The Detroit Tribune

Chief of London Bureau-
(Continued from Back Page)

As a man who in his earlier days accompanied President
Wilson to Europe for the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles,
Mr. Dulles is cognizant that it takes more than ministers
and officials to accept a treaty. He knows how little
the Versailles verdicts were understood or heeded by the
American people— and how the League of Nations provision
was flatly rejected. Thus he was able to warn his colleagues
that whatever alternatives to EDC were forged at the London
parley would be useless and futile indeed unless they received
the support of home parliaments and peoples. His
fine statement of the American position, one suspects, was
less a summary for the other eight foreign ministers than a
simple explanation to the American public of what commitments
their government can and cannot make.

Through experience, Mr. Dulles also has learned that
you cannot keep a defeated nation in chains for long by
means of restrictions imposed from outside. That was one
mistake made with regard to Germany following World War
I. It is a mistake Mr. Dulles and others would not like to
see repeated.

Meanwhile, the feeling of those who saw him in action
in London is that the secretary is not a confused fireman
dashing from one conflagration to another with no master
plan or coherent program. Rather it is hard to see why he
has received so little credit in his own country and abroad
for the impressive accomplishments of which he is the architect.
In the Pacific, starting from the latest and going backward,
there is the new Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
grouping for Asian cooperation, the mutual defense pact with
South Korea, the Japanese peace treaty and mutual security
pact, the ANZUS alliance with Australia and New Zealand,
and the Philippine defense pact.

In Europe, so far, his activities have been more limited.
He inherited a set of commitments and programs in various
stages of completion from the Truman administration. It
was only when EDC, one of the chief pillars of that setup,
came crashing down, that the Republican secretary was able
to play a prominent part in fashioning a new framework.
Although he was at his most effective here, the hard-driving
Secretary Dulles was overshadowed by the suave British
Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. It truly was Mr.
Eden's turn to take the spotlight, for his was the country
that was taking the occasion of the London meetings to break
with the past and make a new investment in Europe's security.
"Ours is, above all, an island story," the British
Foreign Secretary declared but he made it plain this is the
island that was.

Mr. Dulles had no such bombshell to lay on the Lancaster
House table. He was content to see the younger host
claim the headlines and spotlight, but perhaps a little puzzled
that the public at large does not yet appreciate the historic
nature of the things that are being done around the world.