The Tired Line

Every day, in every way, a hypnotic feeling about a new parley at the summit transfixed and tranquilized official Washington. High Administration officials spoke wearily--if anonymously--about the summit as an inevitable and accepted fact of September, August or July. When President Eisenhower last week invited Prime Minister Macmillan to visit him in June en route from a commencement speech at Indiana's DePauw University, London newspapers billed the White House date as a "presummit" meeting.

There were few signs of hard thought about hard bargaining on hard issues to get hard concessions; instead, Washington's tired line seemed to be that "world opinion" wanted the summit, and the U.S. might just as well drift along with it or lose propaganda points to the Kremlin. At one low point last week top-ranking Washington Republicans even talked about the summit as a happy-talk campaign issue for next November--"talking peace"--that might drown out Democratic talk of gloom-and-doom recession. Wrote the New York Times's James Reston: "The G.O.P. politicians are all for making the experiment."

Trial Ballooning. In this soft climate, the Kremlin struck hard last week on hard issues and overrode the U.S. contemptuously. One day Khrushchev turned down Eisenhower's proposal to discuss the reunification of Germany by free elections--agreed upon in the 1955 summit conference--out of hand. Another day K. termed Eisenhower's thoughts on freedom for satellite peoples to choose their own government as "insulting," "unheard-of," and "a scandalous violation of the elementary forms of intergovernmental relations." K. did not like Eisenhower's "tone." Finally, K. offered to consider Eisenhower's plan for peaceful use of outer space--but only if the U.S. would scrap overseas bases. The State Department, thrown on the propaganda defensive once again, could only reply: "Wholly unacceptable."

By contrast with the Russians, high U.S. disarmament negotiators, seeking a new peace initiative, put on a strange performance. In Washington's time-honored way of trial balloons and planted leaks, the disarmament men felt out the U.S. public on possible U.S. concessions. The U.S., they suggested tentatively, no longer feels the same way about disarmament as it felt last summer. The U.S. might consider splitting its foolproof package, i.e., discuss an end to atomic tests without insisting that the Russians stop nuclear production at the same time. In fact, said the trial balloonists, the U.S. is now actually considering a three-year suspension of tests--without a single real Communist concession in return. Explained the Christian Science Monitor: "Soviet propaganda being what it is, and being as effective as it is, the West has little choice but to unwrap its single package or stand before the world charged with obstructing agreement."

Strumming Guitars. Here and there amidst the soft guitars could be heard an occasional rattle of rearguard musketry. In faraway Manila, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told the SEATO Council that the U.S. would negotiate "any" disarmament agreement with the U.S.S.R., but only provided that the agreement 1) could be inspected and enforced, 2) would not tilt the balance of power the Kremlin's way. Dulles' point, reiterated again and again, was that sure peace lies only in sure strength. Even so, the London Times told its readers accurately: "In Britain public opinion is keener than the government in pressing for summit talks . . . Such is not the case in the U.S. . . . The Administration is as likely to rouse criticism as applause by appearing too eager to talk with the Russians."

The irony of the whole situation is that it is the U.S.S.R., avidly yearning for the summit, that ought by every diplomatic definition to be offering the concessions; the U.S., busy belatedly on its missile buildup, ought not to be volunteering concessions.

The irony was lost in the failure of the Administration to set--in private as well as in public--the firm, hard, lean line that effective peacemaking requires. Thus the irony reached its high point at week's end when the Kremlin's Nikita Khrushchev predicted, in the midst of a remarkable 9,000-word letter in Britain's socialist New Statesman, his unswerving faith in ultimate world victory for Communism. Said K.: "Such is the relentless course of historical development, and no one can halt it."

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