Conduct & Example

Tanned and refreshed after a ten-day rest-and-think vacation at his Duck Island retreat, Secretary of State Dulles went back last week to Washington and to the riddle that has become his No. 1 preoccupation: What is happening in and to Soviet Russia and its empire as destalinization marches forward? Said Dulles, whose interpretations of shifting Soviet events are currently guiding fast-moving U.S. foreign policy: "The forces [for change] that are now working [in Russia] are going to prove to be irresistible."

Answering questions at his first postvacation press conference, Dulles foresaw "no sudden transformation" in the U.S.S.R. Said he: "It is not a matter for this year or next year, but I believe this second postwar decade will see these new forces take charge of the situation and that we can really hopefully look forward to a transformation of the international scene."

Although Dulles realizes that changing Russian policy calls for contrapuntal shifts in U.S. economic and political policy, he disagreed fundamentally with such top-flight Democrats as Adlai Stevenson and Averell Harriman, who say that Russia is winning diplomacy's chessboard battles and that the U.S. is losing. By his reckoning the Soviets have unleashed ferment and uncertainty within their sphere that are potentially fatal not to the U.S. but to Russia's own world position.

"What could the West do in order to help those forces at work in Russia?" asked a newsman. Dulles' reply was a good definition of 1956 U.S. foreign policy: "I believe that the most we can do is to adhere to the old historic American tradition of setting an example of the good fruits of freedom . . . The idea that we can help along by direct interference is, I think, a false idea. It very rarely helps to bring about changes in a foreign country to have foreigners themselves directly intervene in their internal affairs.

"But we can and do, I think, set an example which is felt throughout the world, and that tends to stimulate these processes. They would not be irresistible, in my opinion, if it were not for the fact that there is this constant demonstration going on as to how good freedom is. It is a conduct and example which catches the imagination of people, and that is why people throughout the world are constantly striving to get more freedom and more liberty."

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