1959: United States

A summary of United States foreign relations, political events, and legislative and judicial developments in 1959 is presented below.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

U.S. foreign policy in 1959 continued to be conditioned by the fears and antagonisms of the cold war. Its continuance permitted little flexibility in national objectives. But even the fundamental relations between the U.S.S.R. and the United States underwent some change, for if neither nation felt compelled to modify its traditional demands on the other, both agreed on the necessity of talking. Perhaps the burden of leadership, when much of the world was never more than a few hours from destruction, would permit no less.

U.S.-Soviet Relations.

The Berlin Crisis.

The beginning of the year found the West groping for an adequate response to the disturbing Soviet note of Nov. 27, 1958, in which Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev had laid down the ultimatum that the West must within six months withdraw from West Berlin, leaving it a free city, and sign separate peace treaties with the two German regimes. If this program were not followed, the note warned, the U.S.S.R. would sign a separate peace treaty with the East Germans and give them control of the access routes to West Berlin.

Fear was a dominant motive in this Soviet threat, for West Berlin was a danger to the long-run stability of Soviet hegemony in East Germany. Even U.S. spokesmen admitted that Russia had a problem. Robert Murphy, U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of State, pointed to the vast discrepancy between the extraordinary progress of West Germany, reflected in the remarkable recovery of West Berlin, and the drabness, distrust, and fear found in East Germany. West Berlin was both a dangerous Western showcase and a refuge for those who chose to escape the Soviet sphere. The city, moreover, was the one open window through which the West could penetrate the Iron Curtain. As long as it remained part of the [West] German Federal Republic, East Germany could not be absorbed completely into the Soviet system.

In reply to the Soviet threat, the West fell back on its traditional stand on Germany and affirmed its refusal to negotiate under the pressure of an ultimatum. The West rejected the Soviet demand for a change in the status of Berlin on the ground that the 'Big Three' had both a war-won right to remain and a commitment to preserve the city's freedom until the question of Germany's future had been settled. To accept the Kremlin's two-Germany plan, the West held, would be to acquiesce in the idea of a permanently divided Germany. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower stated the Western position bluntly in a broadcast on March 16: 'We cannot agree to any permanent and compulsory division of the German nation which would leave Central Europe a perpetual powder mill. . . . At the end of World War II our announced purpose and that of our wartime associates was the . . . eventual unification of Germany under freedom.'

The Geneva Conference.

Faced with this stand, the U.S.S.R. began to back down. In January, Khrushchev called for a summit conference to discuss Berlin and this time did not repeat the six-month deadline. Rejecting this call for a summit conference, the West in February offered to participate in a foreign ministers' conference. Early in March the U.S.S.R. agreed.

Negotiations at Geneva were doomed to failure. Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, speaking for the West on June 5, attacked the Soviet plan for a free city as a 'disguise for the gradual smothering of the West Berliners' present freedom.' The West, he said, would have no share in imposing a new status on the people of West Berlin against their will. He admitted that the city was a source of friction, but insisted that any agreement reached would have to accept the existing Western rights of access to West Berlin, perpetuate the city's political and economic ties with the West, and assume continued nonrecognition by the West of the [East] German Democratic Republic. The United States would not, he concluded, 'resort to a break of solemn international agreements under the guise of 'relaxation of tensions.' . . . The Soviet Government must recognize that Berlin is a solemn testing ground on which its intentions with respect to its international obligations are being watched.'

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko continued to insist that the 'Big Three' should leave Berlin, but declared that the U.S.S.R. would withhold a showdown on the issue for eighteen months if the West would reduce its Berlin garrisons, curb its propaganda activities, and agree to negotiations on the future of Germany by an all-German commission representing East and West Germany equally. Western spokesmen retorted that the time limit made negotiation impossible. When the conference recessed on June 20, after seven weeks of fruitless talks, the Soviet and Western spokesmen were as far apart as they had been when the conference opened.

The Khrushchev Visit.

President Eisenhower's announcement on August 3 that he had invited Khrushchev to visit the United States produced both condemnation and praise among the American people. Those who disapproved feared that the tour would lull the nation into an unwarranted feeling of security or would honor a man whose past actions did not merit it. Those who praised the visit as a great triumph for U.S. diplomacy assumed that Khrushchev would be impressed by what he saw or that his presence alone would ease cold war tensions. The president himself said merely that he hoped it would be useful in 'the effort to melt a little bit of the ice that seems to freeze our relationships with the Soviets.'

To assure the Allies that the United States, in its coming talks with the Soviet leader, would not retreat from its 'ideals and principles,' President Eisenhower in August visited Bonn, Paris, and London for talks with NATO leaders. He told newsmen that he would propose to the officials of Western Europe that they restate their willingness to negotiate 'realistically' on matters of disarmament and on Germany. But he warned that 'no principle or fundamental interest will be placed upon an auction block.' Berlin, he said, was as important as any other part of the Western position; the loss of freedom anywhere would endanger that of the United States itself. 'Firmness in support of fundamentals, with flexibility in tactics and method,' he added, 'is the key to any hope of progress in negotiation.'

At Bonn the president assured Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the United States would defend the freedom of West Berlin. In their joint communiqué the two leaders agreed that NATO was the pillar of the foreign policies of both nations. In Paris, the president met with greater difficulty, for French President de Gaulle demanded U.S. backing in Algeria, aid in building an atomic-powered submarine, and a greater part in determining the West's global strategy. In London Eisenhower recognized the cordiality in Anglo-American relations, but warned the British people over television and radio that he would not be a party to any summit conference that might, in its failure, 'depress and discourage' people. Prime Minister Macmillian agreed that the President's initiative would secure a summit conference under the most auspicious circumstances. The one innovation in Eisenhower's proposals to Western leaders was the suggestion that the prosperous nations of the West co-operate in improving the economic plight of the world's underdeveloped regions.

Whatever the permanent impact of Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September, it produced a mellower tone in U.S.-Soviet relations. Before the UN General Assembly, the Soviet leader made a proposal for the gradual abolition of all armaments. He even limited his criticism of the capitalist system and admitted that it had served this nation well, although he never ceased to predict that eventually Communism would triumph. As Khrushchev's tour drew to a close, President Eisenhower announced that the removal of Soviet duress over Berlin had cleared the way for a summit conference, and that he would visit the Soviet Union in the spring of 1960. Both the President and Khrushchev agreed at the President's mountain retreat at Camp David, Md., to talk further on Berlin, but the only concession was on the U.S. side, for Eisenhower admitted that the status of Berlin was abnormal.

Khrushchev's visit left most cold war issues as clouded as in the past. If he ended all talk of deadlines and threats over Berlin and promised to resume negotiations, he made no promise of future concessions. He would not go beyond giving guarantees against a Communist take-over should West Berlin be declared a free city. This left the Russians in their advantageous position, for even under guarantees they could strangle West Berlin with taxes or other impediments to the free passage of goods or persons across the hundred miles of East Germany. The Soviet leader gave no evidence that he was ready to back down from his two-Germany demands or that his program for disarmament would be accompanied by a willingness to accept effective controls. Nor was there any agreement on the future of the satellites or Red China. The fundamental issues that divided East and West in Europe seemed to continue unabated.

Plans for Summit Conference.

When the President in October proposed a summit meeting of the heads of the Western powers at Paris in December, to be followed by a 'Big Four' conference at Geneva, his views were heartily endorsed by Prime Minister Macmillan, acquiesced in by Chancellor Adenauer, and opposed by President de Gaulle, who preferred to await better conditions. Despite differences on the nature and timing of the 'Big Four' meeting, Western leaders proceeded to prepare for their own conference at Paris.

U.S. Relations with Asia.

Quemoy and Matsu.

Only occasionally in 1959 did Communist shells from the Chinese mainland explode on the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. But if the Chinese civil war did not provoke another major crisis, the Taiwan Strait remained the key point of conflict in east Asia. The United States, still identified with Chiang's commitment to the offshore islands, accepted as the price of its policies involvement in any future crisis arising from a renewal of the Chinese Communist attacks.

Laos.

It was the Kingdom of Laos in southeast Asia that caused alarm when its government proclaimed a state of emergency and appealed to the UN to intervene in its civil war. For some time the Laotian government had been under pressure from the pro-Communist Pathet Lao movement. Following a period of coalition government, the premier in 1958 ousted the Communist members of the cabinet and attempted to integrate what remained of the Pathet Lao forces into the Royal Laotian army. One battalion fled into the northern provinces and opened guerrilla warfare against the national troops. At its inception, the struggle was purely internal; but in August 1959, Laotian spokesmen, against a background of a deteriorating military situation, charged that the rebels were being supplied, trained, and reinforced by Communist North Vietnam.

The United States could not ignore the Laotian appeal for help. Western stakes in Laos are high; its fall would endanger the security of Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and South Vietnam. The United States, moreover, was committed to the region's defense through the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The U.S. State Department, early in September, declared that Communist intervention was indicated by the fact that the military outbreak of August 30 had followed conferences in Moscow and Peking between Ho Chi Minh, leader of Communist-controlled North Vietnam, and Soviet and Chinese officials.

At the UN Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge introduced a resolution providing for the appointment of a subcommittee to conduct an investigation of the situation in Laos and report to the Council as soon as possible. The Soviet delegate's negative vote was not recognized as a veto since the subcommittee would still be a 'subsidiary organ' of the Council. The subcommittee, composed of representatives from Argentina, Italy, Japan, and Tunisia, left for Laos immediately with sixty aides.

In the Laotian crisis the UN was confronted with another example of the most intractable problem of the postwar era, that of indirect aggression. Before the UN could take any action in Laos, it had to prove either North Vietnamese or Chinese intervention. Few Western diplomats doubted that Communist China and North Vietnam were attempting to subvert Laos, but it was not clear how this added up to 'aggression' or how the UN could combat it, for the members of the UN had never agreed on what constituted 'subversion.'

