FOREIGN RELATIONS: Winds on the Hill

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President Eisenhower's statement that the U.S. is willing to negotiate with Communist China on a cease-fire in the Formosa Strait set off high winds on Capitol Hill. Quick and bitter criticism came from Senate Republican Leader William Knowland and from Indiana's Republican Senator William E. Jenner. Retired Brigadier General Frank L. Howley, onetime (1945-49) U.S. commandant in Berlin and now a vice-chancellor of New York University, also spoke out bluntly against his old commander. Finally, at week's end, a dozen G.O.P. Senators, rallied to action by New Jersey's Senator Clifford Case, spoke up in defense of the President.

Remember Munich. Only four hours after the President had made his statement, California's Knowland summoned the press and attacked the position of his party's Administration. Said Knowland: "I find it hard to comprehend how we could enter into direct negotiations with Communist China without the interests of the Republic of China being deeply involved. History teaches us that prior experience of great powers negotiating in the absence of small allies has not reflected great credit upon the large nations, and has been disastrous to the small ones . . . I refer to Munich . . . and to Yalta . . ."

Indiana's Jenner introduced a resolution that would have committed the Senate, in advance, to reject any negotiated settlement relinquishing any territory to Communists anywhere. Cried Jenner: "The air is full of foreboding that a carefully laid plan is under way for the United States to give up, bit by bit, its commitments in the Formosa Strait . . . Like Gulliver in Lilliput, the great strength of the United States has been pinned down by men too small for it to notice . . . We must have a formula to prevent surrender or appeasement, and that formula must be so clear . . . that no hidden appeasers can pervert it."

Waging Peace. Testifying before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Old Reservist Howley attacked not only the' President's position on negotiations with the Chinese Reds but also his exchange of letters with Russia's Georgy Zhukov. Said Howley: "You don't sit down with murderers and discuss business. The longer we wait, the more awful the war will be . . . Defense is no good. It never wins. You can't even win a girl that way. A defensive policy in the long run will destroy the American spirit, among other things."

When none of his senior colleagues moved to organize support for the President's position, Freshman Senator Case determinedly penciled a statement and got eleven other Republican Senators* to join him in issuing it. "We believe that the President of the United States will act in the present framework of international deliberations with the same wisdom, good judgment and full sense of right and honor he has always displayed," wrote Case. "The President of the United States has a right and obligation to wage peace as well as to wage war . . . We now support the President's efforts . . . We know he will carry them forward with candor and without the sacrifice of this nation's most solemn obligations."