FOREIGN RELATIONS: The Ultimatum Itch

Fighting small fires all over the world while the arsonist sat back unharmed was a prospect that bothered many Americans. What had flitted across their minds was put into words by Harold E. Stassen.

"Clearly, we cannot permit the other nations of the world to be picked off one at a time with the weakest and ripest falling first," he said in a radio broadcast. "But if, following Korea, the Kremlin directs an attack of the Chinese Communists down into Indo-China or into Burma, or of the Bulgarian Communists into Greece or into Turkey, or of the East German and Polish Communists into Western Germany . . . and if the U.S. attempts to meet each of those aggressions where they occur ... we will become a giant pinned to the earth . . .

"Do not [the] facts mean that it must be American policy that if further aggressions occur at any point in the world by these Communist imperialist forces, we shall hold the Kremlin strictly responsible? . . . Should we not make it clear [such attacks] will mean that war will come to Moscow, to the Urals and to the Ukraine?" The U.S. Congress, in a resolution, should lay such an ultimatum before Moscow, said Stassen.

Pundit Walter Lippmann plunged into the argument. The kind of ultimatum demanded by Stassen, wrote he, could not possibly be drafted in terms that were clear and unmistakable. "An ultimatum is the most serious act in diplomacy," he said. ". . . An ultimatum which could bring on a universal war [should not] even be considered unless there is preponderant power to enforce it. That no such power exists is evident . . . To think that nations which are undefended now are now in a position to issue an ultimatum to the strongest military power on earth seems to be a good deal less than statesmanlike."