U.S. diplomacy's search for a Far Eastern policy settled down leisurely for three days in Bangkok. To Siam's templed capital came America's top foreign-service officers from stations throughout the Orient. They had been summoned by roving Ambassador Philip C. Jessup and Assistant Secretary of State W. Walton Butterworth to mull over a program that might check the southerly flow of Communism at China's borders.
The 19 diplomats talked and pondered in carefully guarded privacy. They discussed the value of an anti-Communist pact among southeast Asiatic countries, agreed they should not officially propose one, hoped unofficially that the Asiatics would write one themselves....