Foreign News: No Time for Laughter

While the Communists looked on and sometimes laughed, the West spent most of the week stepping on each other's toes, complaining, apologizing and explaining themselves to each other.

An overexcited and incomplete report of Dulles' press conference (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) came to France's Georges Bidault in the midst of an afternoon session. Set-faced and grim, Bidault accosted the U.S.'s Under Secretary of State Walter Bedell Smith the minute the session was over. "What does this mean?" he demanded bluntly. Smith hastily telephoned Washington for a full transcript of Dulles' press conference.

Even after reading it a few hours later, Bidault was only partly reassured. Said one French diplomat: "When you said Korea was outside your security line, the Communists attacked. What might they do if they believe you will not fight for Indo-China? We had felt that the U.S. was resolved to save as much as possible of Indo-China. Now how can we feel? Only that you will let it go."

Native Wit. It was only the first blow of the week for Bidault. Bidault had sworn that if the Laniel government fell, he would remain at Geneva as representative of a caretaker government even if he had "to go back to France every two or three days and stump the country" for his policy. The actual vote (see below), with its majority of two, was almost as bad.

When he could, Bidault stood off the cocky Communists with the only weapon left to him—native wit. When Tep Phan, Foreign Minister of Cambodia, denounced the Viet Minh invasion of his country and produced a telegram reporting the murder of three Cambodians by Viet Minh rebels, Molotov was scathing. "We have heard about this telegram, but we haven't seen it," he declared scornfully. The Cambodian minister waved the telegram aloft. "Now we have seen it, but we still haven't read it," snapped Molotov, to the laughter of the Communist delegations.

Bidault stood up. "When men are dying, we should not be laughing," he said. "I should like to point out that the laughter did not come from the free nations' benches." The laughter stopped abruptly. Amid dead silence, Molotov arose and admitted sheepishly: "I agree with the French Foreign Minister."

One-Sided Respite. Into the vacuum left by the collapse of the U.S.'s hastily laid plans stepped Britain's Anthony Eden. To the Communists' charge that Russia and China are the sole champions of Asian nationalist aspirations, Eden pointed out that since the war, India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon have all achieved independence from Britain. "Therefore I resent and reject the suggestion that we ignore or oppose the tide of national feeling in Asia, and I ask: Where is there real national freedom—in Colombo or in Ulan Bator [capital of Outer Mongolia], in Delhi or in Pyongyang?"