only alternative to nuclear blackmail."

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