THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1950. RECOGNITION OF SPAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27296, 24 January 1950, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1950. RECOGNITION OF SPAIN

In May of last year a move, sponsored, by the Latin-Americari countries, was made in the General Assembly of the United Nations to withdraw the ban on diplomatic relations with General Franco’s Government. The resolution which was eventually proposed was defeated as it failed to win the required threefifths majority, but several of the Great Powers abstained from voting, among them being the United States. The State Department was criticised ■for its abstention both by Republican and some Democrat leaders. In justification of the Department’s attitude, Mr Dean Acheson made a statement in which he recalled that the ban had been imposed in 1946 as an intimation to the Spanish people that there must be a liberalisation of their regime before their country could become a member of the community of free nations. It was, said Mr Acheson, the United States policy to bring this about, but it was primarily a matter for the Western European nations and positive United' States action would not be helpful. The day after the defeat of the resolution in the Assembly the Export-Import Bank announced that it had rejected a Spanish request for a loan of 1,275,900,000 dollars to be spent about equally on capital equipment and consumer goods. The sum, incidentally, was more than the bank had at its disposal. Both approaches, it was believed, had been carefully planned by General Franco and the double rebuff must have appreciably added to his difficulties, external and internal.

It would appear that the State Department has now considerably modified its policy. The United States is, in effect, prepared to take the initiative in bringing about the resumption of diplomatic relations with Spain. Mr Acheson explains that disapproval of Franco is unaltered, but there is no alternative to his Government in sight and it enjoys support from many who fear a recurrence of civil strife. This is true enough, but it was equally true last year. The reference to “ normal practice in the exchange of diplomatic representation ” also strikes rather peculiarly in view of the State Department’s attitude to the de facto Government of China. The crux of the matter may be that, while Mao Tse-tung is a Communist, General Franco, whatever else he may be, is not. The change in policy is perhaps due to continued pressure from the United States Service Departments which, it has been stated, would like to see Spain fully integrated with Western defence. Unless British opinion has also been changed recently, there may be in this development cause for further friction in Anglo-American policies. The British Government has been strongly opposed to recognition of Franco and the Conservatives, although they favour recognition, oppose the admission of Spain to the Western Union and, presumably, to the Atlantic Pact. The question is a vexed one. On the one hand it is contended that to bring Spain into the family of nations and to extend aid to it will be the best way to weaken Franco’s hold. On the other hand, there is dislike of repealing the United Nations’ ban without good reason, and, as a clinching point, it is asked: Is there any guarantee that Franco will be an asset to Western Union and Western defence? CRIME AND POLITICS In the middle of 1948, Whitaker Chambers, a senior editor of Time magazine, a Quaker who had formerly been a Communist and an agent in an espionage system, gave evidence of his activities before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and charged that Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a former assistant in the State Department, had also been a Communist. After prolonged crossexamination of the principals, the Committee’s investigation was inconclusive, but Chambers repeated his charges in the course of a radio broadcast and Hiss sued him for libel. Only then did Chambers produce the celebrated “ Pumpkin Papers,” microfilm copies of secret State papers which he had concealed in a pumpkin on his farm. The Federal Grand Jury, which had been sworn in eighteen months before to investigate alleged espionage and subversion, examined this new material and formally indicted Hiss on two charges of perjury arising out of evidence he had given at previous proceedings. Last July, the long trial appeared to be drawing to a close —but the jury failed to agree. The whole matter had to be gone over again. The re-trial was commenced about two months ago, and it has resulted in the conviction of Hiss on both counts. He has, in fact, been found guilty of spending years of his life as a trusted State employee in conspiring with the Communists. This much has been established, subject to the appeal which he is to lodge. During these involved and highly sensational proceedings, the case of Alger Hiss has come to assume importance for reasons other than ascertaining whether Hiss did hand over secret State papers to a Communist agent. The House Un-Ameri-can Activities Committee, which first dealt with the matter, has had a highly chequered career. Its investigations have been irresponsibly pursued so that charges have been frequently made that its Republican members were chiefly concerned with attempts to discredit the Roosevelt administration by revealing that it had tolerated Communists in high places. As the Presidential election was still before the country at that time, the matter was also a live political issue, President Truman declaring that the case was “nothing but a red herring.” The “ Pumpkin Papers ” proved that serious leakages of information had taken‘pla ce but the political association of the proceedings remained

strong. At the conclusion of the first trial, for example, an attempt was made by a member of the House Committee to impugn the impartiality of the judge. The comment made in the “American Survey ” of the Economist after the first trial states the difficulty. “ The implacable venom with which Mr Hiss is being pursued does a disservice, not only to the discovery of the truth, but even to those who honestly believe him to be guilty. It lends plausibility to the view that in Republican eyes his case is primarily only one more episode in the long trial of Mr Roosevelt and perhaps the closest there is likely to be to a TransAtlantic Dreyfus case.” The evidence against Hiss disallows a comparison with Dreyfus, but his case certainly again emphasises the difficulty which the American democracy experiences in dealing with conspirator/ in the emotion-charged political atmosphere.