THE NATION: The Other If

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At high noon of a misty grey day last week. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his staff went aboard the presidential Constellation Columbine and flew off to Berlin and the Big Four Foreign Ministers' Conference. It was the first Big Four Foreign Ministers' meeting since 1949 (see FOREIGN NEWS), and crystal-gazers did a brisk business on both sides of the Atlantic trying to predict what might come out of it. Most of them, in assessing the prospects, overlooked the kind of new strength Secretary Dulles was taking into it.

Dulles departed in a week which really belonged to economics, not international politics. The week's basic news lay in President Eisenhower's $65.6 billion budget and its recognition of the importance of the U.S. economic system in the overall integrity of the free world's economy. "Is the budget deflationary or inflationary?" a reporter asked Budget Director Joseph Dodge during a budget briefing conference. Dodge's answer was plain: "It's neither. It's a stabilizing budget."

If the budget committed the U.S. to economic stability, it also committed it to new defense capability. In clear dollars & cents apportionments, the President laid the base for a defense system which will give the U.S. weapons of its own choosing to maintain the peace of the world. Gone was the costly concept of balanced forces, which has hashed up every defense budget since World War II. In its place, Eisenhower emphasized the buildup of air-atomic power. This, as far as Secretary Dulles was concerned, spelled a sustained capability for massive, effective retaliation—without the'slightest hint of aggressive intent.

Said Dulles, as he departed: "I believe that no Soviet efforts can prevail against our constructive purposes and I hope that they will not be tried. If the Soviet leaders come to Berlin with a genuine desire to create conditions of peace, they will find us open-minded and cooperative, and we can together do much good for Germany and Austria and, indeed, for Europe and the world." The other, unspoken "if" was written through the budget message.

If the Russians intend merely to harass and delay, the U.S. intends to stay in the business of defending the free world—politically, economically and militarily—for a long time to come.