In late October, after repeated rumors that the United States would appeal to SEATO for action if the UN would not authorize the employment of force in Laos, U.S. officials found themselves embarrassed by the subcommittee report. The UN mission discovered that the Communist war in Laos had never approached the proportions indicated by the Laotian appeals. The subcommittee found no proof that Communist forces from North Vietnam had taken part in the Laotian conflict; it agreed, however, that the rebels had received arms, equipment, and supplies from the North Vietnam government. The subcommittee reported, furthermore, that the fighting had dropped off since September 15, and had been reduced to general guerrilla warfare scattered throughout the kingdom. The failure of the report to substantiate the Laotian and U.S. charges of Communist interference sent the Western powers into a search for a way to discard the entire issue quietly. It appeared from further reports in November that the United States, reflecting its deep antagonism toward China, had taken the complaints of Laos more seriously than the facts warranted. The threat, it seemed, was largely internal, and emanated from wide hostility in the villages to the central government, a hostility exploited by local Communists.

Tibet.

This large, mountainous, and remote area of Asia has generally been regarded part of China, but the Communist regime, in attempting to assert control over it in recent years, challenged a long-standing tradition of Tibetan autonomy. When finally in 1959 that authority was resisted, the Communist Chinese resorted to force. One investigation by an Indian lawyer concluded that 65,000 Tibetans were killed and 20,000 others were deported. The Dalai Lama, who claimed both spiritual and temporal leadership in Tibet's Buddhist culture, received asylum in India. From India, the Dalai Lama appealed to the United Nations for help.

It became obvious immediately that the question of Tibet could not be divorced from problems elsewhere. There was widespread fear in Western circles that a heated debate in the UN could destroy the cordial atmosphere created by Khrushchev's visit to the United States. U.S. officials declared that a debate would be welcomed, but they made no move to initiate it. That task was assumed by Ireland, a small nation with no direct commitments in the cold war. Ireland was joined by Malaya in placing the question of Tibet on the UN agenda. Those who supported the move had no illusions that a debate would bring any freedom to Tibet, and to hold Indian embarrassment to a minimum, the resolution 'deplored' but did not 'condemn' the Communist Chinese action. In the General Assembly, the American delegate, James W. Barco, declared that the UN could not ignore the shocking events in Tibet. 'To do so,' he said, 'would expose the UN to the charge of indifference to wrongs of a magnitude which strike at the core of human decency.'

China.

U.S. policy of nonrecognition toward Communist China remained unchanged in 1959. Walter S. Robertson, U.S. delegate to the UN General Assembly, restated the American view that seating Communist China would make a mockery of the UN charter. 'By every standard of national and international conduct,' he said, 'the Red regime of Peking is an outlaw. It has perpetrated mass murder and slavery upon its own people.' He accused Red China of promoting six foreign and civil wars — Korea, Tibet, Indochina, the Philippines, Malaya, and Laos. India's representative, V. K. Krishna Menon, again took the lead in supporting China's claims, but to no avail. The final vote was 44 to 29, with 9 abstentions. Thus the controversial question was shelved formally for another year.

But diplomats were not convinced that the vote would remove the 'China question' from the UN. Opposition to U.S. policy had never been stronger than in the fall of 1959, and critics noted that years of the U.S. attitude had done nothing to tame or weaken the Communist regime. The 26 abstaining votes on the Tibetan resolution, which included such nations as Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal, as well as the important nations of southeast Asia, indicated the extent of the opposition to the U.S. approach to the China problem. A report on Asia, prepared by Conlon Associates of San Francisco for the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate, suggested for the first time a step-by-step shift in U.S. policy toward China.

U.S. Relations with the Middle East.

One unique aspect of international affairs in 1959 was the absence of a major crisis in the Middle East. This apparent stability was the product of deadlock, not settlement. The region was still marked by two interlocking sets of rivalries — one between the U.S.S.R. and the West, the other between Israel and the Arab states. Past crises, revolutions, and conflicts had gradually established an equilibrium which the UN was able to define.

For Israel, enjoying greater security and prosperity than ever before in its history, nothing could be more satisfactory than the continuance of the stalemate. A new atmosphere of relaxation had even pervaded the Arab world. Pan-Arabism, the Middle East's chief pressure against the status quo, had receded. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria), its leading proponent, had apparently grown wiser and less volatile with age. He could take some pride in the successful functioning of the Suez Canal. The cooling of his relations with the Soviet Union had the effect of softening the U.S. attitude toward him. But pan-Arabism was not dead, and U.A.R. pressure against Jordan, the Sudan, or Libya could erupt at any moment, as could the struggle between Premier Kassim of Iraq and Nasser for leadership of the Arab nations.

The temporary acquiescence of the U.S.S.R. to the status quo in the Middle East could be explained largely by the fluid situation in the two nations she had sought to influence — Iraq and Egypt. Finally, the United States also found the status quo highly satisfactory. U.S. officials feared that any change, whether stimulated by Nasser or the Kremlin, would not improve the position of the West in the Middle East.

To preserve the status quo the United States continued to support the Baghdad Pact, now renamed the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), since it no longer included Iraq. Great Britain, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey were full members of the organization; the United States participated as an observer. But the United States demonstrated its interest in CENTO when it invited its ministerial council to meet in Washington during October 1959. Despite the momentary quiet, it was clear that the long-term interests and ambitions of the nations involved in Middle Eastern affairs were still antagonistic, rendering the status quo in the Middle East precarious at best.

