MATSU-QUEMOY DEFENSE NOT MORALLY JUSTIFIED

A statement issued by DR. REINHOLD NIEBUHR, Yale's DEAN LISTON POPE (see RELIGION) and 60 other members of Christian Action, a national organization of Protestants:

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER has often stood for patience and moderation as well as firmness in the Far East, even without the support of some of his chief advisers and against the pressures of those who hold that the United States could and should recapture the China mainland for the Chinese Nationalist Government. But [we] are deeply troubled by Mr. Dulles' speech in which he warned that under certain circumstances the U.S. would employ military force to defend Quemoy and Matsu.

We are deeply sympathetic with the concern that the free world not withdraw and acquiesce in the face of Communist show of strength in the Far East. Yet the position implied by Mr. Dulles' threats is highly questionable. Such a moral justification is seriously lacking in the case of the off-shore islands. We hold that the assumption [that the islands must be kept as possible steppingstones to the reconquest of the China mainland] is an illusion which has only explosive potentialities. The more reasonable place to draw the line of the defense perimeter of the free world is around Formosa and the Pescadores.

We recognize that there may be an intentional ambiguity in U.S. policy with respect to these islands. The argument is that it is politically advantageous to keep Peiping guessing and politically necessary to maintain the morale of the Chinese Nationalists and to placate their extreme American supporters. We believe, nevertheless, that keeping our allies and worldwide public opinion guessing and fearful of our intentions is too great a price to pay for this doubtful political advantage. The strength of the free world is based upon genuine cooperation and mutual trust among the free nations, not upon our ability to confuse and frighten the Communist bloc or to bolster the illusions of the Chinese Nationalist Government.

U.S. MUST OPEN MARKETS TO JAPAN

J. D. ZELLERBACH, president of Crown Zellerbach Corp., before a meeting of the American Paper and Pulp Association in New York:

As a former protectionist, I want to explain why I have become convinced that the United States urgently needs to liberalize its foreign trade policy. We cannot hope to survive as free men--much less operate prosperous businesses --unless the Communist drive for world domination is checked. We cannot check Communist imperialism without strong allies. And we cannot have strong allies over the long haul unless the free world is liberated from crippling and divisive trade restrictions.

I have seen our trade restrictions undercut our foreign policy many times while representing the United States abroad. In Italy I had the task of stimulating production and foreign trade so that the Italians could earn their way in the world, so that they could keep a democratic government, so that they could contribute troops and weapons and bases to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Then I have seen us raise tariffs to prevent the Italians from selling us some of the very products we had urged them to make and export to us, so they could earn dollars to buy needed American products from us.

We want the Japanese to limit their trade with Communist China for strategic reasons. But to compensate for its former large trade with mainland China, Japan must find greater outlets in the free world. We must open our markets to Japan or risk the greatest industrial nation in Asia slipping into the Communist orbit--either by the sheer necessity of trading with the Chinese Communists, or by growing economic distress leading to internal Communist subversion.

We have come to the crossroads--we must make a choice now whether we will lead the free world forward to widening markets and expanding production, or permit it to lapse into intensified economic nationalism and political division.

REDS WANT TO DRIVE U.S. FROM EURASIA

The London ECONOMIST:

ONE of the characteristics of the new [Russian] regime is the jettisoning of the suave manner of the Malenkov period. Now the Russians are back at the familiar task of making simple propaganda for simple minds out of the whole disarmament question. It should now be clear for all to see that in Soviet eyes questions such as West German rearmament are secondary to the central aim of driving the Americans out of the whole Eurasian continent.

And when one comes down to this bedrock, it may be expected that the West will show a heartening degree of unity; few, even among the Bevanites, the German Social-Democrats and the French neutralists, really want to see the Americans retire to Kansas while the Russians retain their grip on Eastern Europe. Western leadership, then, faces a dual task. The point has to be patiently and consistently put across to the Russians that NATO and all other arrangements under which American forces provide a shield for smaller countries are vital to western defense (and to defense only). Meanwhile the western people themselves have to be reminded that the Communist objective is, and was throughout the Malenkov era, nothing less than domination of a Eurasia uncluttered by American presence or American power.

NEEDED: GREATER ACCESS TO ATOMIC INFORMATION

FRANCIS K. McCUNE, head of General Electric Co.'s Atomic Products Division, testifying before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy:

IF industry is expected to plan its own future course in atomic work, it clearly requires broader access to information. Without adequate information industry cannot be expected to show real initiative. This is a point of the most crucial importance to the success of the atomic program.

The more widely atomic information is distributed the greater the risk will be that some information will get into unfriendly hands. The justification for accepting such risks lies in confidence in the potentialities of American industry. It rests on the belief that the information which must be declassified will produce greater advances by American industry than the increased "leakage" of information will produce behind the Iron Curtain. I submit that this belief is justified by the past performance of American industry.

ATOMIC WEAPONS LESSEN WAR RISK

Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE

SOMETHING of tremendous significance has emerged lately which can best be described as a confidence that World War III is not imminent nor likely to occur in the next few years.

There is evidence that some time within the last few months both [the U.S. and Britain] came to the conclusion that it was safe to maintain conventional armaments at present levels or even on a reduced basis because the progress on the nuclear weapon side had become almost fantastic in its potentiality.

Briefly, the concept is that Soviet Russia not only will not venture to start a big war but will restrain her allies, including Red China, from doing so.

As information about the potential power of the new weapons becomes available to all governments, the probability of a conflict is reduced almost to the vanishing point.

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