National Affairs: The Riotous Test

The gleaming Douglas C-118 (DC-6) transport had no sooner touched down at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport than U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining smacked up against newsmen’s questions about the “political” significance of his visit. Said General Twining, who had journeyed to Moscow at the invitation of Soviet leaders (TIME, June 11): “I am not in the political business.” He had, he said, flown to the Communist heartland to “see their equipment and their latest developments.” This week Nate Twining attended the vaunted Soviet Aviation Day flyover—and saw precious little in the way of startling “late developments.” But after the flyover he went to a banquet given by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, and met the test—riotously put—as a diplomat and politician.

Sober Center. After dozens of toasts to Eisenhower, to friendship, to peace, and, in a memorable moment, to Red China (when all the Americans sat stock-still in their seats, raised no glasses), Communist Party Boss Nikita Khrushchev spoke volubly, turning to Twining and challenging: “You are probably interested in our rockets and our ballistic missiles. You would like to see them, wouldn’t you?”

Twining, the sober center of all the well-oiled attention, hesitated, considered, and finally nodded yes. “Well,” continued Khrushchev, “we want to see yours. Show us your planes and we’ll show you our ballistic missiles.”

Then, heehawing happily, Khrushchev roared: “But we won’t show them to you today. Today is too early. We’ll do it at some future date. Meanwhile, you keep yours and we’ll keep ours. We’ll show you what competition is.” Nate Twining had right back at him. “I wish,” he said, “that Mr. Khrushchev would appear before Congress and tell Congress the Soviet Union wants to compete with the United States . . . The U.S. needs competition. Right now we are not even at half blower [airplane slang for half power].” Replied Khrushchev: “They won’t let me in.” That caused gay laughter.

Best Word. But Twining had the best, if not precisely the last, word—and he made some points that his hosts might well remember after Khrushchev’s banquet-bantering is long forgotten.

“There has been much talk of peace and disarmament,” said Twining. “Peace and disarmament are not my specialty, but I will say that the man in uniform is the first to want peace. I would like to point out that after World War II, the United States disbanded its military forces almost entirely. This was disarmament. We had to build them up again in the Korean war.”

And, concluded Nate Twining, the U.S. is “not going to disband them again until we have assurances that it can be done under effective international control and inspection.” For an airman’s airman, with no pretense of being a politician, he had said a mouthful.