THE NATIONS: The Question

A world tormented almost to indifference by the international welter of civil strife, rioting, pillage, expropriation, the collapse of social and political tradition and the failure of the nations' leaders to achieve peace found one fact indisputable last week: in Yugoslavia Marshal Josip Broz Tito's war planes had shot down two unarmed U.S. transports (one in flames) and killed four American citizens.

As all eyes were fixed on Washington and Moscow (for most men recognized that these capitals were the political poles of the electric situation), the U.S. acted swiftly. By week's end, there were still rumblings in a still overcast international sky. But the immediate crisis seemed to have passed.

It had been brief, but in the history of the 20th Century it might prove to be a historical milestone. Far more important than the crisis itself was the question it raised for all men to read in smoke and flame: can that part of the world in which human freedom takes precedence over the powers of government live at peace with police states?

In raising this fundamental question, so that none could evade it, the four Americans who died, needlessly, in time of peace, on a routine mission, may in Lincoln's words have laid a costly sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.