Show of Purpose

The Saigon "incident" lit up an obscure and most important corner of the free world's struggle against Communism. In this corner lurked a dangerous fact: the Communists in many parts of the world had the ability to disrupt by violence U.S. efforts to help non-Communist governments and peoples. So far, the U.S. had been able to avoid (or evade) answering force with force. In the Berlin blockade it had flown over Communist force, in the Greek war it had armed and trained Greeks to meet it, and in China it had simply backed away from it.

At Saigon the Communists came close to forcing a showdown which would reveal, one way or the other, whether the U.S. was deadly serious in its intention to resist the spread of Communism. The test would not be the relatively easy one of whether the U.S. was willing to spend money, nor whether the U.S. was willing to wage all-out atomic war. It would be the narrower, harder test of whether the U.S. was willing to engage in limited military action for limited objectives, each one of less than worldwide importance, but each one of which might be, if unresisted, a step toward Communist world domination.

In two eloquent speeches (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Secretary Acheson had described the world scene which made these hard decisions inescapable. Last week, writing in United Nations World, Philosopher Bertrand Russell also achieved an eloquent definition of the free world's danger. Said he:

"The next war, if it comes, will be the greatest disaster that will have befallen the human race up to that moment. I can think of only one greater disaster: the extension of the Kremlin's power over the whole world. Fortunately the measures required to prevent the one are the same as the measures required to prevent the other; they are those that strengthen the forces on the side of human freedom. It is painful that there is such an inadequate realization of the urgency of the problem ... I wish some supreme orator could rouse all western nations to realize their danger, and the pettiness of their disputes. Whatever we do, we shall be united, but it is better to be united in a common salvation than in a common death."

To "strengthen the forces on the side of human freedom," the U.S. would have to reach a clear-cut decision as to what it was going to do to prevent the Communists from breaking up the strengthening process. Practically, that decision was more important than whether the U.S. would use a hydrogen bomb. If it burked such practical decisions as those involved at Saigon, the U.S. could be sure that a situation would arise in which a hydrogen bomb would be used--and not necessarily by the U.S.

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