Mr. Dulles's Ten Days
Some minds are congenitally absorptive. It is to be hoped that that is true of Mr. Dulles's and Mr. Stassen's, for in their ten-days' European tour, which included visits to Rome, Paris, London, Bonn, The Hague, Brussels and Luxembourg, they must have acquired a wealth of impressions which need rather urgently to be sorted out. But the American diplomats were clearly as much concerned to convey impressions as to acquire them. They intimated plainly to a very willing Dr. Adenauer and an apparently not quite so willing M. Mayer that they expected the European Defence Treaty to be ratified with very little further delay. Such indications of the American view were opportune. How far, and with what degree of restraint, they exerted similar pressure in favour of closer unity in Europe is not known, since the conversations with the various European Ministers were naturally private, but that representations to that effect were made is not in doubt. Mr. Dulles expressed him- self on his arrival at Washington on Monday as "mildly opti- mistic about the situation." Mr. Stassen, with rather exuberant loyalty to his colleague, predicted that " the days of this journey will be known as ten great days of service by the Secretary of State to the cause of peace and freedom." May it be so. That Mr. Dulles's visit to London was of real service to Anglo- American relations Mr. Eden made completely clear in carefully guarded language to the House of Commons. Personal contact between the British Foreign Secretary and Mr. Dean Acheson was of the highest value; if the same contact can be established with Mr. Dulles, and if Mr. Dulles is willing to learn something from the most experienced Foreign Minister in the world, the results should be as happy under the Eisenhower administration - as they were under the Truman. Certainly they need to be, for today more than ever a complete Anglo-American under- standing is the indispensable condition of world-stability. There must be no more unilateral decisions.
