JOHN FOSTER DULLES: A VERY COMPLICATED MAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200440039-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 10, 1999
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: September 1, 1956
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Approved or a ease
DEWAR'S
"White Label"
Famed are the clans of Scotland
... their colorful tartans worn in
glory through the centuries.
Famous, too, is Dewar's White Label
and Ancestor, forever and always
a wee bit o' Scotland in a bottle !
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and ANCESTOR
SCOTCH WHISKIES
 HARPER' S Magazine SEP 1966
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jr ztp
MAGA ZINE
JOHN FOSTER DULLEST
a very complicated man
CPYRGHT
JOSEPH C. HARSCH
A Washington columnist for the Christian
Science Monitor and NBC news analyst examines
the character, career, and ambitions of
President Eisenhower's most controversial
-and intriguing-Cabinet officer.
T C i H N Foster Dulles' father was a Presby-
terian clergyman, daily and earnestly con-
cerned with "righteousness" and "duty." Both
his maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, and
his uncle, Robert Lansing, were men who
achieved prominence, wealth, and an identical
title: "Secretary of State of the United States."
Matching the achievements of his grandfather
and uncle, without breaking faith with his
father, is not a task which our present Secretary
of State consciously assigned to himself in his
boyhood. Yet this difficult ambition is woven
unmistakably into his career-and it has helped
make him the most intriguing and the most con-
PYRGsial figure in the Eisenhower Administra-
tion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower has called Mr. Dulles
the greatest Secretary of State he knows anything
about. Richard Nixon once said, "Isn't it won-
derful to have a Secretary of State who stands
up to the Russians?" But to, Randolph Churchill
is attributed the remark that he "smells of non-
conformism," and the Democratic view is typified
by Senator Henry M. Jackson's contention that
Mr. Dulles is "the original misguided missile,
traveling fast, making lots of noise, and never
hitting the target."
Assessments of Mr. Dulles seem usually to fall
into one or the other of these extremes. One of
that he tends to arouse either approval bordering
on veneration, or disapproval ranging close to
moral contempt. Those who have worked closely
with him in business and in government seldom
view him dispassionately. This is surprising,
when it is noted that in his personal relations
Mr. Dulles is gregarious, sociable, a genial
dinner-table companion, lucid in exposition,
reasonable and open-minded in discussion.
British diplomats-who were prepared to dis-
like him after their relatively successful relations
with Dean Acheson-will tell you privately
(never publicly, for that would do too much
violence to a British folklore presumption of
original Dulles sin) that "he is very good in
private ncgotiations, and much better than
Acheson, you know, on the colonial question."
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8 HARPER'S MAGAZINE
CPYRGHT
Mr. Dulles himself has probably contributed
more than any one to the confusion and con-
troversy which surrounds his career. Because of
him, "liberation," "unleashing," "massive re-
taliation," "agonizing reappraisal," and "brink
of war" have become cliches in the current ver-
nacular of Washington. They are often used
with a connotation of an empty pose.
He is more vulnerable to criticism from his
own publicly spoken record than from any other
source, because in his official life he is given to
overstatement, oversimplification, and less than
total candor-flaws which are usually absent
from his private conversations.
A substantial explanation of the dualism
between his public and private behavior is that
he progressed from being a small-town preacher's
son to his present eminence by way of the legal
profession. For years his daily task was to make
the best case he could for his client. He is
reputed to have been the most highly paid cor-
poration lawyer in the history of New York City.
A lawyer is not expected to believe the partisan
side of the case which he presents for his client.
He does not carry it into his personal beliefs or
private conversations. Nor is consistency ex-
pected. He may take the opposite side of the
same argument on behalf of his next client. Such
professional habits are not easily shaken off.