Africa.

Those regions of Africa that remained most troublesome in 1959 were those in which European minorities sought to perpetuate their rule over African majorities. Such areas included Algeria, the Central African Federation, the Union of South Africa, and South-West Africa. The last, turned over to the Union of South Africa under a League of Nations mandate, has been virtually annexed by the Union.

Since these areas in conflict involved Britain and France, the chief European members of NATO, the United States had hesitated in previous years to identify itself completely with the anticolonial cause. In 1959, however, the United States took a number of steps that placed it directly in the camp of the insurgent Africans. It welcomed Guinea's president, Sekou Touré, despite French disapproval; it agreed to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Morocco, a move viewed by Africans as favorable to their cause. Then the United States, in opposition to the entire British Commonwealth except for Ghana, supported the case of South-West Africa in the UN Trusteeship Committee and defended the region's right to have its case heard by the World Court. This U.S. decision stemmed from the conviction that the Africa of the future will belong to the Africans, and that if racial rule could be eliminated in South-West Africa, a beginning could be made for its removal elsewhere on the continent.

U.S. Relations with Latin America.

U.S. relations with Latin America in 1959 experienced some improvement over previous years. Throughout the period of the 'cold war,' Latin Americans had accused the United States of neglecting their region. Although U.S. financial aid had trickled into Latin America, American officials took no comprehensive or rational approach to the economic problems of production and pricing. Occasionally Washington took measures that shook local economies and produced troublesome psychological reactions. This resentment had triggered the attacks on Vice President Richard Nixon during his Latin American tour of 1958. But gradually, under the leadership of Thomas C. Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, the United States helped to stabilize coffee prices and anticipated the conclusion of pacts on other raw materials and even a Latin American common market. At the Inter-American Economic Conference at Buenos Aires in May 1959, the Latin Americans accepted new approaches to their economic problems. Washington had finally ceased to be the scapegoat for the region's economic ills.

The Caribbean.

Perhaps the greatest cause for U.S. concern in Latin America was the spawning of political passion in the region of the Caribbean. Fidel Castro's successful revolution in Cuba set off a wave of interventionism in defiance of the long-standing Latin American tradition of nonintervention. In July, the Dominican Republic charged that Cuba and Venezuela had encouraged invasions of Dominican exiles for the purpose of overthrowing dictator Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. What rendered the Caribbean area even more tense were invasion attempts against Panama and Nicaragua and threats against Haiti and Guatemala — all in the name of democratic liberation. The Dominican Republic called an emergency meeting of the hemisphere's foreign ministers to deal with the external threats to its political stability.

These pressures for a conference trapped the United States in a dilemma. Strategic considerations dictated that the United States act, but not in such manner as to revive old charges that the United States was favorable to dictators. Castro interpreted U.S. mediation efforts as a move to defeat the Cuban revolution and protect the Trujillo regime. Conscious of the risks involved, the United States exercised no initiative in the calling of the Consultative Conference of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of American States at Santiago, Chile, in August 1959, to discuss tensions in the Caribbean. The chief problem for the United States was to avoid over-stressing the principle of nonintervention, for this principle appeared to underwrite the Caribbean dictatorships; at the same time, the United States did not want to endorse the principle of the rights of man so strongly that it would appear to condone further 'liberating' expeditions. The conference solved the dilemma by reaffirming both principles so clearly that neither the dictators nor the 'liberators' could find much comfort. The conference's unequivocal position on nonintervention isolated the Cubans and made the question of democracy in the Dominican Republic entirely the affair of the Dominicans. By offering none of the resolutions himself and by meeting with the other delegates individually, Secretary of State Herter was able to have his way without arousing an anti-U.S. sentiment. Herter's views conformed perfectly to the majority views of the Latin Americans, and his vigorous condemnation of dictatorships of the right and the left established firmly, and for the first time in many years, the U.S. position relative to Latin America. The United States was able to emerge from the conference still facing the troublesome issues of the Caribbean, but backed by the favorable sentiment of the hemisphere's responsible opinion.

President Eisenhower's Good-Will Tour.

On Dec. 3, 1959 President Eisenhower left Washington to begin the longest trip ever made abroad by an American President. In a telecast from the White House on the eve of his departure, he announced to the nation his hopes of using his good-will trip to promote throughout the world the United States' ambitions for peace and friendship.

The chief executive's schedule of visiting 11 countries on three different continents within 19 days was one of the most ambitious ventures in personal diplomacy ever attempted. The accomplishment appears all the greater when it is recalled that when he entered office General Eisenhower was older than any of his 33 predecessors, and that his second term had almost been canceled by a heart attack just before the start of his campaign for re-election. Furthermore, during the previous seven years of his administration, the President had allowed his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to handle the external problems of the United States almost exclusively; it was not until the latter's death, a few months before the President began his trip, that Mr. Eisenhower began to show a personal interest, let alone provide unquestioned leadership, in the conduct of the nation's foreign policy.

