The recent accession of Senator J. William Fulbright to the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has provoked fresh consideration of the complexities of bipartisanship. Senator Fulbright in past years has been a frequent critic of the policies pursued by President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles. Moreover, his advance in status symbolizes the growing influence of the younger Democrats on the committee, such as Senators Mansfield, Kennedy, and Humphrey, who are more critical of prevailing orthodoxies than their senior colleagues. These shifts in personal influence direct our attention to fundamental questions about bipartisanship. How far may a democracy go in stifling debate on basic issues in the name of national unity? How far may responsible men carry criticism and dissent in times of national peril? What is the proper relationship between the two-party competition for power and the framing of foreign policy? That is, when is foreign policy properly a partisan issue?

In his article “Morality and Modern War,” published last December, John Courtney Murray anatomized several of the central elements of the problem—and he did it in his characteristically clear and coolheaded way. Beyond this, he argued that there is a sane middle ground between the extremes of pacifism and bellicism, and that the health of the nations demand that they occupy this middle ground. I have no inclination to part company with Father Murray's judiciousness and perceptiveness, in order to traffic either with sentimentalists or with cynics, with those who piously believe that love can dispense with force or with those who scornfully believe that love, and even justice, merely complicate the efficient and decisive use of force in pursuit of national self-interest. Accordingly the questions which I raise here reflect, I hope, great sympathy for the stabilizing and moderating claims of reason, whose voice is too seldom and too impatiently heard in the land in our troubled times.