From EDWARD P. MORGAN AND THE NEWS -- Monday, November 12, 1956
American Broadcasting Company

This is a real, genuine dyed-in-the-wool blue Monday, and it's a good
deal more than a yard wide.

A certain superficial brightness over some developments in Suez fails to
hide the dark stain of discouragement on the international scene for the
west.

Hungary, tentatively so near the light, has slipped back into darkness.
Nasser's time is not yet up. Far from being toppled, the Egyptian
dictator is, for the nonce at least, in a stronger position than ever.
And one of the sinews of his strength is a sudden enlargement of Soviet
influence in the Middle East. The western alliance, broken like a dry
twig two weeks ago, is bound in splints but there is no real assurance
that the fracture will or can knit properly. But unless the mend is
complete, NATO, the strategic basis of western Europe's defense, may be
permanently crippled. The Baghdad Pact, which was supposed to have
stretched our security from Istanbul to the Khyber Pass, is tattered and
torn before use. The SEATO alliance is even more a paper doll of security
in Southeast Asia than when it was written. And irony of material ironies,
the flow of oil the British and French purportedly set out to protect
is not getting through the Suez Canal and at least one of the major
pipelines is out of commission.

Against this melancholy pile of facts we are obliged to reappraise our
policies. Perhaps the exercise will be less agonizing and more realistic
if we understand that in almost every instance in international affairs,
morality is no substitute for power. We wanted the Hungarians to be free
because it was the moral, decent thing, the just fruit of their pathetically
moving little revolution. But we must have known the Kremlin couldn't,
wouldn't tolerate such an inspiring impertinence now, and we knew we
couldn't really make the Kremlin cease and desist without the open risk
of world war. We wanted the monumental mess in the Middle East to be
tidied up. We wished that Nasser, a sun-burned shadow of Hitler on the
Sahara, would fold his tent and steal away. We hoped that peace would
flutter down like a dove between Israel and her Arab neighbors. We wanted
Suez to be safe, and behind our shock when we found that London and Paris
hadn't given us the time of day we nevertheless rather secretly hoped the
surprise Anglo-French expedition would make Suez safe.

But none of these pious even righteous hopes has come true. Most of the
shooting has stopped and a UN police unit, tender as a Boy Scout troop,
is going in. But without diminishing by a fragment the heroic size of
Secretary-General Hammarskjold's efforts, the cold probability is that
not even this would have happened if Moscow's harsh threat of force hadn't
scared everybody blue.

It may seem strange that in the middle of this ferment comes the counsel
of many responsible observers that now is the time to negotiate with the
Russians, and negotiate with all the skill and energy that we possess.
With the gunsmoke of tyranny still curling over Budapest we recoil at the
thought and yet, in all candor, what else is there to do?--short of exchang-
ing in kind that little watch-charm of security, the hydrogen bomb.

In reassessing our position and policies, we may well draw valuable counsel
from one of our foremost students of the international scene, Henry A.
Kissenger, who, in the current issue of *Foreign Affairs* writes at length
his "Reflections on American Diplomacy." We need more of a political sense,
he thinks, a broader philosophy of purpose, and he doesn't think that
businessmen and lawyers, who largely comprise the higher echelons of
government, can be expected to furnish it themselves.

"Profound policy," he writes, "thrives on creativeness; good administration
thrives on routine.... Policy involves an adjustment of risks; administra-
tion an avoidance of deviation."

The challenge we face, he concludes, is to demonstrate "that democracy
is able to find the moral certainty to act without the support of fanaticism
and to run risks without a guarantee of success."

This is Edward Morgan, saying good night from Washington.

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