Mr. Acheson
Do Senators McCarthy, Hickenlooper and Wherry, who are now leading an almost incredible attack on the reputation of the United States Secretary of State; Mr. Dean Acheson, really know what they are doing ? The containment of the Communist menace requires a strong and predictable Western policy. Such a policy cannot be maintained without a reliable and consistent lead from the United States. That in turn means that the Secretary of State must be a determined and single-minded man, acting on the assumption that he has the full support of the American Government and people. Such a responsibility has never before been laid on any individual in peace-time. Mr. Acheson needs all the support he can get, and he receives it—except in the United States, and in particular in the Senate, the seat of ultimate power in American foreign policy. And so, at this critical juncture in the world's history, the Secretary of State is compelled to stump the country to prove to the common man that he respects the Constitution, knows his own job, and is not the traitor and appease' that the Senators make him out to be. Some of the fantastic expressions of this state of affairs are dis- cussed in an article on a later page. But the insults and slanders heaped upon Mr. Acheson have been intensified in the past few days, until on Tuesday Senator Wherry, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, actually referred to the Secretary as a " bad security risk." This is possibly the strongest term of abuse in the American political vocabulary at the moment, when the nerves of the whole country have been set on edge by the constant witch-hunt for Communist agents. If, by its very wildness, it automatically aroused all decent citizens and brought the Senatorial campaign of abuse to a close, all would be well. But that will not happen. The attacks will go on, and Mr. Acheson will have to devote more and more time to defending himself and less to the vital work in hand. There have been plenty of occasions in recent years when foreign observers have had to hold back their indignation at the abuse of democratic forms by irresponsible individuals in the United States, and usually these foreigners' own countries have been the object of attack. But the dam has never come nearer to bursting than on this occasion when the victim is himself an American.
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