Aims of the Trip.

The President's trip was aimed at two specific goals. One was to radiate an image of American 'peace and friendship in freedom,' as he told his television audience. The other was to pursue several practical negotiations of diplomatic policy. For the first of these goals, most commentators agreed, there was no one who could do a better job than President Eisenhower. His friendly and optimistic personality, as well as the high prestige of his office, enabled him to convey the sincerity and sentiments of the whole American community. His dignity and commanding position as a leader of the 'free world,' moreover, could afford him the authority to make an impression upon the neutralist and newly formed nations of Africa and Asia and to persuade them of the West's sympathy and willingness to provide necessary assistance.

The President believed that the glamour of his office and of his travels would compete forcefully against the 'image-making' publicity tours of such Communist leaders as the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, or the leader of Communist China, Mao Tse-tung. Mr. Eisenhower was fully aware of the new mode of diplomacy by personal visits which had been so characteristic of the 1959 approach to world politics. He said that he would use 'such prestige and standing as I have on earth' to spread his message as widely as possible.

Departure.

President Eisenhower's huge Air Force jet-plane, which was to cover 19,600 miles of his trip, left from Washington on December 3. Included in the White House staff accompanying the President was the zealous press officer, James Hagerty, who had arranged press, television, and news coverage in each country the President was going to visit. His lavish arrangements provided for both the local newsmen and for the American correspondents and cameramen who preceded the President's party wherever it went.

Rome.

The tour opened in rainy and unpleasant weather in Rome on December 4. The President showed his ceaseless enthusiasm for reviewing troops, laying wreaths, visiting sports events, formal dinners, and church services, and all the other demanding ceremonies and protocols which a head-of-state has to follow on paying a courtesy visit to another country. His stamina for this pace of diplomacy was shown from the start, during his vigorous two days in Rome in which he met President Gronchi, Premier Segni, and the recently elected Pope John XXIII. It was reported that the chief topic of the President's political talks in Rome concerned Italy's uncertain status as a member of NATO since the Italians were offended by their exclusion from the forthcoming summit conference of the world's great powers.

Turkey.

The President's next five stops were in Asia, a vast continent which had never before been visited by an American President in peace-time — in the past, President Roosevelt had made brief journeys to Teheran and Cairo during the later stages of World War II.

On December 6 Mr. Eisenhower flew from Italy to Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where 500,000 citizens and President Celal Bayar greeted the American party. Talks centered on Turkey's role in NATO and CENTO (a rejuvenated form of the 1956 Baghdad Pact treaty), and on Premier Menderes' suggestions for the American-equipped Turkish army, the largest anti-Communist army outside the continental United States.

Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In Pakistan a frenzied crowd of 750,000 welcomed Mr. Eisenhower to Karachi on December 7. Mr. Eisenhower spent two days in this capital city discussing a peaceful solution to Pakistan's bitter strife with India over the problem of Kashmir, but refused to personally intervene in the dispute.

Before entering New Delhi, the President flew for a quick visit to the mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan, on the Russian frontier between Pakistan and India. Here the President wished to discover whether the Afghans had been too deeply seduced by the preponderance of Russian over American aid which this newly awakening nation had received.

New Delhi.

The great climax of the President's trip was his four day visit to New Delhi, where his ardent reception by two million Indians — a welcome far more popular than that accorded to Mr. Khrushchev or to Chou En-lai in previous years — raised hopes that Prime Minister Nehru's policy of 'positive neutralism' would now move closer to the West's cold-war attitudes. But for all the smiling, flower-throwing mood prevailing when the President opened the American pavilion at the World Agriculture Fair and spoke to the Indian parliament, doubts now began to catch up with the balm-spreading mission of good will. The Indians, like the Pakistanis and the Afghans, were faced by profound problems of poverty and malnutrition, and were eager to learn if the President had brought, besides generalized good will, any specific schemes of aid to help keep the millions of starving peasants away from Communism. This the President could not give them. India, which not only has to fight the battle against overwhelming poverty, but also has to face the frontier encroachments of Communist China and a fear of the American-equipped army of Pakistan as well, sought a clear guidance on American military policies and arms-deliveries to the area. Finding no definite promises from the President, while Russian economic aid continued to flow into India, it was not surprising that Mr. Nehru refused either to renounce his philosophy of neutralism or to conceal a certain disillusion with the President's new exhortation to wage a 'war against hunger.'

Iran, Greece, and Tunisia.

On December 14 the President began his long journey home, stopping for a brief visit with another CENTO ally, Iran. The Shah of this oil-rich kingdom received the President's party at Teheran before they flew on to the ancient Greek city of Athens. As another NATO ally, Greece (now one of the poorest countries in Europe) was glad to hear the speech which the President made to the chamber of deputies in answer to the welcome of King Paul. On December 17 President Eisenhower landed at the newly proclaimed and most pro-Western of the Arab republics — Tunisia. There he discussed with Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba the U.S. attitude toward Algeria's violent revolution against the French administration.

Paris.

