COEXISTENCE DEFINED

JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE HAROLD E. TALBOTT, to the National Press Club:

I AM afraid that the new phrase, "peaceful coexistence," means just this: You exist, if you are too tough to tackle. You perish, if you are weak or unready.

U.S. MUST GET CLOSE TO REDS

MRS. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, in an interview published in Paris' L'Information :

I DON'T think that the Soviets have changed their policy; I don't think that they want war, because of the terrifying character that it must have. That doesn't mean that we ought to stop having troops; they will remain necessary if only to control the organizations which are watching over disarmament. I think the Soviets want to negotiate and have a great desire to increase their commerce with us. It is certain that we will be obliged to throw ourselves into a policy of coexistence with the East. I don't agree at all with Senator Knowland, who wants us to break off relations with the USSR. We ought to have a special policy toward the Russians, in order to study the best manner of getting close to them.

EUROPE'S BASTION IS STRONG GERMANY FORMER PRESIDENT HERBERT HOOVER speaking to the German press in Bonn:

THE tensions of military conflict with Russia seem to have abated in these recent months. I believe we can have at least a gleam of hope. Moscow has made many declarations of "peaceful coexistence." I would rather they had spoken of "peaceful cooperation." It may be that they want more time to consolidate their gains. It may be that internal forces are working to restrain them from within. Some revolutions have the bad habit of devouring their young. At least their successors are less violent.

But from our many years' experience with the Communists, we must await works rather than words. We should not be lulled into the abandonment of our means of defense. The German peoples have before now been the bastion of Western civilization which deterred its destruction by the Asiatic hordes. My prayer is Germany may be given the unity and freedom which will restore her to that mission in the world.

RUSSIANS PREPARING TO FORM SUPERSTATE

DAVID DALLIN, author of Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy, in a letter to the New York Times: vYACHESLAV MOLOTOV'S repeated warnings are intended to prepare the West for a significant new move on the part of the Soviet Union. In the first years after the war it was expected, both in Russia and abroad, that the newly emerging satellite states would be incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Moscow has now arrived at the conclusion that for a time extension of the Soviet system over new lands and nations must come to a halt because of the growing power of the non-Soviet world. A middle road between the extremes of formal sovereignty and outright annexation will be found, if only in order to maintain votes in the U.N.

A new executive body with far-reaching power, together with a sort of congress, will be created. When prestige grows out of bigness and physical power, a superstate of unprecedented size which would embrace almost half of humanity is in itself a forceful weapon.

MAO BIDS TO LEAD WORLD COMMUNISM

FRANZ BORKENAU, author of World Communism, in the Jewish monthly Commentary:

STARTING as a faithful disciple of Moscow a quarter of a century ago, Mao Tse-tung was driven by Stalin's policies to seek independence for the Chinese Communist Party. He won that independence, and maintained it in increasingly open opposition to Moscow; finally the time came when Moscow had to negotiate with a man it would have preferred to use as a mere instrument. Today, in his old age, Mao has become a full and equal member of the "collective leadership of world Communism," a man no longer to be suspected in the least of "separatist" or Titoist tendencies. Mao is the largest individual figure in world Communism, and overtops any single Russian leader.

The Asiatic revolution that Russia did so much to promote and help may well be nearing the point where "white" Russia may be forced to play second fiddle to "colored" China in world Communism. The struggle for the leadership of world Communism is no longer a struggle between two state powers, but between a small group of international leaders. Mao no longer opposes China to Russia; now he is playing, in his own person, for the leadership of the whole Communist movement.

HISS MUST STILL ATONE FOR CRIME COLUMNIST DAVID LAWRENCE in the New York Herald Tribune:

ALGER HISS has paid his penalty under the law. Anybody else in the same circumstances is entitled to be accorded by his fellow men a chance to rehabilitate himself. But what will the public think about him? He never has publicly conceded that the jury was right in convicting him of perjury. In the eyes of many people therefore, he has not atoned for his sin. The jury's judgment was based to no small extent on the flat statement by Hiss that he never was a Communist. Since his trial, another witness--Nathaniel Weyl --who broke with the Communists has stated under oath that he personally saw Hiss paying Communist dues several times.

There have been many ex-Communists who have been received into re spected circles of American life but primarily because they "turned state's evidence," so to speak, and aided their own government by furnishing all the information they had about the Communist infiltration movement. Alger Hiss should be left to make his volun tary atonement for his crime, but, if he chooses to remain silent altogether, he will not soon regain, even among his friends, some of the esteem he once had.

NEW MILITARY CODE BAD FOR DISCIPLINE

THE LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL:

LIEUTENANT Charles C. Ander son has been convicted by an Army general court-martial of mistreating trainees at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and dismissed from the service.

The methods used by Lt. Anderson were not commendable. He deserved to be reprimanded for hanging one trainee by his ankles and making others perform silly or exhausting tasks. But none of the men were injured, and at the end of the two-weeks period the company had begun to resemble an actual fighting force. Thousands of American men would be alive today had their company commander whipped them into a fighting machine instead of worrying about their ice-cream letters from home and U.S.O. shows. Part of his undeserved trouble can be blamed on the recently adopted Uniform Code of Military Justice which weakens the formal disciplinary powers of company-level officers and makes it necessary to punish any offense, if it is to be punished at all, at battalion-level court-martial. We hope that Lt. Anderson will be given a full and honest hearing. We will need men like him if the guns begin firing again.

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