LV~ R. D U L L E S earned his position in
the lee-al nrnfessinn nvninct ndri, "P -t
of Grandfather Foster and against the better
well at fifty dollars per month on the insistence
is job with the law firm of Sullivan and Crom-
The quality which broke through the resist-
heir eyes for his other shortcomings.
eorge Washington was no compensation in
iatect with the highest marks ever granted at
ale or Harvard. The fact that he had grad-
is law at George Washington University, not at
r big corporations-and who, besides, had taken
who had slight connections with the big families
negligible interest in a boy from the back country
consented to give him a chance, but they took
.udgment of the senior partners. The partners
Fnce of Sullivan and Cromwell and made him,
iltimately, the senior partner was his ability to
Tlie technique of making a case for a client
e Senate, and was beaten by Herbert Lehman.
heck to his career. Then, in 1949, he ran for
. ne did he experience what could be called a
ully that not until he reached the age of sixty-
make a case for a client. He did it so success-
has persisted into his conduct of American diplo-
macy, and not surprisingly it has involved him
in instances of embarrassing inconsistency. When
he was in Pakistan last March, for example, he
argued to members of the SEATO alliance that
it pays to be an ally of the United States-citing
facts and figures to prove that allies get better
treatment at the U.S. Treasury than non-allies.
Seven days later he was in non-allied Indonesia
saying, "there is no connection whatsoever" be-
tween our financial aid and membership in a
military security pact with the United States.
He cited as evidence the fact that India and
Ceylon receive such aid although they are not
allied with the United States.
In between he stopped over in New Delhi and
tried to persuade Prime Minister Nehru that he
had not been unfriendly to India when he had
previously referred to Goa, that much debated
Portuguese enclave on the Indian coast, as "a
province of Portugal."
Another striking example of "making a case"
was provided by Mr. Dulles. on February 24,
1956. The "new" Soviet diplomacy had for
months been running rings around Western
diplomacy. Soviet arms had gone to Egypt, Soviet
"trade" delegations were roving as far afield as
Latin America, Pakistan had agreed to send a
trade mission to Moscow, and the Administra-
tion had entangled itself in the on-again, off-
again fiasco of tank shipments to Saudi Arabia.
Yet Mr. Dulles asserted: "At this moment in
Moscow they are having to revise their whole
program. They have failed."
This was followed by one of the rare explo-
sions of Senate, and public, criticism of Mr.
Dulles (there had been an earlier explosion over
his "massive retaliation" phrase). It evoked an
explanation at the State Department that Mr.
Dulles' doctrine of Soviet failure was based on
a comparison of the Soviet position in 1948
with the Soviet position in 1956. Now the West
was undoubtedly better off in 1956 than it had
been in 1948-but what critics had been talking
about was the appearance of a Western decline
from 1953 to 1956. Mr. Dulles had built his
case for Soviet failure on a convenient selection
of dates which gave him the advantages of the
Marshall Plan, formation of the NATO alliance,
successful resistance to aggression in Korea, and
the refurbishing of Western military power-all
pre-1952 Truman-Acheson achievements, which
Mr. Dulles had tended to minimize in the 1952
election year. He may have felt, however, that
his client had changed, after the Democrats re-
gained control of Congress in 1954.
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Certain inconsistencies between remarks-m-mae
by Mr. Dulles during the 1952 campaign and in
a 1949 Senate speech were raised at the Senate
hearing on his confirmation in January of 1953.
Mr. Dulles explained that "under our Constitu-
tional system we have a general election every
four years ... one side presents his case, and the
other side presents the other case, as two lawyers
do when they go into court. At that stage the
two parties are not judges and they are not
judicial. In my opinion they should not be ...
but when that time is past, then I believe we
should try to work together on a bipartisan
basis...."
When Life magazine came on the streets in
early January of 1956 with an article based on
recorded conversations with Mr. Dulles which
pictured him as almost the sole bulwark of the
peace,, Democrats concluded that Mr. Dulles'
quadrennial release from judiciousness had come
around. Even Vice President Nixon commented
dryly that "the rest of us can take care of the
campaigning."
Another characteristic of many distin-
guished lawyers is the lack of an administrative
flair. (This is, perhaps, natural, since they ordi-
P1'r(rhirk alone or with a handful of close
associates, and thus have little chance to learn
the techniques of managing a large organization.)
In Mr. Dulles this trait seems to be pronounced.
Sullivan and Cromwell partners recall that
when Dulles was senior partner he exhibited
more than usual aversion to administrative work.
The senior partner normally oversees this part
of the firm's operations-as the present senior
partner, Arthur Dean, does. During the Dulles
term, however, one of the other partners took
over this work by mutual and tacit consent.