On the following day President Eisenhower arrived on his second 1959 visit in Paris, where he met with the chief leaders of Western Europe. It was there that the second goal of his trip, the furthering of practical diplomatic negotiations, was to meet its sternest test and most bitter criticism. The leaders of Great Britain, France, and West Germany met with him in almost continual session for three days as they looked to his forceful leadership to guide them through the political arguments which divided them. British Premier Harold Macmillan sought for an early summit conference of the leading powers in order to speedily allay some of the dangerous tensions of the cold war. Chancellor Conrad Adenauer of West Germany opposed him, chiefly out of a stubborn unwillingness to discuss the Soviet demand for the internationalization of Berlin. Since French President Charles de Gaulle did not wish to promote disarmament talks at a time when France was just about to detonate its first atomic bomb, he largely supported Adenauer. All three countries also sought American leadership — which they later claimed they did not receive — for the tactical and military remedies which would be necessary to weld NATO into a far more cohesive and operational unit.

Spain.

Some of the glamour of the President's trip faded when he stopped off on his flight back to the United States to talk with Generalissimo Franco in Madrid. Franco had been thrust into office just prior to World War II with the assistance of the Fascist regimes in Nazi Germany and Italy, and had been officially condemned by the allies as they fought together towards victory. During the postwar years Franco kept himself in office by suppressing all forms of criticism and democratic change, and had lately shored up the weakness of his regime by accepting economic and military aid from the United States. Many of the NATO allies, who still nurtured bitter sentiments towards Franco, eventually accepted the necessity of this policy, since Spain could offer both sea and air bases for the cold-war defense of Western Europe. But they felt — as did many American groups — that it was hardly necessary for Mr. Eisenhower to pay a 'good-will' visit to such a regime.

Morocco and the Return to Washington.

The President's eleventh and last call came on December 22 when he talked for a few hours with King Mohammed V of Morocco in Casablanca. Then he gathered his party together again and flew back to Washington where he was greeted by a procession of 10,000 Christmas torches outside the White House, symbolizing 'the torch of freedom' he had carried around the world. His mission was heralded as a popular and effective demonstration to the world of America's peaceful and friendly intentions. No one disagreed about the notable rise of Mr. Eisenhower's prestige as a personality.

Aftermath of the Trip.

Partisan commentators were divided about the value of the President's unprecedented venture, especially after the delivery of his report to Congress as it reconvened in the first week of 1960. Supporters of the President, or of his manner of conducting foreign affairs, pointed to the newly found esteem which had been accorded the United States in once hostile or neutral parts of the globe and to the encouragement which the President had offered these countries in their fight towards progress and against totalitarianism. Detractors tended to criticize the problems which the President's indiscriminate good-will had left festering and unsolved, as in the European disagreements about NATO and the summit conference, and pointed to the hungry hopes which he had raised, and then failed to fulfill in Asia.

Whatever merits the President earned by traveling 2,000 miles each day and spending so brief a time for practical discussions in each country, the tour did accomplish one great innovation. It proved that the President of the United States is no longer an immobile 'prisoner' within the peacetime politics of his own country as so many of Mr. Eisenhower's predecessors had believed. It also proved that the moral and political authority of the President's high office could exert as beneficial an influence outside the United States as within it. And in an era of global cold war, that was quite a valuable lesson to learn.

LEGISLATION

As the first session of the 86th Congress opened, the Democrats were fresh from a huge election victory that implied public repudiation of the Eisenhower Administration. The President was the lamest of ducks. The Twenty-second Amendment barred him from running again under any circumstances. All signs thus pointed to a session in which the Democrats would call the signals. But at 6:22 A.M. on Sept. 15, 1959, after the longest session since 1951, the underdog had won; the President had forced the Democrats to retreat.

The President faced challenges on some issues, but he beat them back with vetoes and threatened vetoes. Ten times during the session the President rejected bills, and all of the vetoes were sustained but one — the second public works bill.

Despite all the challenge, all the retreat, all the compromise, and all the asserted leadership, Congress came up with only two pieces of legislation that broke new ground — the first comprehensive labor control bill since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and statehood for Hawaii.

On other fronts, Congress raised the federal gas tax by a penny a gallon; passed an omnibus housing bill after two predecessors were vetoed; extended corporation income taxes and various excise levies; authorized an increase in the interest rate paid on Government savings bonds; again raised the ceiling on the national debt; voted a reduction from 10 to 5 per cent in the tax on passenger travel tickets; expressed confidence in the Administration's handling of the Berlin crisis, and extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission.

Left for another day were new substantive civil rights proposals, an Administration proposal to lift the interest rates on marketable government bonds, a school-construction bill, an Administration request to again raise postal rates, an increase in the minimum wage, certain legislation aimed at 'correcting' some recent Supreme Court decisions, and an overall farm bill.

