Dealing with Kidnapers

"When you have people kidnaped, you deal with the kidnapers." said Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at his press conference last week. "It does not carry any implication at all of recognition." The kidnaped were seven artillery officers of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division and the two crewmen of their big Sikorsky helicopter, which had strayed off course, come down in Soviet-occupied East Germany. The kidnapers were the Russians, who. well aware that the U.S. does not recognize East Germany, refused to send the nine men home until the U.S. went around to the East Germans to beg for them.

"When it comes to getting Americans out of a country, we do not stand on ceremony," Dulles explained. "We have been getting Americans out of Communist China, not with the completeness or rapidity that we had hoped, but we have been getting them out through dealing with the Chinese Communists." But when the U.S. sent an Army colonel to see the East German authorities in East Berlin, he was told to go back and get the State Department's "authorization." The Russians then offered a "compromise" plan, whereby the Americans and the East Germans might be able to get together with the Russians sitting in as "middlemen."

The story of the nine men in the helicopter was a timely reminder that the

Communists, even as they carry on jolly conversation (see FOREIGN NEWS), never hesitate to use the nearest convenient U.S. servicemen as pawns in their current political cold war offensive.

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