A blizzard of Cyrillic characters blew into the chancelleries of Western Europe and, to the public eye, all but obliterated the measured phrases of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s State of the Union message. Russia’s Premier Bulganin, who seems determined not to let the President of the U.S. get a word in edgewise if he can help it, loosed a new series of letters suggesting that the chiefs of government of all NATO countries and all Warsaw Pact countries, plus assorted neutrals, get together “in the next two or three months” to talk over everything from atom-free zones to disarmament. KREMLIN SUGGESTS MEETING AT GENEVA, bannered Paris’ Le Monde, adding in a smaller headline below: “In His Speech to Congress, M. Eisenhower Insisted on Economic Aid.”
Man & Moment. In editorial pages, Eisenhower’s speech was generally praised for its air of resolution, and its emphasis on the importance of economic aid. Wrote the pro-Socialist Neue Rhein Zeitung: “What he told his countrymen will calm them and us.” The British, who often prefer eloquence to solidity, were vaguely disappointed. Said the London Times: “There is no mistaking—there never has been—the passionate sincerity behind the President’s words or his willingness to ‘go the extra mile with anyone on earth if it will bring nearer a genuine peace.’ But such phrases show a disquieting tendency to leave it to others—which particularly of course means the Russians—to suggest the first steps.” The Daily Telegraph was more enthusiastic. “Perhaps, after five years of frustration, the man and the moment are at last well met.”
The Discombobulator. In his hurry to snatch the headlines from Eisenhower, Bulganin had not even waited to get a reply to his December round of notes, which he had timed to distract the NATO chiefs at the summit meeting in Paris. U.S. Secretary of State Dulles scoffed at the Russian proposals as “old,” “barren,” and intended to “discombobulate the efforts of the NATO countries to work out a coordinated answer to the earlier letters.” They did, since they arrived between two sessions of the NATO Council, meeting in the Palais de Chaillot to discuss the wording of the allies’ replies to Bulganin’s first round of letters.
The Soviet Union was clearly exploiting its initiative politically to probe for soft spots in the NATO façade, and the Russians obviously hoped that in their latest bagful of old schemes—e.g., a ban on nuclear tests, the Polish plan for an atom-free zone in Central Europe, renunciation of the use of force in the Middle East—Westerners with a desire to disengage might find items to lure them on.
The Russian drive went on all week. It began with the announcement that Russia was “voluntarily” reducing its armed forces by 300,000 men as a “new, serious contribution to the cause of easing tensions”; more likely the cut was a routine step in the reshaping of their mass army into more modern and streamlined form. Following up Norway’s and Denmark’s refusal at last month’s NATO conference to accept nuclear arms, Bulganin sent still another note to Denmark’s Socialist Premier Hans Christian Hansen suggesting that the proposed atom-free zone for Central Europe be extended to include Finland and Scandinavia. In Moscow an Italian Communist Senator said Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had proposed to him: “The atomic neutralization of Italy could be part of an agreement for the atomic neutralization of any other country by which Italy considers itself menaced, particularly as far as the Italian Adriatic coast is concerned.” As if to make the offer more persuasive, Rome reported that missile bases were under construction at three sites across the Adriatic in Communist Albania.
By Popular Demand. Bulganin also snapped up the idea of a nonaggression pact between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, which Britain’s Prime Minister Macmillan had tossed out just before departing for India. Last week, disregarding icy stares from the U.S. State Department and deprecating comment from his own Foreign Office, the Prime Minister not only told Indian reporters, “I stand by my initial statement,” but added that he was sure “President Eisenhower would be willing to make such a formal declaration too.”
Macmillan and many other Western leaders are now privately convinced that a summit meeting of some kind is in the cards, if not within two or three months as the Russians urge, at least before the end of 1958. They reject the 26-nation affair proposed by Bulganin—which diplomats promptly dubbed “the monster meeting.” But Macmillan feels that public opinion demands that the free world’s leaders search out every possible way to peace at every level, including the highest.
At week’s end, speaking with a forcefulness that U.S. pronouncements have too often lacked, President Eisenhower startled Europe with an answer to Bulganin that was also a challenge (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). In his offer to meet “the Soviet leaders,” Eisenhower added only the proviso on which his NATO allies were agreed: “It would be essential that, prior to such a meeting, these complex matters should be worked on in advance through diplomatic channels, and by our foreign ministers, so that the issues can be presented in form suitable for our decisions.”
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- 11 New Books to Read in February
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
- Introducing the 2025 Closers
Contact us at letters@time.com