The New Leadership

Resounding around the U.S. and the free world since Communism's Sputniks spun out into space was the call for leadership. The call was addressed above all others to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man judged by weight of character, prestige, experience and constitutional powers to be most capable of providing leadership. In two firm, decisive moves, the President stepped forward and provided just that. Last week, he went before a Democratic-controlled Congress and delivered a State of the Union message that marked not the least attempt to shrug off blame for past letdowns, spoke candidly but without hand-wringing about the present, mapped a hard line for future progress. This week he sent off a letter to the U.S.S.R.'s Premier Bulganin, thus stepped into a world scene that had become a mishmash of creeping neutralism and phony Communist peace propaganda, and managed both to seize the peace initiative and restore the perspective of the cold war.

The Intrinsic Need. The occasion for the President's diplomatic move was a letter from the U.S.S.R.'s Bulganin, received just before the NATO meeting last month, renewing Communist propaganda demands for a parley at the summit. "I am ready," wrote Dwight Eisenhower this week, "to meet with the Soviet leaders. [But] these complex matters should be worked on in advance through diplomatic channels and by foreign ministers." This is necessary, the President emphasized, to ensure that a summit parley might, "in fact, hold good hope of advancing the cause of peace and justice in the world."

The President moved on beyond Bul-ganin's propaganda-rattling to call upon the U.S.S.R., as he had in his State of the Union message, for works as well as words. Specifically, he:

P: Proposed that the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. "should make it the policy of our two governments" not to use the veto in the U.N. Security Council to stave off the peaceful settlement of disputes,

P: Called on the U.S.S.R. to make good on its promise of "the reunification of Germany by free elections," agreed upon at the Geneva Conference in 1955. "I assure you that this act of simple justice and of good faith need not lead to any increased jeopardy of your nation."

P: Reminded the U.S.S.R. that the right of the Soviet satellites to have governments of their own choosing should again be discussed. "There is an intrinsic need of this in the interest of peace and justice, which seems to me compelling ..."

P: Offered to suspend nuclear weapons tests as part of a world-wide agreement based upon a foolproof termination of "the now unrestrained production of nuclear weapons . . . Since our existing weapons stocks are doubtless larger than yours, we would expect to make a greater transfer to peaceful-purpose stocks."

The First Phase. Moving on to the climax of his week of new leadership, the President dramatically put to the U.S.S.R. what he called "a proposal to solve what I consider to be the most important problem which faces the world today." The problem: mankind's first steps into space. Said the President: "I propose that we agree that outer space should be used only for peaceful purposes. We face a decisive moment in history in relation to this matter. Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. are now using outer space for the testing of missiles designed for military purposes. The time to stop is now."

Thus, as he did last week in his State of the Union message, the President moved vigorously to restore a measure of the U.S.'s pre-Sputnik confidence--without its pre-Sputnik complacency. And thus, in his letter to Bulganin, he redefined the meaning of the world competition and lifted the free world's faith in its cause. At home and abroad, the President moved notably in the second week of the new year to give those who called for it a touch of the style of command he once summed up: "Only strength can cooperate; weakness can only beg."

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