The success of the Republican minorities was attributed in part to the new Republican leadership in both Houses. Republican members who wanted a more aggressive leadership ousted Rep. Joseph W. Martin, Jr. (Mass.), their leader in every Congress since 1939, and replaced him with Rep. Charles A. Halleck (Ind.), who proceeded to command revitalized and well-disciplined minority forces. In the Senate the Republican liberals fought vainly to install Sen. John Sherman Cooper (Ky.) as their minority leader to replace Sen. William F. Knowland (Calif.), who resigned from the Senate to run (unsuccessfully) for the governorship of California. The minority leader's post, however, went to Sen. Everett Dirksen (Ill.), who operated mainly through negotiated compromise with Democratic leader Sen. Lyndon Johnson (Tex.). This often enabled quiet modification of some legislation to concur with the President's desires.

The Democrats were not without their internal troubles. When the leadership started to curb more ambitious plans on such issues as airport construction, public works, and aid to depressed areas, liberal Democrats expressed much dismay over the trend. They argued that Congress should go ahead with the more expansive programs despite the threat of veto and put the onus for blocking what they felt was much-needed legislation on the President. They further argued that tailoring legislation too closely to the President's wishes could lose votes in 1960.

But despite the fact that the public had given the Democrats margins of 64-34 in the Senate, and 283-153 in the House, the leadership decided not to lock horns with the President and attempt to write a bold legislative record reminiscent of New Deal and Fair Deal days. The decision was to follow the same line of compromise and accommodation with the Administration as that in the preceding sessions when the Democrats had only nominal majorities.

The Economy.

Budget.

The 85th Congress had been primarily concerned with recession and the ways to cope with it; at the first session of the 86th, the fear was inflation. In presenting his precariously balanced $77 billion budget to Congress, the President took a strong stand against inflation and put the Democrats on notice that they would have to take the blame for an unbalanced budget and bear the stigma of 'budget-busters.' The GOP in Congress took up the cry. The Democrats set out to cut appropriations below levels recommended by the President as the best answer to Republican charges of fiscal irresponsibility. When the session was over, a dispute arose as to whether Congress had or had not cut the President's budget.

Highways.

The longest tax row of 1959 was over the President's request for an increase in the federal excise tax on gasoline from 3 to 4  cents per gallon. Back of the request was the crisis in financing the federal highway program. State governments protested. Congress dragged its feet. The President called for action, warning that otherwise the highway program would grind to a halt. Finally Congress approved a one-cent increase, effective Oct. 1, 1959.

Other Taxes.

The President also asked for an extension of the corporate income taxes and certain excise taxes, and a new formula for taxing life insurance companies.

On extending the corporate income and certain excise tax rates, the House went along without any trouble. But there were some roadblocks in the Senate. In the end, the only concession to the Senate was a set of provisions repealing the 10 per cent tax on local telephone service and cutting the tax on passenger travel from 10 to 5 per cent, both effective July 1, 1960.

On taxing life-insurance companies, Congress came up with a complex bill that was expected to yield revenues of about $500,000,000 on the industry's 1958 income and more in later years.

Debt Management.

For the third time in less than two years, the President asked for a higher legal debt limit. The latest request was to raise the permanent ceiling to $288 billion, with a temporary ceiling for one year of $295 billion. Congress decided on a $285 billion permanent ceiling, with another $10 billion to expire June 30, 1960.

When the President requested that Congress remove the statutory limit of 4.25 per cent on the interest that the Treasury may offer on its long-term bonds of five years or more, Democrats cited this as proof that the Administration was fostering high interest rates to the detriment of the public and to the advantage of big bankers. The Administration argued that the long-term bonds were selling below par; there was thus little hope of being able to float new long-term issues at 4.25 per cent. As a result, the Treasury faced the prospect of having to rely on the highly volatile short-term market for its financing needs.

At first the House Ways and Means Committee agreed to give the President authority for two years to raise the ceiling when necessary. But later it reversed itself and voted to shelve the bill. There was no action.

But there was action on a request to raise the interest ceiling on Series E and H Savings Bonds. The bill sent to the White House on September 12 raised the interest limit on these bonds from 3.26 to 4.25 per cent, and the Administration promptly raised the rate to 3.75 per cent.

TVA Bonds.

The Tennessee Valley Authority won long-sought authority to float its own bonds to raise capital for construction of new power facilities. For four years the Administration had failed to provide for its declared needs for construction in the budget, insisting that the Budget Bureau should have the sole power to pass on TVA power projects. The bill sent to the White House retained a degree of congressional control over the new projects. The President signed it, but only after pledges from the Democratic leadership that the offending provision would be repealed. This was done in another bill later.

Housing.

After three tries Congress came up with a housing bill that the President signed. This was one of the season's hardest fought battles, ending with both sides claiming qualified victories. This was one of the issues the Democrats chose to throw at the President as a challenge. But two housing bills they sent to him were vetoed; the possibility of a third veto finally produced the compromise bill.

It contained authority for 37,000 new units of federally subsidized low-rental public housing for families displaced by slums, although the President had opposed any more projects at this time. Another provision objected to by the President authorized $50 million in federal loans to build housing for the elderly. Authority for $650 million in urban renewal grants exceeded his proposals by $50 million. The over-all price tag of the bill was estimated at $1 billion as against the first version's cost of $2.5 billion, but the first version covered financing generally for six years and the final one for only two.

The President also signed a bill providing loans of $100 million for veterans housing in rural areas. He had opposed this provision, but signed the bill because it included long-sought authority for increasing the interest rate on G.I. home mortgages insured by the government.

