Knock On Any Door

Add one more to the list of hideous State Department blunders. This time a number of African students, stranded in Communist capitals in Eastern Europe, have been refused passage to the West. The students, according to the New York Times, are chafing at Communist pressures to join in political activities with which they have no sympathy. Those who cooperate are being treated very well, but the stipends of the rest are being reduced, and many have requested financial aid so that they might transfer to Western universities.

The students' appeals were sent to Washington, but the State Department flatly denied them. "The United States officials who forwarded the appeals," the Times reported, "have in some instances been dipping into their own pockets to help tide over the Africans." The report also noted that the students' home governments had cut some stipends and refused to pay passages home.

Only one possible explanation exists: our officials fear the infiltration of "agents" educated by the Communists. If this is in fact the reason for their negative response, it is a poor one; our security system must be assumed to be better than such fear would indicate.

Perhaps the State Department ought to be shamed into doing something about this affair. If private foundations were to offer assistance to the Africans, and bring them here at private expense, red-faced diplomats could conceivably be awakened. Or maybe something more dramatic, like a fund drive by individual American college students, is needed. Part of the staggering loss in prestige might be recouped if 100,000 students were to give a dollar each to rescue their colleagues.

1960 is the year in which psychoanalysis entered the political arena. Kennedy, we are told, has resolved his identity crisis; Nixon has not. Well, then, for what it's worth, the State Department is clearly paranoid.