THE PRESIDENCY: The Long View

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Halfway through last week's full-dress parade of political troubles, the President fielded two press conference questions on the nation's mission in the long-range struggle with Communism. Chicago Daily News's William McGaffin, quoting from a resolution by a national meeting of Presbyterians, braced Presbyterian Eisenhower on the moral question of U.S. help to countries "where human freedom is utterly dead," for example, Latin American dictatorships.

"One of the first principles that any military man must remember in conducting this struggle," replied Ike, "is that you must put your eye on the main danger. The main danger today is imperialist Communism, or Communist imperialism. The main danger is not from people who have embraced Communism and who are not part of the imperialist group. And it is not from a local man who is exercising power, maybe even in dictatorial fashion, at this moment. Now, I do not mean to say that we should ever forsake our ideals . . . But when it comes to the great struggle in which the world is now tied up, for my part, I will keep my eye on the main one, as I concurrently try to bring improvement in the other situations."

Next question came, a little apologetically, from the Des Moines Register's Richard L. Wilson. He wanted the President's view fon Manhattan Lawyer Grenville Clark's new book, World Peace Through World Law,* which proposes setting up a world legal order by modifying the United Nations Charter. He had not read this latest Clark book, said Ike, but was familiar with other Clark writings in the same vein. Moreover, he and Secretary Dulles had discussed world-law prospects "only within the last few days. I, myself, quoting my favorite author, wrote a short chapter to conclude a book that I wrote back in 1947 or '48 [Crusade in Europe, 1948], and in it I pointed out that there was going to be no peace, there was going to be no real strength among the free world, unless each was willing to examine its simple, sole, sovereign position and to see whether it could make some concessions, each to the others, that could make a legal or a law basis for settling disputes."

Last week the President also:

¶ Regretted, in a brisk reply to Nikita S. Khrushchev's letter of last month, Russia's cold shoulder of the slow negotiation sessions with Western ambassadors in Moscow on an agenda for a possible summit meeting, patiently pledged to keep on trying to find ways to get along with the Soviets.

¶ Sent to Congress a bill of particulars on how he proposes to trade atomic military science with Britain under the relaxed secrecy act just passed by Congress. "Artificial barriers to sharing," he wrote, are "wasteful in the extreme."

¶ Suggested, in talks with Dulles about his Independence Day visit with France's Charles de Gaulle (see FOREIGN NEWS), that the U.S. could soothe French hurts over U.S. reluctance to give France basic atomic secrets by offering France an atomic-submarine engine.