Mature Four-Year-Old

When John Foster Dulles' plane rolled up onto the ramp at Manila's International Airport, a strong wind sent a gust of oil flying from the inboard port engine. It spattered across the welcoming committee of U.S. Admiral Felix Stump, in natty whites, Ambassador Charles ("Chip") Bohlen, in a white sharkskin suit, a dozen newsmen. Said a bystander: "They suddenly looked like they'd gotten measles."

Next day, at the opening of the fourth annual SEATO Council, a spatter of trouble briefly threatened to mar the shining anti-Communist surface of the eight-nation South East Asia Treaty Organization.* Pakistan's Mozaffar Ali Khan Qizil-bash briskly demanded more U.S. aid, implied that his country might turn to the Soviet Union if its demands were not met. He warned: "Distinction must be made between friends and those who sit on the fence. While the latter are the recipients of large-scale aid from both Communist and Western countries, the former have to depend on their allies alone." More moderately, the Philippines' President Carlos Garcia and Thailand's Prince Wan Waithayakon echoed the Pakistan representative's plea for "more."

Dulles was polite but firmly realistic. In combatting the spread of Communism throughout the world, said Dulles in closed session, the U.S. has only a limited amount of money. This sometimes meant that funds which might have gone to friendly nations were better spent in helping uncommitted nations struggling to maintain their independence. He pointed out that the SEATO area received over $600 million in U.S. grants and loans last year.

Most acute concern was Indonesia. If the Communists capture Indonesia politically, Communism will have leapfrogged the SEATO line of defense on the Asian mainland. But Dulles was anxious to avoid any charge of SEATO interference in Indonesia's affairs. The final communique only stated pointedly that "there was particular danger arising from some non-Communist governments failing to distinguish between the aims and ideals of the free world and the purposes of international Communism."

Moscow had greeted the SEATO conferees with its standard warning to SEATO's Asian members that nuclear bases on their soil would expose them to "powerful retaliatory blows." It was a measure of SEATO's maturity, in its fourth year, that no member felt it necessary to reply.

*Britain, France, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. Cambodia, Laos and South Viet Nam are not members, but SEATO is pledged to protect them against aggression.

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