U.S. MAY FACE CRISIS IN MONTH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22586, 15 March 1948, Page 5

U.S. MAY FACE CRISIS IN MONTH

BYRNES ON POSSIBLE SOVIET THREAT ACTION MAY BE NEEDED IN ITALY (N.Z.P.A.— Copyright.) (IT a.m.) NEW YORK, March 14. Mr. James Byrnes, a former Secretary of State, yesterday called for American action —“not a letter of protest”—should Russia threaten the independence of Greece, Turkey, France and Italy. Issuing a warning that the United States may have to meet an international crisis “only four or five weeks from now,” he said it was possible the Russian threat might require intervention before the elections in Italy on April 18.

■* Mr. Byrnes emphasised that he was expressing only his own views and that he had not consulted President Truman or Mr. Marshall. Four-Point Programme

Mr. Byrnes, who was addressing the Charleston Military Academy’s graduating class, proposed, among other things: 1. An immediate increase of the army strength. 2. An increased appropriation for the air force. 3. A warning to Russia that indirect aggression will bring a demand for United Nations’ action and that the United States itself will “act immediately” to maintain the status quo till the Security Council investigates. 4. That the United States should forget its desire to limit armaments until Russia stops her expansion moves. Mr. Byrnes said the United States was not prepared to meet the world crisis, but expressed the hope that it would prepare. Meanwhile, the Sunday papers in New York continue to reflect the growing uneasiness over the state of world affairs. The Herald-Tribune’s correspondent in Washington reports that “to a reporter who has returned after four weeks away from Washington is a city that has suddenly suffered a bad attack of the jitters" and cites as one of the reasons the “real alarm over the state of internatiinal affairs.” Real Danger of War The columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop state there is real reason to believe that Mr. Marshall’s recent appeal for calm was aimed primarily at Marshal Stalin because, among Mr. Marshall’s advisers, there is a deep conviction that the real danger of war rests simply in the fact that the Kremlin in relying wholly on distorted accounts of the situation in America and, therefore, undoubtedly under-estimating the gravity of American reaction to such events as the coup in Czechoslovakia. Tlie columnist, Drew Prearson, says that wires have been sent to a large number of reserve officers to be ready if there is trouble and that army representatives have visited key plants and inquired about plans for rapid conversion.

The D&ily News correspondent in Washington reports that military chiefs have abandoned the hopeful theory that the Soviet would not start trouble until they had atom bombs, and they now believe that "anything can happen in a matter of weeks or months.”