THE NATIONS: Flight of the Dove

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Millions signed, in confusion and innocence. "Are you for peace?" the collectors demanded. It was difficult to say no. By the fall of 1950, the Communists counted 450 million signatures, including 1,500,000 from the U.S., more Bulgarian signatures than there were Bulgarians, 243,500,000 Chinese, and so many Hungarian signatures that apparently every Hungarian down to two-and-a-half-year-olds had signed. The Peace Partisans collected thumbprints from illiterate East Indians, summoned African Negroes to peace-signing with jungle drums. Complained an Italian Communist: "During the last unit meeting, I told them I had already signed. The organizer replied: 'Peace can be served with one, two, three, or 20 signatures.' So I signed again."

But they also got signatures of many an eminent man who should have known better. Italy's Elder Statesman Vittorio Emanuele Orlando signed; so did ex-Premier Saverio Nitti. In Canada, Clergyman Alexander James Wilson signed because "I would do anything under heaven to ensure peace." In the days when the dove was really flapping, his prize victim was Henry Wallace, who pleaded that the Russians were misunderstood and that "the tougher we get, the tougher the Russians get." Others confusedly offered plans for "proving" the U.S. meant no offense. Example: Connecticut's Senator Brien McMahon's proposal for atomic disarmament in return for a $50 billion program of global aid, to include the Russians.

But the dove also fooled harder-headed men, and less obviously. For one of the dove's faces is terror. To the Russians, the peace-lovers warned, the least gesture of self-defense looks hostile. Russians were so nervous, in fact, that the slightest thing might terrify them into fighting. Such pleaders urged a peace of paralysis. In Germany Pastor Martin Niemoller and Kurt Schumacher's Socialists argued inanely that though the Communists had built the East German army to 200,000 men, the formation of a few West German battalions would provoke war.

Expanding Peace. Korea was a blow that would have killed a less resilient bird than Russia's dove. Just before the invasion, the Peace Partisans announced that more than half the North Korean population had signed the Stockholm Peace Appeal. But the redoubtable peace-lovers quickly set to work. "Mothers are to instill into their children a deep hatred of the imperialist warmongers, the murderers of Korean women and children," announced the Bulgarian Peace Congress. Early this year, something called the World Peace Council demanded that the United Nations withdraw its charge that the Chinese were aggressors.

"The growing resistance of the colonial and dependent countries to aggression," the council explained smoothly, "constitutes a natural contribution to the cause of the preservation of peace." Without a break in stride, the China Peace Committee cheerfully changed its name to the "Chinese People's Committee in Defense of World Peace and Against American Aggression."