The Scars

Not all the Secretary of State's attention was focused on matters of high policy. He arrived in London with the attacks of Senator Joseph McCarthy still buzzing in his ears--a fact solicitously noted in the British press. Wrote the London Economist: "It would not be surprising if he and his adviser's were to arrive with nothing in their heads except lists of organizations to which they had never belonged, subversive characters they had never met ... It is certainly unlikely that they can bring much in the way of new thought and sparkling policies . . . The fault will not be in them but in their scars . . ."

At a dinner given in his honor by London's Society of Pilgrims, Acheson referred to his scars. Said he: "In the past months some of you may have felt that a strange and confusing dissonance has crowded the transatlantic frequencies from America ... I should say that the dissonance flows from the very awareness that difficult decisions must be made . . ."

During his difficult talks on cold war strategy, Acheson was painfully reminded of one recent cold war victim. From Vienna, Mrs. Robert Vogeler had flown to see the Secretary and plead for U.S. action to win freedom for her husband, whom the Hungarians had jailed as a spy (TIME, Feb. 27). Acheson spent an hour with Mrs. Vogeler, assured her that the U.S. was doing everything in its power to obtain her husband's release. Said Mrs. Vogeler: "The Secretary was most charming and I am greatly encouraged . . ."

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