Evening star., 1955-07-25
Next the 'FoIIow-Throuqh'

The governing headS OF france, BTU
ain, the Soviet Union and the United
States have come down from the SUM
NIT" at Geneva with no more in their
hands, and no less, than they had ex-
pected to get when they first went up
there-a week ago today-to. discuss the
problems that have often seemed to be
driving them, willy-nilly, to the hellish
abyss of an all-out war in the atomic
hydrogen age.
Thus, in keeping with their own pre-
dictions of last Monday, the Big Four
leaders have settled none of the complex
and dangerous issues of the world. Yet
their meeting has not been in vain or
barren of promising results. For at very
least, If appearances mean anything,
they have succeeded in effecting an i'm
pressive thaw in the cold war; they have
succeeded in injecting new and better
spirit, a new and better mood, into in
ternational relations. And they seem to
have achieved, in the process, some real
progress toward the kind of East-West
mutual trust that is absolutely essential
to the building of good and lasting
peace.
All this, of course, adds up to a
quite Intangible accomplishment whose
significance cannot be specifically meas
ured and whose durability is by no means
certain. AS President Eisenhower has
said, "only history will tell the true
worth" of the work done at Geneva; only
the follow through" will show whether
or not 1t has been genuinely constructive
or decisive" in terms of promoting
sound settlement of the grave differences
still existing between the free world and
the Soviet empire Nevertheless, as he
has also said, there is much to support
his moderately optimistic judgment that
the summit" meeting has frightened
the outlook for peace and leSSened the
dangers of "the overwhelming tragedy
Of modern war" And his Western coun-
terparts-Mr. Faure of France and Mr..
Eden of Britain-have voiced essentially
the same hopeful view and so has Rus
sian Premier Bulganin, who processes to
feel that the Big Four have at last ar
rived at an auspicious and potentially
great new stage" in their relations
But still the fact remains that the
summit" conferees have not even pre-
tended that the key issues of our time
are near solution. They have merely in
structed their foreign ministers to stage
a Geneva meeting of their own, in Oc-
tober, to see what can be done about
German reuniflcation, general European
security, disarmament (including the
Presidents proposal for mutual Amer
ican-Soviet inspection), and efforts to
abolish the Iron Curtain. Fast progress
along this line, however. continues to
seem improbable, particularly because
the Kremlin apparently is as adamant
as ever in striving to- "neutralize" Ger
many and make free Europe ripe for
the pfucking by breaking up the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In these circumstances, 1t need
hardly be added, simple sanity demands
that the Atlantic community, including
a rearmed West Germany, continue to
maintain and build up it's defensive
power within the NATO framework. For
only in that way, only by remaining
steadfast and united, can we and our
allies hope to achieve truly effective
follow through" on the several encour-
aging implications of the Geneva
summit" meeting-a "follow-t through
capable of leading, In time, to a gen.
eral settlement effective enough to be
thoroughly reassuring to the free world
and Russia alike.