FOREIGN RELATIONS: Buttressing Destiny

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The Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty has neither the verbal bark nor the military bite of its European counterpart, the North Atlantic Treaty. But it is the first formal alliance against Communist aggression to link Asian powers with one another and with the West.

Last week, when the SEATO treaty came up before the U.S. Senate, Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley declared that the Asian signatories† "have uttered a cry of faith in their own destiny, and a defiant proclamation of their own conviction in the eternal worth of the individual man." But North Dakota's Bill Langer cried: "If such a treaty had been in force among the nations of Europe at the time of the Revolutionary War, the U.S. would still belong to Great Britain." This seemed to prove that everybody except Langer has learned some lessons from George III. The vote: 82 to Langer.