Patience

Before a boundaryless map of One World, the 16-months-old United Nations General Assembly met in New York this week to try a few more toddling steps toward peace (see INTERNATIONAL). The atmosphere was heavy with uncertainties after the haggling at Paris.

To the U.S. came the diplomats of 51 nations, the representatives of four-fifths of the world's people. Most important among them was the top messenger of Russia's policy, Vyacheslav Molotov. He arrived in capitalistic high style--on the first voyage of the giant British liner Queen Elizabeth as a peacetime luxury ship (see BUSINESS).

To Foreign Minister Molotov and the others was given a crystal-clear exposition of U.S. attitudes and intentions. In a dispassionate, soberly frank speech last week, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes told Russia that its own attitude of distrust and its belief in the inevitability of World War III were at the root of the "continued if not increasing tension" between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

To the U.S. people, as well as to the diplomats, Jimmy Byrnes said that the "development of sympathetic understanding" between the two great powers was "the paramount task of statesmanship." That, he pledged, was the course of a "patient but firm" U.S. policy.

"Veto or No Veto." But "every understanding requires the reconciliation of differences and not a yielding by one state to the arbitrary will of the other." He called for Russia, on its part, to abandon "false and misleading propaganda" and the arbitrary use of its veto. Finally he called on Moscow to join with the U.S., "veto or no veto, to defend with force if necessary the principles and purposes" of the U.N. Charter. (Foreign Minister Molotov offered no comment.)

To the U.S. people Secretary Byrnes's speech was a sharp reminder, in the midst of the congressional election campaign, that the nonpartisan business of making a peace was quite as important as the meat shortage and partisan squabbles. Another pointed reminder, and a warning, came from the man who had done most to make U.S. policy nonpartisan--Michigan's Republican Senator Arthur H.Vandenburg.

He echoed Jimmy Byrnes's dislike of "too tough" as an inaccurate description of the U.S. attitude. The bipartisan policy, he said, was "friendly firmness," and it was a policy of peace, not of war. Said Senator Vandenberg:

"We should be wholly frank with Russia--say what we mean and mean what we say.. . . That is why we must have, so far as self-serving politicians will permit, a united American foreign policy, supported generally by Republicans and Democrats alike, so there will be no delusion abroad that we are vulnerable because we are at the mercy of internal divisions."*

His warning: the U.S. policy would succeed--"unless it is scuttled here at home."

"Dissipate Distrust." To these official pleas for understanding and patience came another from the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. In a 4,000-word statement it laid down its formula for avoiding war: tolerance on both sides. It urged Russia to abandon methods of intolerance such as "purge, coercion, deceitful infiltration and false propaganda shielded by secrecy." And it bluntly asked the U.S. to renounce war-won bases, an act which would be compatible with a "policy designed to dissipate distrust."

For every U.S. citizen these utterances should have been ample proof that there was no easy, ready formula for speedy agreements. Said Arthur Vandenberg: "As much as anything, I am concerned about our own psychology, the continued reiteration of our congenital impatience. Our frame of mind [toward U.N.] is akin to a mother's worrying because her two-year-old isn't ready for high school."

*Henry Wallace's comment: "I am more certain than ever that we must adopt a real American foreign policy."

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