Geneva: A Change of Spirit

Unlike other spirits, the one distilled in Geneva during the past summer does not seem to have improved with age. The Big Four foreign ministers, meeting again now in the Swiss city, have found that despite the optimism and conviviality of their national leaders last July, the policies of East and West still reduce to a pair of incompatible, non-compromising positions on the basic questions of German unification and European security. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has subverted the Geneva Spirit by such tactics as triggering an arms race in the Mideast and stirring up anti-Western sentiment in North Africa and Cyprus, while Western nations like Great Britain, smitten by Geneva optimism, have reduced the size of their own armed forces. These developments have engendered for the United States new anxiety reminiscent of the Formosa Strait crisis last spring.

The current problems of diplomacy and defense should help to check the Geneva euphoria that has been prevalent in this country during the past few months. They ought not, however, to interefere with American support of the valuable East-West accords that arose from the July conference at Geneva. In addition to promises not to start another war, Geneva has inspired such concessions as reduction of the Soviet army and release of thousands of prisoners of war.

Harvard itself has contributed to what may prove the most significant achievement of the Geneva Spirit: the development of contacts between East and West. With the Iron Curtain drawn slightly, two Faculty members took the opportunity last summer to travel and study in the Soviet Union, while a third, who is in Russia now, has recently arranged for the exchange of millions of books between that country and the United States.

But in the long run the various achievements of the Geneva Spirit, if they bring about Western complacency and diminished preparedness, will only lead to renewed Soviet aggression. The Eisenhower Administration should recognize the false optimism that has developed in the country recently and should follow up the present Foreign Ministers conference by inaugurating--and perhaps by having its slogan-makers appropriately christen--a new Geneva spirit. This new attitude must preclude such statements as that of Secretary Dulles last Wednesday, when he, alone among the four foreign ministers, espied "considerable similarity of thinking" between the incompatible positions of East and West on the question of European security.

Replacing both the antagonistic propaganda of the Cold War and the Chimerical hopes of July in Geneva, the new Administration attitude should admit that agreement on the major issues of Germany and disarmament still lies far in the future. The United States, while continuing to negotiate on these questions, should focus the world's attention on the steps toward peace that definitely can be taken at this time--the expansion of East-West contacts, for example. Progress in this field, if continued long enough, may eventually transform the Spirit of Geneva into a world-wide spirit that will make Geneva conferences unnecessary.