THE CONGRESS: Debate on Berlin

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Without advance fanfare, and with almost no audience, the U.S. Senate sparked last week to one of the most important debates on U.S. foreign policy of the 1950s. Subject at issue: the crisis of Berlin. Key debater: Connecticut's white-maned Senator Thomas John Dodd, 51, freshman Democrat making his maiden speech. Dodd aimed eloquent oratorical guns at critics who "attack our policy as too rigid and inflexible," and those who sneer at a U.S. foreign policy based on moral principles. Before he had taken his seat, he had crossed swords with such eminent senior Democratic defenders of flexibility as Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Montana's Mike Mansfield, assistant majority leader. And he had provoked top-drawer praise from foreign-policy specialists on both sides of the aisle.

The chamber was almost deserted when Lawyer Dodd. veteran of two terms (1953-57) in the House, rose at his back-row desk, laid his speech on a lectern, and speaking in a clear, strong voice began working his way through his careful logic.

Concerning Flexibility. "There is no peculiar virtue in the concept of flexibility," said he. "To me, flexibility implies compromise and concession. When applied to fundamental principles—right principles—flexibility is not only without virtue; it becomes a vice . . . Have we forgotten the lessons of the Hitler era, with its compromises, concessions and flexibilities?"

Dodd dismissed as "insipid sentimentality" the idea that "soft words, smiles and geniality" on the part of Western leaders could make possible some kind of settlement with the Soviet leaders. "Any artificial accommodation which gives the appearance of agreement without the substance is a dangerous folly that can only disarm us and send us to our doom, comforted and reassured that all is well.

"Another assumption which enjoys wide currency is the argument that a divided Germany threatens us with World War III. Such reasoning, I think, overlooks the basic source of tension in the world. World Communism, and world Communism alone threatens us today with world war. Germany can be no more than a pretext for war. If war comes this year—God forbid—over the Berlin crisis, it will come as a deliberate, calculated stratagem of Red aggression. Berlin is just another phase of their long-term plan to subjugate the free world. The Berlin question is just a pawn in their hands, and will certainly not determine, of itself, whether there shall be peace or war."

"Tragically Unprepared." "There is, however, one circumstance which could give rise to a world war that no one wanted. If we, through the appearance of division, through weakness and lack of purpose, encourage the Communists to attempt some new act of aggression, this may well trigger off a war, and a war for which we are tragically unprepared. The hazards of flexibility and vacillation are far greater than those of strict adherence to right principles."