! A

THE TABLET, August 8, 1959.

TH A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 8th 1959

NINEPENCE

, i nrri mi i iiiiii— i i

— i n — m n a n i m u i i i I, i mi iin i . nn 'Hi m i ■ nmni <' i'i n a n c r a

Mr. Nixon in Warsaw: Much More than a Satellite.

Af ricans in the Federation: Impressions in Rhodesia: II. By J. E. Alexander. Prophecy and Wisdom: Beliefs of East and West. By Kenelm Foster, O.P.

Calvin’s Eniversity: Better News from Geneva. Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia: An Encyclical on the Pastoral Priesthood.

Critics’ Columns : Notebook ; Book Reviews : Chess

THE TWAIN SHALL MEET

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER and M. Khrushchev are to exchange visits informally, not as negotiators, but for the first time there will be inside Russia a general expectation of détente. M. Khrushchev will find it difficult, when he gets home next month, to resist saying that he has broken through the tensions and by his personal exertions has made the peace of the world much more likely. He will find it difficult not to boast that he has done something that nobody else could do. He is already deriving great prestige from the announcement that later in the year the President of the United States will return the visit. It is rarely that a President of the United States travels abroad. M. Khrushchev’s main objective is achieved by the mere announcement of this exchange of visits : he can say that he has established parity with the most powerful nation on earth, to the exclusion of lesser Powers like Britain and France—and more than parity, since President Eisenhower is a Head of State' whereas he, Khrushchev, is not, but has only lately become a Head of Government, where before he was technically only a party boss. In so far as it is true that a sort of inferiority complex, a sense of being regarded as a backward nation and not accorded the status in the world that is its due, has been part of the explanation of Soviet policy hitherto, there is immediate gain.

The advantage lies with President Eisenhower, who has not been pressing for such visits of Heads of State but on the contrary has consistently expressed his doubt about their value and so will be able to say without difficulty when they are over that they have not led to any useful result, if th a t should be his opinion. M. Khrushchev, on the other hand, has been demanding such meetings for two years past, and has said so much about their value, and about the ineffectiveness of meetings between any less exalted personages such as Foreign Ministers, that he can hardly tell his half of the world afterwards that no particular result has been obtained.

As early as the first days of July the President began his correspondence with M. Khrushchev, more than a month ago. The first round of the Geneva conversations of the Foreign Ministers had reached its fruitless end, and the dangerous possibilities of the position in Berlin had persuaded President Eisenhower that the case for a meeting was strong. The advice of Mr. Macmillan, pressing the case for such personal encounters as he had himself found useful, doubtless played a part in bringing about what is termed a more flexible policy on the American side. But if a new chapter has opened the historians will find it easiest to date it from the death of Mr. Dulles at the end of May. Within onlym week or two of Mr. Dulles’ death the President must have begun to contemplate a step which would have found little favour if Mr. Dulles had survived. The advantage still lies on the American side, but it is a diminished advantage in so far as the American tactics have shifted whereas the Soviet tactics have not.

As soon as the exchange of visits was announced there were protests in the United States, including some from Catholjc prelates, declaring that M. Khrushchev should never be accepted on American soil, let alone be made the President’s honoured guest. There were similar feelings in this country when he came here with Marshal Bulganin in the spring of 1956, only six months before the murderous repression in Hungary for which he was directly responsible. But those who protest can at least feel confident that the opportunity will not be lost in the United States to bring home to M. Khrushchev the abhorrence of the free world for what happened then in Hungary, and for so much else in Eastern Europe, as well as within the Soviet Union itself, for which the regime which he represents has been responsible. Nor will the expressions of that abhorrence be left to refugee organisations. In this matter alone, it may be confidently expected, President Eisenhower’s advantage will be turned to good account.

A

A

- ,