"To Our Countries"

"Gentlemen," said the President of the U.S. at dinner with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada, "since our meeting here is an informal one between friends, let us dispense with toasts, and instead drink to our countries." The statesmen touched glasses and murmured, "To our countries," while across the table their foreign ministers did the same. When the glasses were lowered, Canada's External Affairs Chief Lester B.

Pearson quipped that in Moscow the toast might well have been: "To the U.S., surrounded as she is by Mexico on the south, Canada on the north, and the Atlantic and Pacific on the east and west." The states men laughed approvingly.

For three days last week the President met with Mexico's President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines and Canada's Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent amid such scenes of studied informality and good neighborliness. The meeting was held not in Washington but in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., a watering place set amid the Alleghenies. There was no agenda, little protocol. A U.S. participant described one session of the talks:

"As a matter of fact, I saw only two people bring in briefcases, and neither briefcase was opened." During roundabout surveys of the world, the U.S. proposed that the three nations, all of them former colonies, should guide and advise the emergent former colonies of the Far East. Canada proposed that the West and the Communists should submit future foreign aid programs to the U.N. as a matter of public record, so that the world might measure Western and Communist performance against their promises. Mexico seemed primarily delighted to be received and heeded as an equal by Canada and the U.S. So little was actually done, that wits dubbed it "the immaculate conference," but U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pointed out that the purpose was "to produce an atmosphere."

As such, the meeting was successful. "It has been extremely nice," said St. Laurent, heading homeward. Mexico's Ruiz Cortines amplified that conclusion: "Because it was more human, also more genuine ... a new era in relations.'' The President of the U.S. bade goodbye to his guests: "May we do this again some time? I hope it was worthwhile."

Last week the President:

P: Played 18 holes at White Sulphur Springs, triumphing with Partner Sammy Snead over White House Press Secretary James Hagerty and Appointments Secretary Bernard Shanley. The President's score: 93.

P: Accepted "with profound personal regret" the resignation as of April 15 of Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, off to Oregon to try for the Senate seat of Democrat Wayne Morse. P: Appointed Devereux Colt Josephs, chairman of the board of the New York Life Insurance Co., and Dr. David Dodds Henry, president of the University of Illinois, to be chairman and vice chairman of a new committee to study post-high school educational problems, e.g., the shortage of engineering students.

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