Which Way to Liberation

IN April 1948 I delivered an address entitled Halt! About Face! Then, as now, we had come to the end of one phase of postwar foreign and the beginning of another. We had come to the end of that rather brief period during which we had cherished the hope of achieving peace through friendly co-operation with the Soviet Union. For about a year we had been wrestling with the unpleasant problem of learning to deal with an openly hostile Soviet dictatorship. The mood of the country was one of puzzled frustration and mounting anger. My address was a warning against the of global military containment which had then recently sprung from the indomitable spirit of Winston Churchill, the geopolitical brain of George Kennan, and the petulant disillusionment of President Harry S. Truman. This had been adumbrated at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, somewhat vaguely enunciated by President Truman in March 1947, and sharply defined on March 17, 1948. It seemed to me a very foolish and very dangerous policy. Now, five years later, we are again at a turning point. The containment has failed. We have had a political overturn. A new Republican administration has embarked upon a course of action which is supposedly based on the recognition of past error. Yet, as I view the beginnings of this new departure I am filled with forebodings as to the new policy of liberation, very similar to those which prompted me to speak out in 1948 against the then new of containment. Indeed, so much does the new seem to me the child of the old that I am tempted once more to use the title, Halt! About Face

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