THE CONGRESS: Peace Ratified

The bipartisan front, so shattered elsewhere, held firm last week as the Senate closed debate on ratification of the peace treaty with Japan. A heavy majority of Democrats and Republicans, 66 to 10,* voted for ratification of the treaty drafted last September in San Francisco. They followed up by approving the three mutual defense treaties, with Japan, the Philippines and Australia-New Zealand, that frame U.S. security in the Pacific.

In the Senate gallery, watching with quiet satisfaction as the peace was ratified, sat the treaty’s chief architect, John Foster Dulles. The Republican statesman, who was drafted as special ambassador and adviser by the Democratic Administration to work out the settlement with Japan, feels that his diplomatic job is now done. He is ready to leave the Administration and to speak up, on the side of the Republican opposition, for a more effective U.S. policy.

Dulles, in recent weeks, has been saying, in effect, that containment of Communist aggression is no longer enough. It is time for the free world to turn from the defensive, to seize the initiative for freedom. Dulles’ policy, as culled from his public statements:

¶ “Never before in our history have we adopted a defeatist attitude toward despotism . . . We must adopt a positive policy and get away from the idea that the [Communist] overrunning of China is the final, last word.

¶ “If we tried to build a defensive system of 25,000 miles [i.e., containment], we would merely compound the French stupidity [i.e., the Maginot line] 100 times.”

¶ “The Communism of Soviet Russia and its satellites represents today the active, dynamic element and the free world represents the static, passive element . . . The U.S. . . . can be destroyed by forces that, in themselves, seem weak—if those forces are active and if we are passive.”

* The “No” votes: one Democrat—Nevada’s Pat McCarran, and nine Republicans—Illinois’ Dirksen, Idaho’s Welker and Dworshak, Montana’s Ecton, Indiana’s Jenner, Missouri’s Kem, Nevada’s Malone, Wisconsin’s McCarthy, North Dakota’s Young.