THE NATION: Five Fears

The President of the U.S. came before the people this week in an effort to dispel fear. Over a nationwide radio and TV network, he calmly ticked off the misgivings of his countrymen and presented his Government's solutions to them.

The hydrogen bomb, he said, is "merely a dramatic symbol" of the nation's fears. "None of the questions that bother us today has an easy answer, and many of them have no answers at all, at least in their complete sense." The answer to these problems is to approach them as the average family does. An American family "meets its problems courageously. It doesn't get panicky. It solves these problems with what I call courage and faith, but above all by cooperation . . . Now the problems of America are the family problems multiplied a millionfold . . . The greater any of these apprehensions, the greater is the need that we look at them clearly, face to face, without fear, like honest, straightforward Americans, so that we do not develop the jitters or any kind of panic, that we do not fall prey to hysterical thinking."

The First Fear. The men in the Kremlin, said the President, may start an atomic war. The best way to still that apprehension is to consider the position of the men of the Kremlin. "The very fact that those men by their own design are in the Kremlin means that they love power. They want to be there. Whenever they start a war. they are taking the great risk of losing that power . . . When dictators overreach themselves and challenge the whole world, they are very likely to end up in any place except a dictatorial position, and those men in the Politburo know that.''

Nevertheless, said the President, "I admit that there remains a possibility they might [start a war] in a fit of madness or through miscalculation." Of all the factors that inhibit them, none is greater than their knowledge of "the retaliation that would certainly be visited upon them if they were to attack any of our nations or any part of our vital interests."

The Second Fear. Next on the President's list was Communist infiltration. "It would be completely false," he said, "to minimize the danger of this penetration. It does exist." But "this fear has been greatly exaggerated as to numbers."

The Third Fear. There is another fear "that we will use intemperate investigative methods, particularly through congressional committees, to combat that Communist penetration." But "in this country, public opinion is the most powerful of all forces, and it will straighten this matter out wherever and whenever there is real violence done to our people."

The Fourth Fear. Another thing that is nagging Americans, said Ike, is the fear of losing allies abroad. There is, he recognized, one real menace to international friendships: "The one mistake we must never make is to think of our friends . . . as being tools of ours. They are not. They are friends of ours, and if they are not friends, they are useless to us."