The Passing Years and Mr. Davies

If the security program is to achieve its true purpose of protecting the Government and the American way of life, it must be so administered that it does not impair the things it is designed to serve. And among the things that must be protected for the Foreign Service is the tradition of frank and objective reporting that long has constituted one of the State Department's most enduring sources of strength.

These words, from the report on the Foreign Service made by the Wriston committee last spring, were part of a grave warning to the Administration. The Committee was appointed by the Secretary of State to discover why, in an era when the nation's diplomatic commitments are ever increasing, its diplomatic corps appears less and less capable of doing an effective job. To emphasize the importance of the committee's findings, its membership was composed of some of America's most distinguished public servants, diplomats, businessmen and educators. Presumably, the Administration intended to act on the recommendations of the group.

Yet the case of John Paton Davies shows that little has been learned. The albatross of incompetence was hung around Davies' neck, and he was summarily dismissed from the Service last week because he advocated limited rapprochement with the Chinese Communists in the gloomy days of the early '40's when the Japanese were kicking the Nationalists back into the hills.

Davies' dismissal has added to the demoralization of government personnel both in the field and in Washington. All through his long career, he has compiled an enviable diplomatic record that is known and admired by his colleagues. Now, in an entirely new political climate, he is being punished for a statement he honestly made a decade ago. Officials understandably are becoming afraid to report the truth from foreign countries as they see and feel it if their reports might be unpalatable to key groups in the Administration and Congress--immediately or years from now.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was fired because he did not show the proper enthusiasm towards a project with which he disagreed; John Davies has been dismissed for guessing right about an event which many people in Washington would like to think has never happened. The effect of these cases on the generation now in the nation's universities is a foregone conclusion: at a time when the need for capable experts is greater than ever, few undergraduates even consider the Government as a career. If such senselessness continues, the result will be a Foreign Service of trained seals--and this, as the Wriston report continues, "at an hour when everywhere across the world matters press upon the American interest for judgment, decision, and action."