The American Pavilion at the World's Fair here is officially controversial. President Eisenhower, described as “very irritated” at the bad notices our exhibition has received, dispatched George V. Allen, Director of the United States Information Agency, to Brussels to give him a personal report. The President's action made the adverse opinions expressed by many writers and private citizens returning from the fair a subject of official inquiry.

This controversy over our representation here has its ironic aspects. While everyone who visits the fair agrees there is much to criticize, little agreement exists on the basis for the criticism. Many vociferous attacks have been launched from assumptions that are questionable or even inconsistent.

It is a dangerous, current cliche to say America is in the midst of a deep crisis. For suddenly, with the success of Sputnik, our mood of righteous selfcongratulation has given way to the.mood of the crash program. And our new sense of urgency develops simply as a reaction to Russia's technological achievement. Thus it is that so many can argue that the crisis will be resolved if only the United States can close the gap in military research, if only the old nuclear supremacy can be restored.

The Soviet Union is a powerful military state today and it is continually growing stronger. Estimates vary widely as to whether it is one year, two years or five years ahead of the West in the development of the intercontinental missile, but there is almost general agreement that it is substantially ahead of us in a timetable in which the development from one stage to the next depends upon first achieving certain scientific and engineering break-throughs and then advancing from those. In other words, this is not the kind of developmental time lag which can be made up easily, if at all.

In the 1930s, it was predicted that in modern warfare there -would be no victor. The prediction was not really vindicated by the second World War. There were two major victors in that war, the United States and the Soviet Union. They won, not only at the expense of their enemies, but also of their allies and of neutrals. Alexis de Tocqueville's great prophecy, that Russia and America seem "marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe," was over-fulfilled. The world, for most practical purposes, is divided into two opposed systems.

In Paris today almost everybody is discovering his attachment to de Gaulle. Some say they have never ceased to trust the General, others claim to have predicted.long ago his return to power. Many have told me—among them Jean-Marie Domenach, editor of the leftist Catholic Esprit— that there still exists a kind of “network of the Resistance” inherited from wartime, now consisting of sentimental attachment of the earlier members to each other and of loyalty to de Gaulle. It was also Domenach who told me of a conversation he had had with the General two years ago. On that occasion de Gaulle expressed his lack of respect for those who paraded, for years, in the'name of his Movement, and called himself the “only true revolutionist” in France, a man deserted and misunderstood by the pseudo-revolutionists who claimed to be bis followers.

The satellites in orbit overhead herald our entry into a new era, an era which will be as different from the Machine Age as the Machine Age was from die Middle Ages. We have conquered the basic problem of launching vehicles into outer space, but we have not determined a program for controlling space. If the space age is to provide opportunities for mankind greater than merely providing the staging ground for World War III, a legal system must be formulated which will regulate the use of outer space by the earth. Outer space is not covered by international law; yet we cannot afford the luxury of anarchy.