Evening star., 1946-10-05
Mr. WuIIuce's S War

the character OF Henry A. Wallace,S
war with Bernard NJ. Baruch is to
draw up, In the style OF the famous
Smyth report on atomic energy. a
set of enumerated fact-paragraphs.
"a In his celebrated July letter to
President Truman. Mr.. Wallace de-
voted the major part of his comment
on the atom to what he described as
"a fatal defect" in the American
plan for international control.
(2) This fatal defect" he said,
was that our plan, with Its provision
for effectuating control by separate
stages would (a) bind other ma
tions to suspend all military atomic
research and reveal to us their
uranium and thorium resources, but
(b) would require us to give up
nothing whatever until we decided
at our "unfettered discretion
that the proposed new international
system was working to our salts
faction.
(3) When this Interpretation be-
came public, people informed on the
subject Immediately recognized that
Mr.. Wallace had completely miscon-
trued and grossly distorted the de-
vice of separate stages" and Mr..
Wallace himself acknowledged his
mistake in a conversation last week
with Mr.. Baruch.
a. According to Mr.. Baruch, Mr..
Wallace thereupon agreed to correct
himself publicly in order to clear the
air Of confusion and end a situation
"gravely dangerous to delicate ne
gotiations now under way" in the
United Nations Atomic Energy Com
mission.
(5) But Mr.. Wallace, after having
been accused by Mr.. Baruch of re-
neging on the agreement and letting
the error be spread further by mass
distribution of copies of the July
letter. has now issued statement
charging that Mr.. Baruch-not he
is confusing everything.
(6) In this statement. although in
his July letter he called it the great
fatal defect" Mr.. Wallace dismisses
the subject of separate stages" as a
minor procedural matter which he
happened to have misunderstood
but which amounts to practically
nothing anyhow.
CD Having thus disposed of what
he treated as major matter in
July. Mr.. Wallace now has come up
with new central ISSUE" assert
ing that the present impasse in
atomic negotiations is chiefly owing
to the fact that the United States
is still producing and stockpiling
A-bombs, his implication being that
if we stopped doing this progress
would be made much faster in es-
tablishing international control.
90 In making this point, which
in effect gives the impression that
the United States is mainly to blame
for the present deadlock, Mr.. Wal
lace seems wholly oblivious of the
fact that the Russians themselves,
in their counterproposals for con-
troll, have taken the position that
atomic production should come to
an end and existing A-bombs be
destroyed after the overall inter-
national treaty has been negotiated
and ratified.
90 Finally, In largely blaming
the United States for the impasse,
Mr.. Wallace ignores tal the fact
that every nation on the Atomic
Energy Commission except Russia
and Poland fully agrees with the
essentials of the American plan. and
(b) the fact that a control system
could be set up with relative ease
if Moscow abandoned it's objections
to a genuinely effective interna-
tional supervisory and policing au-
thority.
Conclusion: Up to now, by failing
to correct himself forthrightly and
by being so muddled in his analysis
of the causes of the present impasse,
Mr.. Wallace seems certainly to have
covered himself with something less
than glory in his strange private
war on Mr.. Baruch and the Amert-
can plan to control the atom.