Shortly before taking office as Secretary of
State Mr. Dulles expressed a wish that he might
have an "ivory tower" office off in some obscure
corner of the White House where he could just
think about foreign policy, and not have any
formal connection with the vast, complex,
hierarchical structure of the Department of State.
He did not get his wish, but his subordinates
have sometimes suspected that in his own sub-
conscious mind he did. It is frequently said that
he carries the foreign policies of the United
States around in his coat pocket. He seldom
delegates policy responsibility and it is note-
worthy that-as in the case of the Saudi Arabian
arms shipments-no one was quite sure what the
policy was until he came back from his Duck
Island vacation retreat.
The once-powerful secondary officials of the
apartment have en e to ecome mere y
executors of his policy (when they are informed
of what it is) and the rank of Ambassador has
steadily declined in importance during the Dulles
incumbency. When there is any important nego-
tiating to be done Mr. Dulles usually goes him-
self, leaving his Ambassadors no function higher
than that of reporters. Even this residual func-
tion has been of declining relevance, since Mr.
Dulles has his own views of each situation clearly
in mind. Ambassadorial reports bear upon
Dulles' thinking, but seldom influence it; and,
it is said, they never cause a reversal of a strong
Dulles view. Ambassadors have been called home
for consultation without being consulted by
Mr. Dulles.
During the Acheson period, policy was gen-
erated out of the impact upon each other of
many and diverse minds in the Department. Mr.
Acheson set up and used an institution called
the Policy Planning Staff. He frequently over-
rode its conclusions, but he did not assume that
his thinking alone could generate foreign policy.
Today the Policy Planning Staff has fallen into
disuse; Department policy begins and ends in
Mr. Dulles' own mind. Dulles' policy is influ-
enced heavily by the Senate. It is sometimes
reversed by the, President. It is adjusted within
the limits of tolerance of public opinion. But the
machinery of the State Department plays the
least of the roles in the process.
The fact that Mr. Dulles is one of the most
traveled Secretaries of State in history is a direct
result of his unfamiliarity with the use of an
administrative apparatus. To him, his staff of
experts, his far-flung foreign service, appear to
be not an instrument, but a baffling encum-
brance from which lie disengages himself in so
far as he is able.
James F. Byrnes.-another lawyer-exhibited a
similar inclination, although to a lesser degree.
When he was negotiating with the Soviets in
Moscow in 1945, one of his aides (now an Am-
bassador) suggested that the delegation ought to
send a report of its work back to the State De-
partment. "Why?" 1\MIr. Byrnes inquired, in
genuine bewilderment. "What would be the
point of that? I'm here."
Mr. Dulles also is capable of assuming that
wherever he happens to be at the moment, there
too is the Department of State. In his case, how-
ever, it comes closer to being true.
A related quality is his facility for disen-
tangling himself from embarrassments. In 1947
he had nominated Alger Hiss, with the highest
recommendations, for the post of director of the
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30 HARPER'S MAGAZINE
Carnegie Endowment. When the pumpkin pa-
pers were unearthed in August 1948 he and
Dean Acheson were both vulnerable to criticism
because of their past associations with Hiss; Mr.
Dulles was, if anything, more so because he had
provided.Hiss with refuge at the Carnegie En-
dowment after Hiss had been maneuvered out of
the State Department under Mr. Byrnes.
CPYRGHT
AT ONCE Mr. Dulles relieved Hiss "of
all active duties" at the Carnegie Endow-
ment. He appeared as a prosecution witness at
both of the Hiss trials. He contradicted Hiss'
testimony on five specific points during the final
stage of the second. trial. By the day of the ver-
dict, ;January 21, 1949, he was ready to say:
"The conviction of Alger Hiss is a human
tragedy. It is tragic that so great promise should
have come to so inglorious, an end. But the
greater tragedy is that seemingly our national
ideals no longer inspire the loyal devotion
needed for their defense." (Some 25,000 Amer-
ican boys were shortly to challenge Mr. Dulles'
lugubrious generalization by giving their lives
P RGbiTtlefields of Korea.)
