FOREIGN RELATIONS: Leaders' Responsibility

In the Saturday morning papers, Vice President Nixon read with anger wire-service and New York Times reports that the State Department's mail was running 80% against the Administration's stand on Quemoy and Matsu. Checking with top officers at State, Nixon became convinced that the stories were based on a calculated leak. Nixon quickly spoke out:

"What concerns me primarily is not the patent and deliberate effort of a State Department subordinate to undercut the Secretary of State and sabotage his policy. What is of far greater concern is the apparent assumption on the part of those who put out the story that the weight of the mail rather than the weight of the evidence should be the controlling factor in determining American foreign policy.

"If we indulge in a kind of thinking which assumes that foreign policy decisions should be made on the basis of opinion polls, we might as well decide now to surrender our position of world leadership to the Communists and become a second-rate nation. It is the responsibility of a leader to lead public opinion—not just to follow it. He must get all the facts before making a decision, and then he must develop support for that decision among the people by making the facts known to them."

So saying, Nixon prepared to make Pacific policy his central theme when he took to the political hustings this week.