"A Plateau of Tension"

Sir Oliver Franks, Britain's keen, contemplative Ambassador to the U.S., is first of all a professor of moral philosophy, secondly a diplomat. He did such a good job of prodding Western Europe into uniting under the Marshall Plan that Britain allowed him only a short tour as provost of Oxford's Queen's College before drafting him for Washington duty last May.

Last week, Sir Oliver expressed a philosophy of a moderately hopeful sort in a New York speech before the Pilgrims, an old, famed Anglo-American friendship society. Said Sir Oliver of British-American relations:

"We and you together are making a supreme endeavor to save the sanity of this world . . . No one can put the clock back. We shall live for many years in a restless world and may find that the close contacts between the nations serve to emphasize friction rather than to advance the unity of men. A crisis in this sort of world may not be a turning point in the fever chart but a long sustained plateau of tension."

In the common effort to keep humanity from rolling off the plateau over a precipice, said Sir Oliver: "You may rest secure that Britain will not fail you and in the back of the mind of every Briton there is firm and steadfast belief that you will not fail us."

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