HYDE PARK—The Senate finally has extended the reciprocal trade agreements for four years, and this important bill is now passed. It is one of the few bills for which the President put up a real fight, and although he did not get the five year extension that he asked for, nevertheless he won far more than was at first expected, including the power to cut tariffs up to 20 percent.

Of course, it is due to the Democratic leadership that this compromise with the House bill was finally reached. I think we all owe congratulations to Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson and his colleagues for their great understanding of the real need for reciprocal foreign trade agreements.

It must be hard for the President to have to rely on the opposition to put through the things that so often his own party does not seem to understand are vital for the economic system of today's world.

The U.N. has been a place of great interest and excitement this past week, and the delegates lounge, where the representatives of all nations gather on their way to and from lunch to greet old friends and meet new ones and, of course, discuss the problems now before the Assembly, has been a buzzing bee-hive of activity. The reporters haunt the lounge between 12 and 2 o'clock, looking for important faces and trying to catch significant sentences that will give them new insight into somebody's moves or policies.

Although Russia's Mr. Gromyko made his expected effort to brand the United States and Britain as aggressors in Lebanon and Jordan, his words carried little conviction. I think it is obvious that you cannot be an aggressor when you have been invited to come in and protect a country by that country's duly constituted government. It is also evident that both the U.S. and Britain would be happy if adequate U.N. forces could replace their troops in protecting the borders of those countries.

Surely the time has come to establish a permanent U.N. police force of sufficient size to really carry out the mandate for protecting the border of countries, when they request such protection. Such a U.N. police force also would leave small countries free to ask for—and get—impartially supervised elections when there is a real need for it. We Americans should be very glad that President Eisenhower took the initiative in proposing such a U.N. force, in his speech last Wednesday.

It is good news that the Western and Eastern scientists now conferring in Geneva are reported to be in agreement on a protection system to monitor an international ban on tests of nuclear weapons. There is no question in my mind that there should be a ban on all tests where there is radioactive fallout that really endangers the human race. Other tests, that will be of value in developing new peacetime uses of nuclear energy, can—and should—be permitted.