THE NATION: The Misfire

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Burning Interest. Despite the reservations, the statements by Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles were promptly, predictably interpreted around the world as a U.S. "suggestion" and even a "proposal" for a ceasefire. Did this attitude, plus the abandonment of the offshore islands, mean that the U.S. had changed its China policy? Was the U.S. accepting the British view that Formosa should be neutralized? Had it accepted the Communist regime as permanent and abandoned the persistent hope of free Chinese everywhere that a non-Communist government might some day return to power on the mainland?

High officials of the Eisenhower Administration took pains, in off-the-record conferences, to insist that the U.S. had not changed its policy. In fact, they said, Eisenhower and Dulles did not really expect a cease-fire to come about. (Said one high official: "Oh, it's always a poker game, but it is not going to happen.") They merely wanted to maintain the U.S. position, before the world, as a proponent of peace through the United Nations. This effort is especially directed at Europeans who profess to believe that the U.S. is spoiling for a fight with the Communists in Asia.

Before the week was out there were many indications that the U.S.'s calculated risk in the field of propaganda had misfired. In Asia, where the shooting is in progress, the burning interest is not in who is for peace, but in who is going to win. Thus, Asians were quick to realize that a cease-fire would leave the Chinese Nationalists with no hope for the future. Talk alone had done at least part of the damage that a cease-fire would do: it had demoralized U.S. allies in Asia.

This demoralization was obvious in the reaction on Formosa, where Eisenhower's statement had the effect of a major political event. Said a merchant who has been trying to get his family out of Shanghai for the past year: "It looks like the wisest thing for us is to go back instead of getting our families out." Said an editorial commentator in Sing Tao Jih Pao, an anti-Communist newspaper in Hong Kong: "After Free China has suffered this disaster [neutralization], what Asian nation will believe in the reliability of the U.S. as an ally?"

Places to Fight. Less than two years ago, the free world was holding out a three-pronged resistance against the Communists in Asia: in Korea, in Indo-China and around Formosa. Truces without victory removed the prongs in Korea and Indo-China. Now the Communists are hacking at the one prong that remains. Although Yikiang and the Tachens may not be very important as real estate, they are important in politics. Every Communist gain adds to their appearance of success and strength; in Asia, appearance can become success and strength. Asians were asking: If neither Korea nor Indo-China nor Yikiang nor the Tachens is the place to fight the Communists, is there such a place?