THE NATION: Man of the Year

• Share

(8 of 8)

For years now—in Europe at least—the Communists have made 'peace' their private property. Even though people knew what the Communists meant, the idea in their hands helped them and hurt us. It looks now as if your Mr. Dulles is going to take peace away from the Communists and restore it to its real meaning."

During 1954, as he kept working pour la paix. Foster Dulles disregarded the cries of those who would have had him take the high road toward war or the low road of appeasement. He stayed, instead, on the rutted, booby-trapped road in between, and he made some forward progress. If he has, indeed, captured the word peace for the U.S., his patience and caution were well worth the prize.

Three Tests Ahead. To 1954—5 Man of the Year, to his boss, Dwight Eisenhower, and to the people of the U.S. whose destiny they hold, 1955 will bring three critical tests. The immediate problem is the French reaction to the Paris agreements. Somehow, the rearmament of Germany will begin in 1955, whatever stand France takes. The other two tests facing U.S. foreign policy in 1955 are more serious.

After two years in office, the Eisenhower Administration has failed to plug the yawning gap in its foreign policy—the place where history, logic, opportunity and the poverty of the world cry out for U.S. leadership on a free worldwide front of economic advance. In the year's closing months, the President, despite strong opposition in his own Cabinet, seemed to be moving toward a positive policy for liberalized world trade and stimulated production. Dulles favors such a program. But he has been too busy with the international politics of his job to give it his own leadership; it has little chance of success unless he fights for it—in Washington and abroad.

The second challenge of 1955 is even bigger. Almost certainly, there will be a top-level conference between the Western powers and the Russians. Whatever the paper headed "Agenda" may say, the main business before the meeting will be agreement on atomic weapons. If the U.S. submits to crippling limitation on its power of massive atomic retaliation, it must get in return an equivalent enforceable limitation on the Communist suneriority in land armaments and the techniques of subversion.

The prospects of agreement are not bright. But they are less dark than they were before a practical missionary of Christian politics began his extraordinary year of work.

* Adams' fullest staff: eight clerks.