memory had remained contentious and intriguing, a constant chal-
lenge to anyone who tries to assess his six unbroken years of power.

The irony of John Foster Dulles was that, while among some
people he succeeded in appearing as a man of tremendous prin-
ciple and courage, to others his main impact was of a devious and
tortuous nature which could be neither relied upon nor readily
understood. And both impressions were correct. Inside himself
Dulles fought a continual battle between principle and what
appeared to him as realism, a realism moreover which sprang
essentially from his long experience as a lawyer. Thus, while he
believed in certain ends and standards with the passionate and
unshakeable force of a Presbyterian elder, he also interpreted the
ways and means of achieving his objectives with the casuistry and
ingenuity of one of the ablest and most outstandingly successful
corporation lawyers ever produced by the New York bar. It was a
truly formidable combination, but not one that was likely either to
endear him even to those who thought he was on their side, or to
insure success when he was dealing with human and political
problems.

Dulles himself strove very hard to do the right thing. In his
earlier days at the State Department he ransacked his conscience
again and again in the intensity of his effort not to allow either his
pursuit of principle to become naive or his recognition of the need
for realism to deny and kill his principles. This struggle inevitably
produced a certain lack of confidence which had to be hidden
beneath a hard exterior. As time went on his confidence as Secretary
of State grew. He came to a working arrangement with himself
and he was certainly never rattled by merely external criticism
from other people. The final result was a man who eventually
mellowed a little and, although nothing was basically different, the
more general approval which seemed to reach out towards him in
the last year of his life reflected a genuine easing of the inflexible
forces driving him on. He was slow to learn that diplomacy is not
law. But in the end he half came to do so, and if he had lived till
the close of the Eisenhower Administration his place in history
would undoubtedly have been clearer. Certainly the ineptitude and
folly of Washington's handling of the 1960 summit would have
been avoided.

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