OPINION: A Bow to the Colossus

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The British press these days tends to scold and mutter at U.S. policies, attitudes and personalities. One morning this week, the highly respected London Times struck a different note: Said the Times:

"We are no longer sure that all power corrupts, but there is no doubt it creates apprehension. Even the kindliest and most well intentioned of giants causes a certain amount of nervousness among its friends. This is hard on the giant. And the United States—having heard through the years the anxieties of its allies that it might declare war too soon or that it might not declare it soon enough; that it was too far removed from Communist armies to be able to take the Communist threat seriously or that it is now taking it so seriously in its own land that freedom and tolerance are at stake; that its overwhelming prosperity would get it dangerously out of step with the rest of the world or that any American recession would spell disaster to the free nations—may well get impatient . . .

"Two things need to be said about all this . . . The first concerns the American way of democratic discussion. In Great Britain the ultimate platform of debate is Parliament. In the United States it cannot be. The President and his 'Ministers' are not in either House . . . There is no 'question time' within Congress. As a result, discussion is forced out into the nation as a whole. Congressional committees, press conferences, television interviews, newspaper columnists—all acting within different sets of rules or without any rules at all—let loose to their hearts' content . . .

"The second point concerns America's view of her allies' reaction to all this.

Often it is strenuous and strident. The ordinary United States citizen is bound to have the greatest difficulty in drawing a distinction between the tiny minority in Britain and other Commonwealth and Eu- ropean countries who sincerely but misguidedly believe the free world can be saved without vigorous American leadership and the great bulk of each nation that thanks God for that leadership and prays only that it may make no fatal mistake.

"It may be hard on the American colossus not to be allowed one mistake, but it is a tribute to all that its tremendous power has come to mean to the free world. If there is some anxiety over the exact circumstances in which the United States would drop its first atom bomb in the next war it is because American genius and skill have now given that bomb—as Bikini has shown this month—the force of 'five hundred Hiroshimas' ... If the battle for . . . reasonable tolerance now being fought in the United States engages us strongly it is because if that country ever lost the liberal way of life democracy would be in mortal peril everywhere . . .

"It is worth saying once again that no nation has ever come into the possession of such powers for good or ill, for freedom or tyranny, for friendship or enmity among the peoples of the world, and that no nation in history has used those powers, by and large, with greater vision, restraint, responsibility and courage."