Invitation Declined

For the first time in recorded history, a U.S. President asked a defeated rival to attend an international summit council: in a ten-minute White House meeting last week, Dwight Eisenhower told Adlai Stevenson he would be "very happy" to have Stevenson accompany the U.S. delegation to next week's heads-of-government NATO meeting in Paris. Leaving the White House, Stevenson first said he was not really sure he had been invited, then promised to decide within a week or ten days, that afternoon announced that he would not go "unless there are compelling developments."

So ended a chapter in high politics that began a month before, when Stevenson volunteered to go to Europe in advance of the Paris conference to help sell his friends overseas on the plans to strengthen NATO. Stevenson later had some second thoughts on the practicality of such a trip, and the idea died. But Secretary of State John Foster Dulles seized at the opportunity to present a bipartisan U.S. approach to the NATO sessions, asked Stevenson to take on a job as his special adviser (TIME, Nov. 25).

Surprisingly to many, Adlai Stevenson and Foster Dulles, long antagonistic, got on well together. Dulles installed Stevenson in an office across the hall from his own, visited frequently back and forth, encouraged Stevenson to express himself freely. He gave Stevenson's proposals serious consideration, included Stevenson in planning sessions held at Dulles' home, invited Stevenson to prepare "language" for Dulles' speeches in Paris. The State Department was generally pleased at Stevenson's brief performance and believed, as an Assistant Secretary put it, that he had helped "polish up" the total NATO program.

Stevenson decided to turn down the trip to Paris principally because he felt that, despite Ike's invitation, the White House attitude was still considerably cooler than State's. Specifically, he:

P: Suspected that the invitation was deliberately vague in a situation where it should have been firm and formal. (Asked if Stevenson had been invited to go to Paris, the usually well-informed Jim Hagerty had to check to find out, later reported that this was the President's intention.)

P: Doubted that the Administration had in mind a real job for him at Paris, declined to go along as mere window-dressing or as a living exhibit that Republicans and Democrats can cooperate.

P: Believed that the conference was bound to be a cut-and-dried affair, because U.S. planning did not reach beyond military matters into the economic and political possibilities.

P: Declined to sacrifice his role as an opposition critic, particularly if his going to Paris would not add much to the U.S. effort.

Democrat Adlai Stevenson's brief trip through the Republican State Department was marked with good intentions on both sides. But the final outcome, whoever was at fault, could hardly contribute to the success of the NATO conference. No sooner had Stevenson issued his refusal than NATO observers in Europe, figuring he was trying to avoid again being associated with failure, began reading into it a sign that U.S. expectations for the Paris sessions were gloomy.

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