NO FRIENDS, NO ENEMIES, JUST INTERESTS

Jesse Jones's Houston CHRONICLE:

IT is high time the United States quit throwing money and materials around the world like a drunken sailor and settled on a foreign policy clearly consonant with our national interests first and foremost. We pile deficit on deficit until we threaten ourselves with bankruptcy.

The British still operate on the maxim of one of their great statesmen that England has no friends, no enemies, but only interests. Would that this country had statesmen who possessed a similar regard for our own.

THE DEVIL'S FAVORITE BIBLICAL TEXTS

Columnist SIMEON STYLITES (Halford E. Luccock), in the Protestant weekly CHRISTIAN CENTURY:

WHAT would you say is the devil's favorite text from the Bible? High among the devil's preferences in Holy Writ must be the verses that can be perversely warped out of their real meaning to make nice booby traps. Here is a beauty: "For you always have the poor with you." That has been continuously twisted by knaves to induce the belief that the evil of poverty is set in the world as permanently as gravitation. Another honey, lifted out of its context and distorted, is, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." And the devil whispers behind the leaves of the Book, "There is your blessing on war." Another good one is, "Let your moderation be known to all men." The devil gets many folks to take that as their motto, many of them pulpit spellbinders, and they let their moderation be known--immoderately!

But the devil's first choice certainly must be, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." What could be more reasonable? The catch lies in dividing the "things." It develops that nearly everything that matters much is claimed by Caesar, and the leftovers for God are pretty slim. Increasingly Caesar, in the form of large business concerns, takes over everything from the up-and-coming executive, even to the kind of car he drives, the clothes his wife wears and his opinions on every subject except geometry. Caesar, as the government, increasingly says, "Your ideas are mine to determine. If you think anything except the least common denominator of conformity, you are out of line. Your conscience is my affair. I will take over your thinking on war and foreign policy. Better come along quietly." A reasonable text, "Render unto God the things that are God's"--if you can discover anything that Caesar has overlooked.

BOTH BRITISH PARTIES FAVOR APPEASEMENT

The Anglophobe New York DAILY

NEWS:

BRITAIN'S general election comes up May 26, and the Conservative and Labor (Socialist) Parties published their platform this week. Sir Anthony Eden's Conservatives utter a set of pious bromides about their love of peace and determination to avoid war. To that end, they propose to seek early talks with the Kremlin mob on easing world tensions. Nothing is said about the Kremlin mob showing evidence of good faith before such talks are held. The Conservatives hint broadly that they'll heed the Socialists' demand to cut the conscription period from the present two years. When they get around to Formosa, they urge Chiang Kai-shek to pull his troops off Quemoy and Matsu, and say: "This could lead to the reconsideration at an appropriate moment both of Chinese representation in the United Nations and the future of Formosa." That is a plain promise that if the Tories win this election they will press for a sellout of Chiang and Formosa.

The Labor platform merely goes a bit further than the Conservative. It calls for an immediate end to all atom and hydrogen bomb tests, immediate withdrawal by Chiang from Quemoy and Matsu, the "neutralization" of Formosa, and admission of Red China to the U.N. What both of these platforms add up to can be described in one word--appeasement. So, whether Tories or Socialists win this election, we'll have an "ally" dedicated to knuckling under to Red tyranny all around the world and persistently pressuring our Government to do likewise.

RUSSIA STANDS OR FALLS ON ITS FARM PROBLEM

EDWARD CRANKSHAW, political analyst for the London Observer and author of "Cracks in the Kremlin Wall," in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

THE Soviet leadership has discovered that a modern industrial society cannot be run on a subsistence economy; that it depends on a regular supply of food; that it depends on a richer supply, and cannot indefinitely operate precision machines at high speed on a diet of rye bread and pickled cucumbers. Khrushchev has staked his own future certainly, and the future of Soviet Russia probably, on his capacity to carry out the third Russian agricultural revolution.

The idea that Soviet agriculture is going through a normal stage in the transition from low-value to high-value production simply will not hold water. There is nothing normal about this highly artificial situation. Because of its insane pretensions as a global power, because of its preoccupation with spreading Communism abroad, the Kremlin has immensely added to its task. It is trying to carry out the traditional development from simple arable to complex mixed farming while, at the same time, diverting vast acreages and resources to the so-called industrial crops and cutting itself off from the free supply of agricultural machinery from abroad. It is, in a word, carrying out an industrial revolution and trying to carry out an agricultural revolution, while existing in a voluntary state of siege.

Whatever happens, it can only mean more suffering for the peasants. For many it will probably mean hunger and bloodshed. Either Khrushchev wins and reduces the rural population to the status of state serfs, or he will come to grief, as Stalin nearly came to grief before him. One thing is certain: if production cannot be increased, and soon, it will mean the beginning of the end of Soviet Communism. For, in the last resort, the agricultural crisis is not about food; it is about a theory--a theory which heaps suffering on everybody but the men who hold it.

INFORMANTS NEEDED TO FIGHT COMMUNISTS

Louis B. NICHOLS, assistant to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, speaking before a New York City forum of the Anti-Defamation League:

THE Communist Party has made a JL most vigorous campaign against informants, seeking to discredit the former Communist whose testimony is necessary to expose the Communist conspiracy. They also have another reason: they want to discourage informants and other former Communists from telling the truth. To date, 134 Communist Party leaders have been indicted for violation of the Smith Act. In each case where convictions have resulted--83 convictions [and] only three acquittals--former Communists and onetime confidential informants have supplied the evidence which led juries to conclude [that] the persons were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If they are to survive, the Communists know that the FBI and its sources of information must either retreat or be destroyed.

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