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IT is a measure of the irony of this hollow "celebration" that Mr. Eisenhower should come to it fresh from a rehearsal for atomic panic, and that his next stop will be at a big four conference at Geneva, which recognizes the futility of U.N. as a forum for international conciliation by excluding 56 of the 60 member nations and fixes its deliberations entirely outside of the framework of U.N. As a fetish, U.N. commands enormous internationalist devotion. In 1919, the elder Henry Cabot Lodge drew a distinction between taking a suitable part in world affairs, and exposing the United States to every controversy and conflict on the face of the globe. He quoted from Browning: " 'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls. And matter enough to save one's own." Despite the oratory, this is still the most appropriate verdict on the practical chances of achieving a millennial reform of human nature.
1945 ISSUES STILL REMAIN
The New York Times's COLUMNIST ARTHUR KROCK :
THE tenth anniversary celebration at San Francisco is demonstrating the durability of the French proverb that the more things change the more they remain the same. Many of the immediate issues on which the delegates of 1945 divided have disappeared from the troubled agenda of the world. But their roots have not. Ten years ago these roots were the postwar foreign policy of Russia, the governing arrangements for territories captured by the United States and its allies from the Central Powers and Japan and the standing of the Peron dictatorship in Argentina with the other Pan-American nations. Ten years afterward they are the same. That is being proved every day.
[I] wrote from San Francisco ten years ago that "the fine professions of the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations will exist for a long time as words only." That remains true. But they have been useful and rewarding words which fused a belief among informed persons of goodwill all over the earth that a third world war could be averted, and bred in them a determination to avert it. How surely these words reflected the strength of that spirit is manifest in the very fact of the gathering at San Francisco a decade after they were published.
POSITIVE ACTS NEEDED
Britain's moderate weekly SPECTATOR :
IT was always up to Russia to signify a change in policy by certain positive acts. Some of these have now been made with startling rapidity. This is all to the good. But what we do not yet know is how far Russia is prepared to go toward a European settlement that would be reasonably acceptable to all concerned. One thing is certain: that no magic will be found at Geneva to abolish overnight the many problems which divide East and West and bedevil their relations. Another thing is essential: that the Western Powers should go to Geneva determined to stand their ground. What is dangerous is that Western statesmen and journalists should lead the public to expect too much, too soon, too easily.
SMOOTHING THE EDGES
BALTIMORE SUN: