The Week

• How far is Liberal defeatism, as personified by the current-phase Walter Lippmann, prepared to go? Mr. Lippmann’s latest column makes the flat statement that a) “As things are now, the last thing that any sane man wants to see is an open rebellion in Eastern Europe,” b) Yugoslavia and Poland “think of the West as a protector against Germany,” and, a little further along in the column to be sure, c) “the basic fact [is] that Poland and Yugoslavia . . . must unavoidably react between the Russians on the one side, the Germans and the Americans on the other.” In a word: since those aggressive Americans, with their megalomaniac dreams of Empire, are equally guilty with the Russians for the current tensions in international politics, the time has now come for us to back down. And he finds a new way of saying it each week.

• The United Automobile Workers and the General Motors and Ford Motor Co. managements have reached the Alphonse-Gaston stage of negotiation. “We prefer not to strike now,” says Alphonse-UAW, asking for an extension of present contract arrangements until the autumn. “We can’t accept such consideration,” says Gaston-GM-Ford, “please strike now if you must and get it over with.” The pseudo-politeness of the two parties underscores the obvious: the union is in a poor position to strike as long as there are close to a million unsold new automobiles in dealers’ hands At long last Mr. Walter Reuther is reposing over a barrel, a position in which he has had his opponents for most of his life. We hope the spanking we hope he is about to receive will induce a little humility—say, as much as there is benzoate of soda in a bottle of ketchup, which is about all he could absorb at a single time.

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• How far is Liberal defeatism, as personified by the current-phase Walter Lippmann, prepared to go? Mr. Lippmann’s latest column makes the flat statement that a) “As things are now, the last thing that any sane man wants to see is an open rebellion in Eastern Europe,” b) Yugoslavia and Poland “think of the West as a protector against Germany,” and, a little further along in the column to be sure, c) “the basic fact [is] that Poland and Yugoslavia . . . must unavoidably react between the Russians on the one side, the Germans and the Americans on the other.” In a word: since those aggressive Americans, with their megalomaniac dreams of Empire, are equally guilty with the Russians for the current tensions in international politics, the time has now come for us to back down. And he finds a new way of saying it each week.

• The United Automobile Workers and the General Motors and Ford Motor Co. managements have reached the Alphonse-Gaston stage of negotiation. “We prefer not to strike now,” says Alphonse-UAW, asking for an extension of present contract arrangements until the autumn. “We can’t accept such consideration,” says Gaston-GM-Ford, “please strike now if you must and get it over with.” The pseudo-politeness of the two parties underscores the obvious: the union is in a poor position to strike as long as there are close to a million unsold new automobiles in dealers’ hands At long last Mr. Walter Reuther is reposing over a barrel, a position in which he has had his opponents for most of his life. We hope the spanking we hope he is about to receive will induce a little humility—say, as much as there is benzoate of soda in a bottle of ketchup, which is about all he could absorb at a single time.