Public Works.

Congressional action on the second public works bill came on September 10 and marked the first time an Eisenhower veto had been overriden in the six years and eight months since he took office. The $1,185,000,000 bill contained funds for rivers, harbors, flood control, and other projects in every state. The President had objected to the inclusion of 67 projects that he had not recommended. His veto of the first bill was upheld by the House by a one-vote margin. The second bill also contained all those projects, except that this time Congress included an across-the-board cut in all funds. After the veto of the second bill, Republican ranks cracked, primarily from the pressures from back home. Within three hours after the bill had reached Capitol Hill, the required House and Senate majorities of two thirds made it law.

Labor.

Labor, elated at the Democratic landslide in the congressional elections in 1958, was substantially less happy when the session controlled by those Democrats had ended. Labor leaders announced at the session's start that their main objective would be to get Congress to invalidate all state laws forbidding compulsory union membership. But Congress, spurred by the revelations of labor racketeering by its Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, instead wrote a 'strong' labor reform bill containing many major Taft-Hartley Act amendments favored by business and detested by organized labor. The bill contained provisions designed to deal with such violence, corruption, and abuse of power as the Senate committee headed by Sen. John L. McClellan (D., Ark.) had shown to exist within the labor movement.

Sen. John F. Kennedy (D., Mass.), Speaker Sam Rayburn, and others tried to win approval for more moderate legislation, tailored to curb abuses without interfering with legitimate practices. The initial version of the bill, sponsored by Senator Kennedy, was passed by the Senate on April 25 by a 90-1 vote, with Sen. Barry Goldwater, (R., Ariz.) the only dissenter. But in the House a much tougher version was adopted. The two bills went to a Senate-House conference and long and protracted negotiation began. At one crucial point in the struggle, President Eisenhower made a radio-television appeal for support of the more stringent House bill.

As the bill emerged, it was much more like the House version than the Kennedy bill. It required 55,000 unions, 500,000 union officials, and about 100,000 employers to file annual reports with the Secretary of Labor on a wide variety of financial practices. The bill also outlawed misuses of union funds and labor-management bribes; barred convicts from union office; and set federal standards for union elections and trusteeships. 'Hot cargo' contracts, in which employers agree not to do business with firms labeled 'unfair' by the union, were made illegal. Limited curbs were put on organizational and recognition picketing.

Agriculture.

There was no change in the stalemate between the Democrats and the Administration over farm policy. Congress did pass two bills for revision of price supports and production controls, one dealing with wheat and the other with tobacco. But the President vetoed both and the legislators gave up any hope of coming to terms with the Administration. The President also vetoed a bill that would have prohibited the Secretary of Agriculture from turning down loans approved by the Rural Electrification Administration. The Senate voted to override by a two-vote margin, but the effort failed in the House.

Congress also passed, and the President signed, a two-year extension of the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, a major instrument in the disposal of farm commodities abroad, which was to have expired Dec. 20, 1959. The bill provided for $1.5 billion a year for foreign-currency sales and $300 million a year for donations, and contained a provision that gave the Administration discretionary authority for a modified system of distribution of the commodities to the needy in the United States.

Foreign Affairs.

There was much discussion over the Administration's handling of the Berlin crisis, over whether some basic changes were needed in foreign aid concepts, over how the development of the underdeveloped nations of the world could be speeded, and over ways to strengthen the Western allies.

Mutual Aid.

The President and Congress were at odds over the amount of money to be granted, whether there should be a shift in emphasis from military aid grants toward more loans for economic development, and the manner in which the Development Loan Fund should be financed.

The final appropriations bill amounted to $3.2 billion in place of the President's original request of $3.9 billion. Just as significant were the policy changes added to the bill. These provided for shifting military aid to the defense budget, beginning in fiscal 1961; directing the President to submit a detailed plan for the progressive reduction of all bilateral grant assistance; and establishing in the State Department an Inspector General and Controller to audit the aid program.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had proposed that the Development Loan Fund — set up to provide easy credit for economic projects in underdeveloped countries — be financed by Treasury advances of $1 billion, so that a hostile House Appropriations Committee would no longer have the chance to cut the loan fund every year. The removal of this new financing device on the Senate floor, in deference to the President's wishes, crushed the morale of ardent mutual security supporters in the Senate who wanted to give the Loan Fund a degree of permanency.

Atomic Exchange.

By failing to interpose objections, Congress gave approval to agreements for seven NATO nations — Britain, France, Canada, West Germany, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Greece — to receive U.S. atomic energy information and materials for military purposes. Resolutions disapproving the agreements on the grounds they would spread 'unspeakable destructive capability' failed to pass.

International Finance.

Congress approved increases in the U.S. subscriptions to the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Monetary Fund got $1,375,000,000; the World Bank, $3,175,000,000. Action on the new Inter-American Development Bank, created to underwrite accelerated economic development in the Western Hemisphere, was described by the president as 'a most significant step in the history of our economic relations with Latin America.' To get it rolling, Congress authorized a $450 million contribution.

Other.