Contest of Wills

The details of President Kennedy's closed-door sessions with Nikita Khrushchev, as they became known last week, made for a dramatic picture of the two most powerful antagonists of the cold war matching wits and wills.

The meetings began and ended with surface expressions of friendliness. When Khrushchev arrived at the U.S. embassy residence in Vienna for the first talk, Kennedy mentioned that he was happy to see the Premier, recalled a session that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (of which Massachusetts' John Kennedy was then a member) had held with Khrushchev during his 1959 U.S. visit. Khrushchev replied that he had long ago sized up Kennedy as an up-and-coming public figure, mixed irony with flattery by noting that the President was such an awfully young man to carry so heavy a burden of office.

Cigars & Dwarf Corn. The talk soon turned tough, but there were still some moments of pleasantry. Once Kennedy lit up a cigar and dropped the match behind Khrushchev's chair. "Are you trying to set me on fire?" the Premier joked. When Kennedy assured him that he had no such idea in mind, Khrushchev answered with a smile: "Ah--a capitalist, not an incendiary." Another time, Khrushchev and Secretary of State Dean Rusk got into a debate on dwarf corn. Khrushchev declared that it could not be grown in quantity. Rusk, who was born on a Georgia cotton farm, insisted that Khrushchev was wrong, and promised to send him some samples. But Khrushchev caught Rusk's hint that the U.S. could grow corn better than Russia could, argued that the problem was not the grain itself but the Soviet Union's lack of machinery and fertilizer. Once they were acquired, he boasted, Russia would bury the U.S. in corn.

Kennedy and Khrushchev kept their verbal guard high. Twice during the conversations, Kennedy tossed Chinese maxims at his antagonist. He quoted Mao Tse-tung as saying that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"; Khrushchev, straight-faced, denied that the peace-loving Chinese leader could ever have said such a thing. Kennedy also used the old proverb, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step," to make his point that a first step in progress on the road to peace should be made at the nuclear test talks. Struck by Kennedy's Oriental references, Khrushchev remarked: "You seem to know the Chinese very well." Kennedy answered: "We may both get to know them better." Said Khrushchev grimly: "I know them well enough now." At one point, noting that the U.S. admits its own mistakes, Kennedy asked: "Do you ever admit you're wrong?" Khrushchev replied that Russia had already admitted the mistakes of the Stalin era. "Those weren't your mistakes," Kennedy shot back--and got no answer.

Bone in the Throat. To the nation, Kennedy reported that there had been "no loss of tempers" during the talks. But in the stalemated discussions over Berlin, Khrushchev came perilously close to anger. The Soviet Premier explained that he intended to sign a peace treaty (perhaps by year's end) with East Germany; after that, the West would be forced to deal with the East Germans for access to Berlin and the right to station troops there. Kennedy coolly answered that the West was in Berlin legally and would use force to maintain its rights there "at any risk." Khrushchev reddened and said that West Berlin was a bone that must come out of the Soviet throat.

Throughout the conversations, Kennedy kept to specifics, hoping to steer Khrushchev away from opportunities to make speeches. For his part, Khrushchev seemed surprisingly indifferent to the ultimate fate of at least two world trouble spots. The Soviet leader expressed his interest in seeing a truly neutral Laos--and left Kennedy with the impression that he might possibly help get the stalled Geneva talks off the ground--but added that Laos was of no great interest to the Soviet Union. Neither was Cuba, although Khrushchev added that U.S. policies were fast turning Castro into a good Communist. Kennedy bluntly denied the charge.

Capitalist Captive. Khrushchev obviously had carefully prepared for his meeting with the new U.S. President. He told Kennedy that he had read "all of your speeches," even quoted back to the President phrases from last month's second State of the Union address to Congress. Once Khrushchev declared that Kennedy had reversed an order that would have sent U.S. Marines to Laos; when Kennedy denied it, Khrushchev looked unbelieving. Khrushchev stuck by the error that Kennedy was the captive of top industrialists and financiers who met Khrushchev in New York on his 1959 U.S. tour. Even after Kennedy explained that not one of these businessmen had supported him during last year's election, Khrushchev was unconvinced. "They are very clever fellows," he insisted, and let the matter drop.

Going over his Vienna experience with friends last week, a tired, aching John Kennedy insisted that the ordeal had been "invaluable"; he now had, he said, "a clearer idea of the intensity of the struggle we are in." He had not expected any concessions--and he had certainly achieved none. But he had heard clearly the voice of the enemy and thus better understood, because the U.S. and Soviet commitments are so strongly opposed that "it was going to be a close thing to prevent war. There is heightened danger for both countries." As he told the country (see following story), it had all been a very sobering experience.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.