Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1959-04-01

Ten years ago this week the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization came into
being for one reason, and one reason
only-namely, to serve the cause Of
peace with great and unprecedented
new defensive alliance designed solely
and simply to deter the Soviet Union
from further aggression against the free
Western world.
Today, a decade later, the foreign
ministers of NATO'S IS member nations
are converting here to counsel with each
other on many formidable and complex
issues OF grave mutual concern, includ-
ing particularly Berlin and the proSpec-
tive negotiations with the Russians. At
the same time, since this portentous
gathering comedies with the tenth
anniversary of the alliance, the particle
pating statesmen will have reason to
review the past even as they make plans
for the future.
Certainly, as far as the past is
concerned, only the blind would claim
that NATO has lived up to all the hopes
repoSed in it when the treaty was signed
here on April 4, 1949 But let us look
back for moment. The Atlantic Com
munity was then relatively weak coali-
ton, politically, economically and mill
tarily. The Soviet Union, on the other
hand, doomed very large as a menace
to freedom everywhere. Playing the role
OF rapacious lone wolf under Stain,
sabotaging every promoting move
in the United Nations, it had subverted
and virtually absorbed nearly a dozen
once-independent lands, and there was
no doubt in those days that it intended
to go on from there to take over the
whole of Europe. Nor can there be any
present doubt that it would have moved
in that direction, with all deliberate
speed, if the West had failed to unite
against the threat.
To that extent, therefore, it may
be said that NATO, with greatly out
numbered ground forces, but backed by
our strategic air power, has succeeded
in its primary mission during the past
ten years. BY merely existing, by Serv-
ing as constant reminder of the
Vests readiness to strike back against
aggression with enormously destructive
air-borne nuclear weapons, it unques-
tionably has deferred the Kremlin.
Surely, had there been no such alli-
ance, had there been only irresolution,
division and go-it-alone policies instead,
today's world would be quite different
from what 1t is, and our own country
might be completely isolated in it
rather lonely, friendleSS and desperate
nation sandwiched between a Europe
and an Asia dominated by the Commu-
nistS. This is not an overdrawn picture;
this is the way things would have drifted
without the warning presence of the
Atlantic treaty.
So much for the past Now, what of
the future? AS to that, the thing we
must keep in mind is that the worlds
overshadowing reality continues to be
the fact that Soviet policy still adds
up to dark, dominance seeking con-
spiracy threatening the security, peace
and liberty of the whole of mankind.
Stains death has not changed it. The
prospect of another summit conference
has not changed it. We have only TO
remember the pitiless repression of Hun
gary and the Kremlin'S incendiary in
trigueS in the Middle East to realize
that Red Russia just keeps rolling on as
a menace of the first magnitude to all
that free men hold dear.
In such circumstances, NATO obvi-
ouSly must remain alert and strong.
Above everything, it must leave no room
for doubt about its resolve to stand firm
for freedom even if the fight along this
line takes not merely all summer, but
the next half century. Given that,
the Kremlin may be persuaded in time
to start cooperating for the establish
ment of just and enduring world peace.