Evening star., 1955-05-02
Robertson-Iron Yigor
Bellies q Velvet Voice
By WARREN ROGERS, JR.


Walter Spencer Robertson has
more the look of a prematurely
gray college cheerleader than of
a 61-year-old diplomat.
Slim and jauntily dressed, he
never looks more at ease than at
an airport microphone saying a
few words just before racing to
Formosa or Geneva or Paris.
He has done it nearly dozen
times during the past two years
as Secretary Of State Dulles
trouble shooter and specialist on
Far Eastern affairs.
His latest: A hurry-up mission
to Formosa with Admiral Arthur
w. Radford, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. This trip.
made amid a worldwide upswing
in hopes for a Formosa cease
fire, had about it the hubbub on
which Robertson seems to thrive.
Uncommon vigor is the first
thing you see in him. 1t bellies
the soft voice of a lifelong Vir-
ginian-an investment banker
and country squire turned diplo-
mat.
And There Is More
But he has more. He has. for
instance. a mind scholarly
enough to have won a Phi Beta
Kappa key. And he has daring
enough to have taken on a pilots
job in World War I. and a front
line visit to an embattled off,
shore island in the Formosa
Strait last week.
He is consistent in his, support
of Chang Kai-Shek, the Ma
tionalist Chinese leader whom
he met and grew to admire as
a patriot during a 1945-46 tour
in China. And he is consistent in
his military opposition to the
Chinese Reds.
Those factors played an i'm
portant part in the two prime
Notwithstanding missions he has
performed for Mr.. Dulles-in
mid-1953 when he flew to Korea
and persuaded South Korean
President Syngman Rhee not to
upset the truce, and last october
when he made an -unannounced
fight to FormoSa to wind up
the United States-N Nationalist
China defense treaty commit
ting America to safeguard
Formosa.
Mr.. Robertson never counte-
nances any doubt about what the
Communists are up to, who they
are and how to stop them.
What he. said in a speech a
year ago last fall at Louisville, he
has repeated many times:
1.-THE things we are doing in
the Far East are things we could
never forgive ourselves not doing
-. we have no choice
Sees Long Term Conflict
"For the conflict with the Mos
coW-Peiping axis will be a pro-
tracted one, and given our ma
tional psychology. it will often
be a frustrating one.
I'VE like jobs that are well de-
fined, to which there is a recog-
nizable conclusion, but the task
before us will seem to 60 on
and on"
That phrase 'Moscow-Peiping
axis" recurs time and again in
Mr.. Robertson's conversation. He
makes no distinction between
Russian Communists and Chi
nese Communists.
He got to know the Chinese
variety pretty well while serving
with the American truce team in
China during 1945-46.
Some of them are my per-
sonal friends" he has said. But
he has no illusion about possibly
weaving them away from COM
munism: They hate America"
OF how to deal with the Chi
nese Communists, Mr.. Robertson
says, as he did to a House Ap-
preparations subcommittee last
February:
THE greatest threat to our
security and to world peace in
Asia is Red China, and you do
not appease them by giving them
the things they demand"
He sees in the Far East a Com
munist blueprint drawn to a pa
tient timetable.
AS he puts it, the Reds made
a grab for Japan when they
moved into North Korea; their
ultimate goal was Japan's indus
trial potential.
Thwarted there in what he has
hailed as possibly "the turning
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