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In recent months Dulles has gained new confidence that he has found the right words and phrases. His reports to the people, e.g., his report on the Paris Conference at a televised Cabinet meeting, have been remarkable for their sweep and clarity. Dulles considers such reports a key part of his job for one large reason: he believes that the citizens of the U.S. have the right and the ability to understand his business.
As he goes tirelessly about that business, Dulles, at 66, displays a tremendous capacity for concentration and work. Almost all of his waking hours are working hours, whether he is flying across an ocean, seated in his map-lined office or resting at home (the yellow scratchpad is always at his bedside). His depth of concentration sometimes unnerves staff members who have brought him problems: they think he has forgotten that they are there. His favorite form of relaxation literally gives his staff the shivers: he likes to swim wherever and whenever he can, and sometimes does so, in water more suitable for polar bears than for Secretaries of State.
One-Plane Department. When Dulles travels, his airplane becomes a mobile State Department. He takes with him more aides than made up the entire State Department personnel in John Quincy Adams' day.* On trips to Europe, the staff is headed by Assistant Secretary (for European Affairs) Livingston T. Merchant and Counselor Douglas MacArthur II. When Asia is the landing place, the Secretary's chief aide is Assistant Secretary (for Far Eastern Affairs) Walter S. Robertson.
The traveling State Department leaves at home 5,761 colleagues in a sprawling, uncertain organization that is at least two decades overdue for genuine reorganization and reorientation. Dulles has scarcely touched that herculean job, and he may never get around to it. But whoever does may find a legacy from Dulles' one-plane operation. A sense of policy direction must precede any basic change in the setup of the department; Dulles is providing direction to which the department may be some day geared.
"Pour la Paix." Obviously, John Foster Dulles goes about his job as a missionary at large rather than as an administrator.
At first, some people at home and abroad thought that he was only going to preach. They soon discovered that this mission ary did a lot of practicing. He not only carried the word into the jungle, quieted the local tribes and performed marriages, but also helped to clear the ground, dam the streams and stop epidemics of fear.
At year's end there was evidence that Missionary Dulles was making some converts where conversion was difficult. In Paris, a French foreign office official told a TIME correspondent: "You know, the other day a pamphlet came across my desk. Written in French, it was entitled Pour la Paix. My first reaction was that it was just another Communist propaganda tract. But it wasn't. It was John Foster Dulles' recent speech in Chicago.