THE NATION: Mission's Beginning

"I was brought up in the belief," wrote John Foster Dulles to the President of the U.S. last week, "that this nation of ours was not merely a self-serving society but was founded with a mission to help build a world where liberty and justice would prevail." So saying, Dulles, gravely ill of cancer, resigned as Secretary of State. Replied Dwight Eisenhower: "You have set a record that stands clear and strong for all to see." Appointed to succeed Dulles in as critical time as ever faced a nation in a role of leadership: Christian Archibald Herter, 64, longtime student of foreign affairs, onetime Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts and for two years Under Secretary to Dulles.

The U.S.'s—and the free world's—best guidance to the new Secretary of State was the welling, heartfelt tribute that poured out to John Foster Dulles, 71, from around the non-Communist half of the world. Dulles had dedicated his diplomatic career—as Republican servant of the Truman Administration in drawing the Japanese peace treaty, as an architect of the United Nations, and as Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State for more than six years—to the concept that power must be wielded resolutely so that moral values of natural law and justice may take root worldwide.

Secretary Herter took over at a time when the world looked to the U.S. for direction in the compounded crises of Berlin, Tibet, Iraq, and at a time of a rising tide of weariness with cold war that might lead the Communists to miscalculate the free world's resolution. He had no need to, and probably would not, follow the precise pattern of Dulles policies; but as long as there was a cold war to fight, he could take a guideline from the London Observer's appraisal of Foster Dulles: "We have come to appreciate how enormously important it is for the man leading the strongest nation in the world to understand the relationship between strength and morality. Without that, everything could come unstuck."