Foreign News: The Peacemongers

The United Nations last week had the air of a college campus during the fraternity rushing season. The neutralist leaders were wined and dined by East and West, nattered with offers of financial aid, wooed with the promise of technicians, state visits and cultural exchanges. When Dwight Eisenhower presided in the Presidential Suite at the Waldorf Tower, his guests included Cabinet ministers from such countries as Nepal, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Ethiopia. When tiny Togo gave a cocktail party at the Plaza Hotel, who should pop in but pudgy Nikita Khrushchev, all smiles. Both dazed and gratified, Togo’s Premier Sylvanus Olympio offered the understatement of the week by observing that Khrushchev is a “very calm man” to whom “you can say anything at all and he will not be angry.”

When not being courted by East and West, the uncommitted nations were busily courting one another. In the minds of the self-appointed neutralist leaders rose visions of a new power bloc made up of some 40 to 50 nations which, by their votes and moral influence, could bring peace to a naughty world.

Fast Leap. Handsome Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, neutralism’s only avowed Communist, walked in and out of conferences and intimate téte-á-tétes. His quarrel with Khrushchev, dating back to 1958, was temporarily dissolved again in a succession of handshakes and a long confabulation behind the grillwork doors of the Soviet Union’s Park Avenue mansion.* Old Partisan Fighter Tito was himself living in capitalist splendor on Fifth Avenue, and spent his free time strolling in Central Park or watching the night glitter of Manhattan from the Rainbow Room, 64 stories above Rockefeller Plaza. Not confined like Khrushchev to Manhattan, he motored up to Hyde Park to visit Franklin Roosevelt’s grave. Tito even maintained his aplomb after stumbling down a flight of marble stairs while hurrying to welcome Britain’s Prime Minister Macmillan. Leaping to his feet, the 68-year-old Tito cried jovially: “I fell so fast and got up so fast, you photographers had no time to take a picture.”

Best of Both. Equally nimble, Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah raced around Manhattan shaking black hands and white hands at every opportunity. Casting himself in the role of mother hen to the 15 newly emerged African states, U.S.-educated Nkrumah strode from his suite in the Waldorf-Astoria alternately dressed in Western business suits and Ghanaian ceremonial robes, and seemed to promise to fellow Africans the best of both worlds.

Nkrumah assiduously promoted his view that erratic Patrice Lumumba should be restored to power as Premier of the chaotic Congo, and warned newsmen that anything which damaged the prestige or authority of Lumumba’s nonexistent government would “undermine the whole basis of democracy in Africa.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of the United Arab Republic, appeared the most relaxed of the neutralist bosses. Though he has proved unable to rally even the Arab world to his flamboyant standard, Nasser has let it be known that he is waiting to accept leadership of the new Africa. But for the moment, he seemed content to watch how the other fellows were going about it. From a rented, four-acre estate in Sands Point, L.I., Nasser motored into town or called on Nikita Khrushchev at nearby Glen Cove or paused at the U.A.R.’s Tudor mansion on Park Avenue to accept the homage of two representatives from the other Arab states. Unquestionably a man of great presence, he beamed conspicuously from every group photograph in which he appeared, and seemed to be enjoying his brief fling as a conciliatory diplomat instead of thundering dictator.

First in Field. India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, who not so long ago had the field of neutralism all to, himself, arrived late and stepped from his plane with the air of a man wondering why he has come at all. But as soon as he was established in Manhattan’s fashionable Carlyle Hotel, a favorite residence of ex-President Harry Truman, Nehru began making his familiar mediating rounds and accepted the courtship of the others as his proper due. In a single day, Nehru breakfasted with Nkrumah, lunched with Macmillan, dined with Khrushchev and, in between, conferred separately with Egypt’s Nasser, President Eisenhower, and U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold who had been adopted almost overnight by all the new African nations as their particular hope and champion. Privately, Nehru seemed more concerned about Red China than in preserving the past purity of his neutralism.

Joined by the late-arriving President Sukarno of Indonesia, Tito, Nehru, Nkrumah and Nasser met at Yugoslav headquarters to synchronize their divergent impulses. After three hours of talks, the only agreement they could reach was on a resolution that was offered next day to the General Assembly by Sukarno. Striding to the podium accompanied by a befrogged and bebraided military aide, who reverently accepted each page as his master finished it, Sukarno submitted the appeal from neutralism’s Big Five for a new and immediate meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. “The opportunity may not come again,” cried Sukarno. “Grasp it, then, hold it tight; use it!”

The Busy Five clearly hoped that all other uncommitted nations would follow their lead. The countries just emerged from colonialism, however, are not eager to surrender a shred of their new sovereignty to anyone—for that reason, they have given steady support to Hammarskjold and the U.N. And there was some question how much the Big Five could subordinate their egos to one another. Nasser and Nkrumah may each dream of becoming the messiah of Africa; Nehru may strike the attitudes of a man professing to be the world’s conscience; Tito and Sukarno, each in his own way, may wish to be a bridge between Karl Marx and Adam Smith—but these separate ambitions give little indication of coming to pass. The basic determination of the new uncommitted nations is not to join any blocs, even a neutralist bloc.

-The familiar Communist rule of thumb is that when Tito is in favor, Mao is not, and vice versa.