The Week

• According to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “Mr. [George] Kennan has never, in my judgment, grasped the realities of power relationships, but takes a rather mystical attitude toward them.” Precisely so. Which, of course, is what qualified Mr. Kennan to serve as chief of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under the Secretaryship of Dean Acheson.

• Ezra Taft Benson had a further taste last week of what he is up against. For the benefit of agricultural constituents, his inquisitors on the Agriculture Committee of the Senate not only resisted Mr. Benson’s call for a moderate revision of the parity laws in the direction of sanity, but undertook, for the record, to insult Mr. Benson, and cast him in the role of enemy of the open sky and abundant field. Senator Ellender of Louisiana called Mr. Benson a liar (it is Senator Ellender who recently discovered, upon traveling in Russia, the good intentions of the leaders of the Soviet Union) ; Senators Thye and Young were rude; and Senator Symington, in behalf of the starving masses of Missouri, spoke, apparently, in jeremiads (“Every time, Moses [Benson], that you strike the rock you hurt my people.”) Mr. Benson (and Lewis Strauss) are the nearest thing to principle in the Eisenhower Administration. And principle is in disgrace with fortune, and men’s eyes.

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• According to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “Mr. [George] Kennan has never, in my judgment, grasped the realities of power relationships, but takes a rather mystical attitude toward them.” Precisely so. Which, of course, is what qualified Mr. Kennan to serve as chief of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under the Secretaryship of Dean Acheson.

• Ezra Taft Benson had a further taste last week of what he is up against. For the benefit of agricultural constituents, his inquisitors on the Agriculture Committee of the Senate not only resisted Mr. Benson’s call for a moderate revision of the parity laws in the direction of sanity, but undertook, for the record, to insult Mr. Benson, and cast him in the role of enemy of the open sky and abundant field. Senator Ellender of Louisiana called Mr. Benson a liar (it is Senator Ellender who recently discovered, upon traveling in Russia, the good intentions of the leaders of the Soviet Union) ; Senators Thye and Young were rude; and Senator Symington, in behalf of the starving masses of Missouri, spoke, apparently, in jeremiads (“Every time, Moses [Benson], that you strike the rock you hurt my people.”) Mr. Benson (and Lewis Strauss) are the nearest thing to principle in the Eisenhower Administration. And principle is in disgrace with fortune, and men’s eyes.