THE WEEK

• Mr. Albert Smith Bigelow and crew of three pacifists, aboard their 30-foot sailing ketch “Golden Rule,” set off from Honolulu recently with the highly advertised objective of queering the Atomic Energy Commission’s tests off Eniwetok atoll. How? By setting course right for the middle of the test area, being there at firing time, and immobilizing the hand that was due to pull the switch. Everybody knew, of course, that the “Golden Rule” wouldn’t get to the target area, because the Coast Guard would pick it up, in good time, and tow it back quietly to Honolulu. And so it happened with Mr. Bigelow shaking his fist at the Coast Guard, demanding to know by what authority it interfered with his sovereign right to go anywhere he liked, in his boat?—does the government own the ocean? We think Mr. Bigelow has a point, and that the government ought to recognize its dilemma. It should either a) petition Congress for a letter of marque and reprisal against Mr. Bigelow—and treat him like a pirate; or else, b) let the “Golden Rule” go its bloody way.

• By one of those happy coincidences that are so frequent in political life, Tito’s new spat with the Kremlin broke into the headlines just as Congress began debate on the Administration’s $3 billion foreign aid bill. Senators George D. Aiken (Rep., Vt.), Mike Mansfield (Dem., Mont.), Alexander Wiley (Rep., Wisc.), and John S. Sparkman (Dem., Ala.)—the bipartisan team that leads the all-out foreign-aiders on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee—expressed confidence that Moscow’s scolding of Belgrade would quiet the incipient congressional revolt against the use of American dollars to build up national Communism. Senators William F. Knowland (Rep., Cal.) and Styles Bridges (Rep., N.H.), unimpressed by either the Communists’ family quarrels or their own colleagues’ gullibility, continued to demand that all assistance to Yugoslavia (and to Poland) should be cut out of the foreign aid program. If Tito’s quarrel with Khrushchev is a fake, they reasoned, we are suckers to fall for it. But if it is genuine, this is exactly the moment not to bail Tito out of his trouble, but to put on pressure to force the Yugoslavs to break clean.

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• Mr. Albert Smith Bigelow and crew of three pacifists, aboard their 30-foot sailing ketch “Golden Rule,” set off from Honolulu recently with the highly advertised objective of queering the Atomic Energy Commission’s tests off Eniwetok atoll. How? By setting course right for the middle of the test area, being there at firing time, and immobilizing the hand that was due to pull the switch. Everybody knew, of course, that the “Golden Rule” wouldn’t get to the target area, because the Coast Guard would pick it up, in good time, and tow it back quietly to Honolulu. And so it happened with Mr. Bigelow shaking his fist at the Coast Guard, demanding to know by what authority it interfered with his sovereign right to go anywhere he liked, in his boat?—does the government own the ocean? We think Mr. Bigelow has a point, and that the government ought to recognize its dilemma. It should either a) petition Congress for a letter of marque and reprisal against Mr. Bigelow—and treat him like a pirate; or else, b) let the “Golden Rule” go its bloody way.

• By one of those happy coincidences that are so frequent in political life, Tito’s new spat with the Kremlin broke into the headlines just as Congress began debate on the Administration’s $3 billion foreign aid bill. Senators George D. Aiken (Rep., Vt.), Mike Mansfield (Dem., Mont.), Alexander Wiley (Rep., Wisc.), and John S. Sparkman (Dem., Ala.)—the bipartisan team that leads the all-out foreign-aiders on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee—expressed confidence that Moscow’s scolding of Belgrade would quiet the incipient congressional revolt against the use of American dollars to build up national Communism. Senators William F. Knowland (Rep., Cal.) and Styles Bridges (Rep., N.H.), unimpressed by either the Communists’ family quarrels or their own colleagues’ gullibility, continued to demand that all assistance to Yugoslavia (and to Poland) should be cut out of the foreign aid program. If Tito’s quarrel with Khrushchev is a fake, they reasoned, we are suckers to fall for it. But if it is genuine, this is exactly the moment not to bail Tito out of his trouble, but to put on pressure to force the Yugoslavs to break clean.