Precisely four days later Dean Acheson-citing
as his text the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel
according to Saint Matthew, verses 34 through
46, the theological basis on which the ministers
of the Christian Church follow even a convicted
murderer to the scaffold-said:
"I should like to make clear to you that what-
ever the outcome of any appeal which Mr. Hiss
or his lawyers may make in this case, 1. do not
intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss."
Some philosophic observers of the two men see
in this disparity of reaction to the same incident
an outbreak of the ancient conflict between
Presbyterian and Episcopalian; the one pru-
dently turning his back, the other defiantly wear-
ing past mistakes. If there is self-righteousness
in either position, or both, it is a matter for a
panel of theologians to determine.
The triple , reconciliation of righteousness,
duty, and success is not always an easy one. Theo-
logians would also be intrigued by the way Mr.
Dulles resolved it when he had to deal with the
controversial personnel cases which he inherited
from his predecessor. The McCarthy group in
Congress had declared total war against a num-
ber of foreign service career officers, in particular,
John Carter Vincent and John Paton. Davies.
Mr. Dulles dutifully went through the long
records and found-as Mr. Acheson had-that
there was no basis for dismissal on the ground.
of doubtful loyalty. But he divested himself
prudently of Mr. Vincent on the ground that
his China reporting had been "a failure," and
of Mr. Davies for "disregard of proper forbear-
ance and caution in making known his dissents
outside privileged boundaries." His personal
feelings about the Davies case may or may not be
suggested by the fact that on the day after he
had announced his decision he telephoned Mr.
Davies and authorized him to use his (the Dulles)
name as a reference if it would be helpful in
obtaining another job. His final session with Mr.
Vincent ended on the Dulles observation (appar-
ently conclusive to Mr. Dulles) that Mr. Vin-
cent's critics in the Senate talked louder than
his supporters.
The rationale of Dulles' defenders in these
matters is that when a man is trying to do some-
thing as important as preserving the peace of the
world he cannot afford to carry excess baggage,
any more than can a man trying to climb Mt.
Everest. Mr. Dulles found ways and means of
shedding the liabilities which had plagued Mr.
Acheson unless, as in the case of Charles E.
Bohlen, the defenders could muster stronger sup-
port than the critics. Dwight D. Eisenhower
and Senator Robert Taft both spoke up for Mr.
Bohlen. Dulles' detractors on the other hand
use such words as "hypocrisy" and "moral cow-
ardice" in speaking of these cases.
It is not clear whether the free run which
Senator McCarthy enjoyed around the State
Department in the early Dulles days repre-
sented Dulles' prudence or orders from the
White House. It has been noted that when
Harold Stassen did talk back to Senator Mc,
Carthy in those same days he was repudiated
by the White House.
Dulles' adaptability to changed circumstances
was tested, and confirmed, by his relations with
his son Avery. Mr. Dulles himself has been loyal
to his father's Presbyterianism in personal faith,
in constant references in his public life to
"moral" and "spiritual" values, and in consider-
able prominence as a layman in the work of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ, an
organization of Protestant churches. When
Avery Dulles entered the Roman Catholic
Church to study for the Jesuit priesthood Mr.
Dulles broke off relations with his son. Relations
were re-established before photographers when
Dulles became a candidate for Senator.
There are plenty of other examples of Mr.
Dulles' adaptability. When he visited South
Korea just before the outbreak of war he
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promised the South Koreans that they would
"not stand alone" in the event of attack. Back
in Washington, he confided to reporters that he
was vastly relieved when President Truman
ordered U.S. troops into the Korean battle, for
otherwise his promise of support to the South
Koreans would have remained unfulfilled. From
the outbreak of the war until the 1952 campaign
he defended the Truman decision to enter the
war. He then became critical of that decision
during the campaign; but returned to its defense
after the 1954 mid-term elections put a Demo-
cratic majority back in control of the Senate.
He contributed comfort and usable quotations
to the Bricker amendment cause during the
1952 campaign, but turned against the amend-
ment when it came toward a vote in 1953.
T H E qualities which make Mr. Dulles con-
troversial show up in his control of foreign
policy. One usually knew with Acheson what his
policy was trying to achieve. With Mr. Dulles
one is not quite sure whether the American
attitude toward Communist China, for example,
ss'5ZrTeasured by the fact that he refused
to shake hands with his Chinese opposite num-
ber, Chou. En-tai, when they were in the same
room in. Geneva in 1954, .or by the fact that
since July of 1955 a U.S. Ambassador and a
Communist Chinese ambassador have been ac-
credited to each other in Geneva.
Dulles' admirers cite his famous "brink of
war" doctrine as evidence of his mastery of the
technique of foreign relations. They take seri-
ously his version of events, which is that he has
deliberately taken the United States to the brink
and thus saved the peace by his boldness.
His own version of how he got the Chinese
Communists to agree to the truce in Korea is
that when in India, on his first of many trips
around the world, he told Prime Minister Nehru
that if there were no truce the United States
would open up the war and carry it across the
Manchurian frontier. In the Dulles version of
history Mr. Nehru presumably relayed this stern
warning to Peking, after which the truce was
concluded. But Mr. Nehru has since been re-
ported as saying that if 1\1r. Dulles ever told him
any such thing on that trip he, Mr. Nehru, didn't
take it seriously enough even to remember it,
let alone relay it to Peking.
The greatest single controversy over Dulles'
conduct of foreign policy is whether Mr. Dulles
has shaped events, or adjusted himself to them.
Facts permit one to say only t hat at ie en o
Mr.. Dulles' third year in office his policy was
almost diametrically opposed to what he said it
was going to be when he started out. His open-
ing declaration was to. take U.S. policy off the
alleged dead center of Acheson's containment,
inject boldness into it, and by boldness "lib-
erate" the captured peoples of the Soviet realm
and "roll back" the Iron Curtain.
Perhaps the most characteristically Dullesian
operation was the one involving the famous For-
mosa Resolution. Congress was asked for what
amounted to a blank check, authorizing the
President to do almost anything to save Formosa.
The country braced itself for war with China,
and the world shuddered. But when the Seventh
Fleet steamed westward under cover of the
"Resolution" it did not fire its broadsides against
the Communists on the China coast, but merely
evacuated the Chinese Nationalists from the
Tachen islands, then turned quickly away. The
affair left people wondering whether the "Reso-
lution" was intended to protect the Chinese
Nationalists in the Far East or to cover the
Dulles flank on Capitol Hill. And was the
Seventh Fleet spared from attack by Chinese
Communist planes because of the much publi-
cized "Resolution," or because urgent unpub-
licized advices sent from the State Department
to Peking by way of London, Moscow, and New
Delhi had explained that the fleet maneuver was
solely intended for the evacuation of the islands?
In pre- and early-Secretarial days Mr. Dulles
spoke often and critically of the Acheson "con-
tainment" policy. The implication always was
that he intended to go over from passive con-
tainment to an active "roll-back" of the Soviet
frontiers of power. But the fascinating fact is
that as the months elapsed and the Communist
frontiers rolled over half of Indochina, Dulles'
pronouncements on foreign policy more and
more frequetltly included passages which
sounded much like the theories of George F.
Kerman, author of the containment doctrine.
The essence of Kerman doctrine was stated in
the following passages from Mr. Kennan's Staf-
ford Little Lectures of March 1954:
I can conceive that Soviet power will some
clay recede from its present exposed positions,
just as it has already receded in Finland and
Yugoslavia and northern Iran. But I can con-
ceive of this happening only precisely in the
event that the vital prestige of Soviet power
is not too drastically and abruptly engaged in
the process, in the event that change is per-
mitted to come gradually and inconspicuously
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as the result of compulsions resident within
the structure of Soviet power itself, not
created externally in the form of threats or
ultimata or patent intrigues from the out-
side.
In 1952 during the election campaign and long
thereafter, Mr. Dulles advocated policies toward
the Soviet Union which bore some of the ex-
ternal earmarks of "threats," "ultimata," and
"patent intrigue" although he would not himself
of course put such labels upon them. "Instant"
and "massive" retaliation sounded rather like a
"threat." The warning to the Chinese Com-
munists extended through Mr. Nehru partook of
the quality of an "ultimatum." And the "libera-
tion" policy sounded rather like a "patent in-
trigue," for Mr. Dulles never made it clear how
he intended to bring about this desirable end;
he just kept hinting at various ways and means
of giving the Soviets "homework" and difficulties
in "their own backyard." Jig_,seeined to imply
Wi..?, intensified "psychological warfare" and
"propaganda" offensive abetted by undercover
CIA work. He never spelled it out in detail
beyond "the creation in the free world of
1' c forces to develop a freedom pro-
r ch of the captive nations."
There does seem to have been a step-up in
CIA undercover, operations against the Com-
munist bloc in the early days of Dulles' r%iine.
The Committee for Free Europe was also for a
time stimulated to greater activities. But by
1954, 'Washington had begun to demobilize the
Chinese Nationalist division which had tried to
.operate in. northern Burma against the Chinese
Communist southern flank, ana,.had begun to
dismantle the CIA operation on Formosa known
as Western Enterprises, Inc.-Mr. Dulles had for-
mally assured the United Nations, as early as
September 15, 1953, that "our creed does not
call for exporting revolution and inciting others
to violence." Long after this the Committee for
Free Europe continued to float its "freedom
balloons" across the Iron Curtain, but everyone
knew that the "forward strategy" of the early
Eisenhower days had been laid aside. The Free
Europe people, whose hopes had been focused
on liberation by revolution, wondered plaintively
just what was their continuing function.
So much attention was paid to the "massive
retaliation" phrase in the famous speech of Jan-
uary 12, 1954, that few at the time noticed the
balancing Kennanesque passage: "If we can
deter such aggression as would mean general
war, and that is our confident resolve, then we
can let time and fundamentals work for us."
On March 17, 1954, in an expansion of this
thesis, he was sure that "there is going on, even
within the Soviet empire, a silent test of strength
between the powerful rulers and the multitudes
of human beings . . . their aspirations in the
aggregate make up a mighty force." This was
further documentation for the thesis that "time
and fundamentals will work for us, if only we
will let: them."
On the day Mr. Keenan had his final farewell
session with Mr. Dulles he spent a long evening
of soul-searching with an old friend. At the end
of the conversation, Mr. Keenan remarked that
he supposed that Mr. Dulles could not after all
pursue a Keenan policy as long as he, Keenan,
remained in the State Department. Mr. Dulles
continued to use bold words along with his
Kennanesque passages, but certainly by Feb-
ruary 8, 1955, the men of the Kremlin had taken
the real measure of the bold words. On that date
Vyacheslav Molotov said to. the Supreme Soviet
of the Soviet Union:
... the Republicans won the Presidential
elections not because they proclaimed a more
aggressive foreign policy, but, on the contrary,
by virtue of the fact that they actually ap-
peared to be for a certain time the political
party which was furthering not the continua-
tion of aggression in Korea but the ending of
the war and the re-establishment of peace in
that country.
Paul Nitze, Mr. Acheson's last chairman of the
Policy Planning Staff, studied the Dulles record
and published an article in Foreign Affairs (Jan-
uary 1954) analyzing the difference between
"declaratory policy" and "operational policy."
The Dulles "declaratory policy" has been all that
the most ardent warhawks on Capitol Hill could
desire, but his operating policies began with a
private explanation after Chiang Kai-shek had
been "unleashed" that real U.S. policy in the
Far East was one of "disengagement" from the
mainland of Asia.
The United States has not yet disengaged
entirely from the coast of Asia, but its armed
power, its "psychological warfare," and its propa-
ganda have steadily receded from the frontiers
of the power struggle. Under Mr. Dulles the
actions, though not the voice, of the United
States have beat less and less vigorously "on the
vital prestige of Soviet power" and have given
increasing opportunity for the "compulsions resi-
dent within the structure of Soviet power" to
operate. Whether Mr. Dulles ever consciously
practiced Kennan policy, while declaring a con-
trary nolicv. is a secret Mr. Dulles has never
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disclosed. But it is obvious that there has been
a gradual flow of Dulles policy around the clock
from denunciation of Kerman doctrine toward
the actual practice of Kerman policy.
INSIDE HIS OFFICE
D ID Mr. Dulles play it this way from the
start, or simply adjust himself to events as
they changed? The answer is obscured by many
things, including Mr. Dulles' own methods of
operation as a Secretary of State. An Assistant
Secretary of State who attended his daily staff
conference for many months is sure that if he
entered the Dulles office at any other than the
scheduled time, Mr. Dulles would not be able to
recall his name.
In Mr. Acheson's day the upper levels of the
State Department seethed with new ideas. Under
Mr. Dulles, policy originates with Dulles texts.
The fitness of one Ambassador for promotion
was questioned on the ground that he had ex-
hibited ignorance of a particular Dulles speech.
Two theories are equally permissible about
Dulles' conduct of our foreign policy. One is
that with a truly Machiavellian skill he has kept
eY ttUTwar-wing happy by his public pro-
noun.cements, while quietly paving the way for
a settlement with the Communist world by his
actual operations. The other theory is that the
domestic Soviet aftermath of Stalin's death-cou-
pled with a vast American urge for peace which
seized upon Dwight Eisenhower as its instrument
-have together produced a more relaxed world
with which Mr. Dulles has, if sometimes tardily,
come to terms.
One theory among those who have worked
with him is that Mr. Dulles is more preoccupied
with the record of John Foster Dulles on the
pages of history than with history itself. He
seems to be singularly unaware of other people
around him, and their possible corollary con-
tributions to events. The "brink of war" article
in Life attributes the peace exclusively to Dulles'
technique-leaving one to wonder what Dag
Hammarskjold, Nehru, Anthony Eden, Winston
Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, and several others
were doing with their time.
At a ceremonial occasion convoked for the
presentation of an award in international juris-
prudence to Dr. Manley O. Hudson, Mr. Dulles
made a long speech on international jurispru-
dence. He made no mention whatever of Dr.
Hudson. One person present remarked that it
seemed to him "an extraordinary example of
gracelessness in an intelligent man." The
thoughts of more than one member of the audi-
dence went back to Mr. Dulles' opening letter
to the employees of the State Department when
he took over command with the announced ex-
pectation of receiving their "personal loyalty."
Mr. Dulles is unquestionably intelligent. He
is beyond doubt a highly skilled negotiator. He
is a brilliant pleader of a case. There is no
record of any client ever having been dissatis-
fied with the Dulles handling of his legal affairs.
He is a candid and articulate expounder of a
complex problem in foreign affairs. His knowl-
edge of such problems and his ability to grasp
their ramifications is probably unequaled by any
other foreign minister of these times.
But, curiously enough, there seems to be a'
lurking lack of self-confidence, or perhaps non-
fulfillment, somewhere in his make-up-as
though in his own mind Grandfather John
Foster still loomed unmatched over him. Mr.
Dulles has made a far larger splash on the pages
of history than the grandfather whom others
have long since forgotten; but perhaps the grand-
son is still subconsciously a member of the
clergyman's branch of the family, made uncom-
fortable by grandfather's condescensiori toward
his poorer and more obscure relatives.
In the process either of making the peace, or
of adjusting his record to the peacemaking work
of others (take your choice), Mr. Dulles has
chalked up one incontrovertible score over his
predecessor. There have been grumblings on
Capitol Hill from time to time, but never any
real revolt against Mr. Dulles. The Senate voted
its nonconfidence in Dean Acheson just before
Mr. Acheson went to Brussels to negotiate the
NATO alliance (which the Senate then ratified).
No such public humiliation has ever been
visited upon Mr. Dulles.
It can certainly be said of Mr. Dulles that he
has successfully shielded himself and President
Eisenhower's foreign policies from attack in the
Senate. Whether he has actually generated
American foreign policy is a further question
which cannot be answered surely from the exist-
ing public record. Mr. Acheson and Mr. Kerman
did generate policy. Mr. Dulles has steered old
policies through a number of storms, and often
steered wisely and well. At least, he kept the
policies afloat.
Technically, Mr. Dulles has initiated only two
new policies since he took office. One was the
treaty of alliance with Chiang Kai-shek. The
other was the "northern tier" policy in the Mid-
dle East which the British converted into the
Bagdad pact. It is not necessarily a mark against
Approvea
 CPYRGHT.
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him that neither of these policies has produced
spectacularly successful results, nor that there
are only two. It may be that he best served the
needs of the times by steering old policies along
old courses. Congress has unquestionably been
more comfortable during Dulles' steering than
it was during Acheson's generating-although it
did vote, and heavily, in favor of every Acheson
policy presented to it (albeit attacking Mr. Ache-
son personally). Mr. Dulles has yet to test his
ability to carry a major new policy of his own
through Congress.
But the conduct of foreign policy does not
consist exclusively of negotiating formal
treaties, implementing formal statements of
policy, and. generating concepts like the Marshall
Plan and the NATO alliance. Policy can also be
the absence of action.. It may even involve the
absence of action under the cover of much verbal
sound and fury. Mr. Dulles inherited from Mr.
Acheson a public opinion which demanded bold
statements of defiance against the Communist
world, but which also yearned for an end to the
Korean war, and release from the fear of a
greater atomic war.
CPYRGHT
T H E Secretary has marvelously served these
conflicting desires. He has appeared to be
the crusading knight bearing the cross of right-
eousncss on his shield, his sword upraised against
the foe and his voice calling for the charge. But
if your glance descends from this stirring picture,
you notice that the charger he bestrides is
ambling placidly in. the opposite direction.
The spring crisis in Arab-Israeli affairs shows
.the characteristic earmark of a. Dulles operation.
At suitable intervals Mr. Dulles loudly called
upon the Soviets to prove their good intentions
by deeds, not words. But when Soviet arms
flowed into Egypt Mr. Dulles inconspicuously
noted that Moscow had a legal right to do what
it did. Britain, in anguish over the apparent
threat to its Middle East oil supplies, reversed
its ancient pro-Arab inclination, sided with
Israel, and tried to involve the United States
under the 1952 tripartite declaration. Mr. Dulles
deftly side-stepped this London move by invok-
ing the UN, thus leaving the door open for
Soviet participation in a settlement.
There was no formalized declaration or im-
plemention of policy in this operation. There
were no documents. There was a risk that the
Soviets would seek dangerous advantage from
the leaning of Mr. Dulles away from London.
But it was not the kind of risk \fr. Dulles takes
in the picture of his behavior beloved alike by
his adulators and his 'detractors. History is likely
to record that Mr. Dulles has taken more and
bolder risks on the brink of appeasement than
on the brink of war.
It is perhaps premature to suggest that
whereas the times of Stalin called for a Secretary
of State who literally did stand up to the Rus-
sians, the times of Khrushchev call for one who
will make peace with them behind a smoke
screen of threatening words. We know that the
meti of Moscow were shaken out of some of their
illusions by the resistance of the West in Korea.
We do not know yet whether they understand
and will respond to Mr. Dulles' extraordinary
way of riding foreign policy backwards. And it
is much too early to decide whether the Dulles
way of riding is intentional, or accidental.
In the meantime, in spite of all criticism, Mr.
Dulles continues to ride American foreign policy
as though it belonged to him by inherited right.
He took office with the following statement to
his assembled employees in the courtyard of the
State Department:
I don't suppose that there is any family in
the United States which has for so long been
identified with the Foreign Service and the
State Department as my family. I go back a
long ways-I'd have to stop and think of the
date-when a. great-great uncle of mine, Mr.
Welsh, was one of our early Ministers to the
Court of St. James. In those days, you know,
they were Ministers, not Ambassadors.
My grandfather, John W. Foster, was for a
long time in the diplomatic service and then
ended up as Secretary of State under Presi-
dent Harrison. His son-in-law, my uncle,
Robert Lansing, was Secretary of State under
Woodrow Wilson.
Coming down to my own generation, my
brother, A. l,etj_W. Dulles, was for many years
in the Foreign Service of the United States.
My sister, Eleanor Lansing Dulles, is today in
the State Department and has been for sev-
eral years. I, myself, have had at least sporadic
association with the Department of State and
with the Foreign Service throughout- most of
my life. So you can see, from the standpoint
of background and tradition, it is to me an
exciting and thrilling thing to be with you
here today, as Secretary of State.
To Mr. Dulles the State Department has
become a family fief. He inherited it by feudal
right, he and his family, of which he is the senior
living member.
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