Evening star., 1954-12-01
Instead Of Blood and Thunder

instead or BLOOD ana IhundeF
In his Chicago address Secretary Of
State Dulles. with the full and openly pro-
claimed backing OF President Eisenhower,
has made it emphatically clear that the
United States has no present intention of
adopting Senator Knowland's proposal for a
blockade of Red China. But the Senator,
undeterred, still insists that such action
should be taken and that it would succeed
If it were taken-in forcing the prompt lib
Grafton of the thirteen Americans who have
been imprisoned by Peiping on "trumped-
up espionage charges.
OF course, even though he is the admin
istration'S majority leader in the Senate,
Mr.. Knowland has right to voice his
dissenting opinion. Yet that opinion, when
measured against the non-spectacular but
altogether calm and reasonable policy set
forth by Mr.. Dulles, seems to be adventurous
and unrealistic in the extreme. In fact,
1t may be described as a kind of historical
anachroniSnl, or romantic and nostalgia
throwback, that belongs more to the time
of sailing ships and the Barbary pirates
than to this atomic hydrogen age-an age
lin which the Kremlin- supported Chinese
Communists can hardly be Hkened to
little band of backward cutthroats whose
power would quiver and collapse before a
mere show of American force.
Thus, to begin with, Mr.. Knowland lets
his confidence run rather wild when he
declares-as If the thing were certain
instead of improbable that adoption of his
proposal would quickly force Red China to
satisfy our demands Actually, judging
from the past records of the Chinese Com
munists, there is reason to believe otherwise;
there is reason to believe that their policy
would harden in such circumstances, that
they would be more determined than ever
not to free the thirteen Americans, and that
they would respond also with some sort Of
counterforce. And what would the Senator
have us do then? With the blockade failing
to attain its main objective, would he be
content to have the United States sit over
there, with it's ships, in humiliating posture
of impotence? Or would he call for further
action? Would he urge, for example, that
our Air Force bomb cities like Peiping and
that Generalissimo Chiang's troops be
"unleashed" for an offensive from Formosa?
These questions speak pretty much for
themselves. What they plainly indicate is
that Mr.. Knowland's proposal could not be
put into effect without at the same time
imposing upon the American people-Who
certainly appear to be in no mood for it
the grave risk Of step-by-step drift into
major hostilities that could readily explode
into an all-out g1obal war of unprecedented
destructiveness!s That is why the Senator's
vieW-at least in the present state Of world
affairs-seems far less sensible than the
Eisenhower Dulles policy, the nub of which
is simply this: That while we must remain
strong and vigilant with our allies, and be
ready to fight if necessary, "our first duty
is to exhaust peaceful means Of sustaining
our international rights and those of our
citizens, rather than ,aotD reSorting to war
action such as naval and air blockade Of
Red China"
The words "f1rst" and s'now" (the
italics have been supplied) suggest that Mr..
Dulles and the President do not rule out the
it the risk of war, may. eventually be made
unavoidable by Communist action But at
the present stage, as the men chiefly
responsible for our foreign policy, they hold
that peaceful means have not been ex-
hausted, and they are proceeding accord
ingly. Their course, 1t is true, is not nearly
SO dramatic as the blobd- land thunder one
proposed by Mr.. Knowland, but 1t is much
wiser and far more prudent. and the over
whelming majority of Americans undoubt-
edly concur In it.