WAR IS IMPOSSIBLE
COLUMNIST WALTER LIPPMANN: WITHIN recent weeks it has beW come clear that all [the] principal [world] powers are in basic agreement on three general propositions. The first is that war, which now means thermonuclear war, is impossible. The second is that while the great powers must not wage war, they cannot now make the concessions. The third proposition is that, unable to fight and unable to settle, they must nevertheless find ways to relax the. most severe and dangerous of the tensions. Under the constraints of the military stalemate, all the principal powers are impelled to stay more or less where they are now, to live with their differences, hoping somehow to outgrow them or to outlive them.
If this is the kind of result that the governments expect and are hoping for, they might do well to say so; to make it their avowed, instead of only their implicit policy. They could then worry less than they do about the people's expecting too much. The people would know what to expect, which is nothing momentous in itself, but a lot of little things that could add up to a good deal.
NO CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM
WALL STREET JOURNAL: THE United Nations meeting was getting so bullish about "real" peace that it is probably a healthy thing the Russian bear caused a reaction to set in.
Molotov's speech contained all the familiar Soviet demands. It is possible, of course, that what Molotov said in San Francisco is not the last Soviet word.
It may be merely the initial bargaining position from which the Soviets might conceivably be willing to retreat at the summit meeting in Geneva and the subsequent foreign ministers' meetings.
Meantime his bucket of ice water should serve to dampen the optimism of even the most optimistic—in San Francisco and elsewhere. For that unintended good deed, the West can be duly grateful.
SHADOW OR SUBSTANCE?
The New York Herald Tribune's COLUMNIST ROSCOE DRUMMOND: DEAR Mr. President: Don't give us what we want—if you have the merest, lingering, flickering doubt that the Soviets are offering more the shadow than the substance of a safer world.
Yes, we all want to put behind us this terrible preoccupation with things destructive; we all want, as you remarked at the U.N., to "dismantle the terrible apparatus" of tension, mistrust and nuclear fear. But, Mr. President, don't feel that we so impatiently, so yearningly want these things that you need have any compulsion or temptation of any kind whatsoever to put your signature —at Geneva or afterward—to a commitment that could have any effect other than to strengthen the cause of freedom—of free peoples and free nations.
NO CHANCE FOR SUCCESS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: