one general observed wryly, “He certainly was no Nathan Hale.”
I was on the point of writing to the
New York Times
, advocating that the Paris summit meeting be canceled by us before something worse took place, but my friends dissuaded me from such a course, and I sat back waiting for the time bomb to explode. I remember taking consolation in the fact that at least one of the Republicans’ major campaign issues was about to be blown sky-high. They could not, in October, claim that they had brought peace in our time, for now what many of us who worked abroad knew, would become apparent to all: that America was far from true peace and that her international posture had deteriorated badly in the last eight years.
The debacle came, not in the form I had imagined,but worse. With shame I read President Eisenhower’s response to Khrushchev’s breaking up the summit and found it one of the most tedious and ineffective statements ever made by an American President. Where were the bold challenges that Teddy Roosevelt would have thrown down, the clear logic of right that Woodrow Wilson would have expounded, the ringing call to international decency that Franklin Roosevelt would have uttered, or the pedestrian, honest reaction of Harry Truman? Our nation looked most inadequate that day, and when, a few days later, our President retreated from Paris to Portugal to garner the meaningless plaudits of a commandeered crowd I wondered what our values were.
I took consolation from the fact that although as a nation we had suffered a body blow, the citizens had witnessed what had happened and were in a position to assess the blame.
At this point the Democrats received help from another quarter. Months before, I had been apprehensive about President Eisenhower’s intervention in the British elections. London newspapers had cynically termed him “Prime Minister Macmillan’s campaign manager,” and much of the Labour Party’s subsequent hostility to the United States stemmed from this unwarranted intrusion by our President. The only reason why there were no riots in the streets of London was that Englishmen tend to be gentlemen.
But when President Eisenhower tried the same gambit in Japan, seeking again to shore up a conservative party, which sought revision of the Japanese constitution, the roof fell in. Japanese leftists, in their weird snake dancesand virulent chants of hatred, proved that they were not bound by the restraints that govern British gentlemen. I am sure that the Japanese did not resent President Eisenhower’s intervention any more deeply than had the British; they merely expressed that resentment in more violent ways. At the time I was widely questioned about the Japanese riots and replied consistently, “In the long run they mean very little. Merely that the Japanese won’t tolerate outside meddling in their internal political life.” When my interrogators expressed amazement at my lack of panic I added, “Watch. At the next election Japan will vote conservative, just as before.” And it did.
On the other hand, from the short-range view, the Japanese rioters had struck another lethal blow at Republican campaign claims, for it would now be difficult for that party to argue that it had organized the world into groups that supported us. All too visibly, the world was falling apart if an American President was unable to visit the capital of our nation’s principal bastion in the Far East. I remember thinking at the time, “Right now the general public doesn’t seem to realize the setbacks we’ve suffered. But later the pictures they’ve seen on television will return to their minds, and when the Democrats refer to these matters, the voters will understand.” I was convinced that the Republicans had suffered substantially from the events in Paris and Tokyo.
At the same time I had to admit that the Democrats had also absorbed two frightening body blows. When I heard the newscast that John Kennedy, while on
I was on the point of writing to the
New York Times
, advocating that the Paris summit meeting be canceled by us before something worse took place, but my friends dissuaded me from such a course, and I sat back waiting for the time bomb to explode. I remember taking consolation in the fact that at least one of the Republicans’ major campaign issues was about to be blown sky-high. They could not, in October, claim that they had brought peace in our time, for now what many of us who worked abroad knew, would become apparent to all: that America was far from true peace and that her international posture had deteriorated badly in the last eight years.
The debacle came, not in the form I had imagined,but worse. With shame I read President Eisenhower’s response to Khrushchev’s breaking up the summit and found it one of the most tedious and ineffective statements ever made by an American President. Where were the bold challenges that Teddy Roosevelt would have thrown down, the clear logic of right that Woodrow Wilson would have expounded, the ringing call to international decency that Franklin Roosevelt would have uttered, or the pedestrian, honest reaction of Harry Truman? Our nation looked most inadequate that day, and when, a few days later, our President retreated from Paris to Portugal to garner the meaningless plaudits of a commandeered crowd I wondered what our values were.
I took consolation from the fact that although as a nation we had suffered a body blow, the citizens had witnessed what had happened and were in a position to assess the blame.
At this point the Democrats received help from another quarter. Months before, I had been apprehensive about President Eisenhower’s intervention in the British elections. London newspapers had cynically termed him “Prime Minister Macmillan’s campaign manager,” and much of the Labour Party’s subsequent hostility to the United States stemmed from this unwarranted intrusion by our President. The only reason why there were no riots in the streets of London was that Englishmen tend to be gentlemen.
But when President Eisenhower tried the same gambit in Japan, seeking again to shore up a conservative party, which sought revision of the Japanese constitution, the roof fell in. Japanese leftists, in their weird snake dancesand virulent chants of hatred, proved that they were not bound by the restraints that govern British gentlemen. I am sure that the Japanese did not resent President Eisenhower’s intervention any more deeply than had the British; they merely expressed that resentment in more violent ways. At the time I was widely questioned about the Japanese riots and replied consistently, “In the long run they mean very little. Merely that the Japanese won’t tolerate outside meddling in their internal political life.” When my interrogators expressed amazement at my lack of panic I added, “Watch. At the next election Japan will vote conservative, just as before.” And it did.
On the other hand, from the short-range view, the Japanese rioters had struck another lethal blow at Republican campaign claims, for it would now be difficult for that party to argue that it had organized the world into groups that supported us. All too visibly, the world was falling apart if an American President was unable to visit the capital of our nation’s principal bastion in the Far East. I remember thinking at the time, “Right now the general public doesn’t seem to realize the setbacks we’ve suffered. But later the pictures they’ve seen on television will return to their minds, and when the Democrats refer to these matters, the voters will understand.” I was convinced that the Republicans had suffered substantially from the events in Paris and Tokyo.
At the same time I had to admit that the Democrats had also absorbed two frightening body blows. When I heard the newscast that John Kennedy, while on
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