International: Mr. Jessup & Co.

U.S. diplomacy's search for a Far Eastern policy settled down leisurely for three days in Bangkok. To Siam's templed capital came America's top foreign-service officers from stations throughout the Orient. They had been summoned by roving Ambassador Philip C. Jessup and Assistant Secretary of State W. Walton Butterworth to mull over a program that might check the southerly flow of Communism at China's borders.

The 19 diplomats talked and pondered in carefully guarded privacy. They discussed the value of an anti-Communist pact among southeast Asiatic countries, agreed they should not officially propose one, hoped unofficially that the Asiatics would write one themselves. They surveyed the prospect for U.S. economic and military aid to Indo-China, Thailand and Burma, the soft underbelly of non-Communist Asia. If they came to any solid conclusion, the same was locked tightly in Phil Jessup's briefcase for the slow return jaunt, via Europe, to Washington.

The indecisiveness of U.S. diplomacy in the face of the vast crisis in Asia was all too apparent to the Americans' Siamese hosts. Jessup and Butterworth called on Siam's Premier Phibun Song-gram (see cut), and had some refreshments, but they seemed to have made no firm impression that the U.S. had advanced beyond the scouting-and-thinking stage in Southeast Asia. No one seemed to talk of action. While U.S. diplomats dallied, the Bangkok government pointedly let it be known that it would not yet follow the U.S.-British lead in recognizing the French-sponsored Bao Dai government in Indo-China. It would be too risky, in view of Communist opposition.

In Bangkok's streets the Americans could hear the pop and splutter of firecrackers. Thousands of Siam's Chinese (a vigorous, influential one-sixth of the country's 18 million inhabitants) were celebrating the Chinese New Year—and the signing of the Sino-Soviet treaty.