The Smiling Man

Smiling, sleek and self-effacing, his air transport borne aloft on a roseate cloud of good will, Red China's Premier Chou En-lai last week dropped in to New Delhi to pay a call on Jawaharlal Nehru. As blandly charming and tactful as Khrushchev and Bulganin had been blunt and boorish just a year ago, Chou seemed determined to win a smile from Nehru, who was just a mite disillusioned about his Russian friends. As he stepped from his plane, Chou cheerfully endured the perils of a blizzard of tossed rose petals and the weight of garlands of marigolds flung about his neck by impulsive Indian schoolgirls. He was still smiling a day later when the smoke of a large firecracker, exploding with the roar of a bomb at one of the rallies, at last cleared away.

Indians responded to the Communist blandishments with a will. "Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai," they shouted at the Red leader--"India and China, brothers, brothers." "If the entire world became one pattern," said Nehru, conceding perhaps a few basic differences between his government and that of Red China, "interest in life would lessen."

Closeted together for ten hours, Chou and Nehru presumably discussed all the touchy subjects that lay between them: Communist buildup in Nepal and Tibet. Chinese intentions toward Burma and Formosa; but a good deal, if not most, of the talking centered around what Nehru will tell President Eisenhower about Chou when he visits the U.S. later this month. "Now is the time," Chou told U.S. reporters, "to establish better relations. Perhaps that is not the view of the United States, and perhaps John Foster Dulles does not like me, but maybe our successors will be able to get together."

When Nehru returns from his U.S. visit, Chou will pass through New Delhi again to hear what Ike and the Pandit had to say.

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