CANADA: The Bait & the Hook

Ever since Red China began baiting its bids for diplomatic recognition with the glittering prospect of trade, some Canadians have shown themselves surprisingly eager to swallow bait, hook and all. Most outspoken of the lot is Toronto’s Globe and Mail, whose publisher. Oakley Dalgleish. recently returned from a tour of the Chinese mainland burbling with admiration for the Peking regime. Last week U.S. diplomats wondered if the pro-Peking line of Dalgleish and his fellow apologists might not be swinging the government in the same direction.

After the Chinese Reds began shelling the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy, the Globe and Mail renewed its demands to hand over Quemoy, extend diplomatic recognition and welcome the Chinese Communists into the U.N. The Globe and Mail reprinted three editorials in ads in the New York Times, drew a freshet of letters from both sides of the border, including an approving note in the Times from John Carter Vincent, left-leaning onetime U.S. diplomat who was fired from the State Department in 1953.

By itself, the Globe and Mail could be regarded as a single shrill voice. More alarming is the possibility that the Ottawa government, prodded by Canadian friends of Red China, might agree, thus shattering the Western front against U.N. recognition of the Reds. It is an open secret in Washington that Prime Minister Diefenbaker has pressed President Eisenhower for a softer policy toward Red China. The State Department was also jolted by Diefenbaker’s hint that Canada might take the initiative to turn the Quemoy crisis over to the U.N.

Canada has issued no formal statement of policy, nor has it announced any plans for the coming U.N. General Assembly. Washington hopes that the government recalls some clearheaded remarks delivered in the House of Commons last year: “I think the experience of the United Kingdom, which recognized Communist China prior to the Korean war, has added little to the extension or expansion of trade between that country and Communist China . . . Until such time as the Communist government of China expiates its wrongdoing under international law there certainly will be no justification for the granting of recognition.” The speaker : Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.