FOREIGN RELATIONS: Decision & Danger

(See Cover)

It was New Year's on Formosa, the beginning of the Year of the Sheep. All last week, places of business, including the newspapers, were closed in observance of the holiday. Along the streets of Taipei (pop. 500,000) firecrackers popped among the red-brick buildings from dawn until dusk. Pedicab coolies in conical straw hats and straw raincoats lounged by their carriages, inspecting their bare toes as they waited to take Formosan families on New Year's calls. A soft fog ringed the lush, green hills, throwing a grey blanket over the palms, the camphor trees and the sweet-potato patches.

Thirty-two miles to the northeast, at the harbor city of Keelung (pop. 150,000), the 13,600-ton cruiser Helena, flagship of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, lay at anchor. Aboard the Helena, the atmosphere seemed as cheerful as that ashore. The fleet's commander, a quiet, three-star admiral named Alfred Melville Pride, one of a long line of seafaring Prides (see box), went about his daily routine with casual efficiency. The mood aboard ship was one of unruffled waiting. Vice Admiral Pride and his topflight staff had events well enough in hand so that he could tip back in his chair, grin and crack: "Everybody's heaving around, and the admiral hasn't a thing to do.""

Beneath the calm on Formosa and the studied casualness on the Helena was the knowledge that the land and the ship and the fleet lay in the core of a diplomatic tornado that was swirling around the world. Two hundred and fifty miles away, the mangled bodies of Chinese Nationalists killed in the Communist Chinese attack on the islet of Yikiang were tossed ashore by the turbulent waters of the East China Sea. There was little calm, outward or inward, in Washington or in London or in the United Nations headquarters at New York. In the world's capitals, last week was recognized as a time of decision and danger.

"Clearly & Publicly." The week of decision began when clerks in the U.S. House and Senate stood up to read a special message from President Eisenhower. Chinese Communist attacks on Nationalist-held islands off the coast of China, said the President, were seriously imperiling the peace and security of the world. He asked Congress to "clearly and publicly establish the authority of the President" to use U.S. forces as he deems necessary for the protection of Formosa and the Pescadores. He wanted that authority to be broad enough to cover defense of "related territories."

There was hardly a lawmaker on Capitol Hill who thought that Dwight Eisenhower needed to ask for that authority; he already had it. But the President knew that the action he was about to propose could, although he did not believe it would, lead to a large-scale war. He wanted to demonstrate national unity behind his policy; he wanted to keep his 1952 campaign promise that he would submit to Congress any proposed steps to use U.S. forces in combat.