Confidence & Caution

Sir Pierson Dixon. Britain's permanent representative to the United Nations, had company for lunch at Wave Hill, his handsome Hudson River residence in Riverdale. just north of Manhattan. Gathered under fragrantly flowering linden trees one balmy day last week were three of the free world's shapers of foreign policy: Britain's Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan, France's Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay and U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Puzzling Problems. The Briton and the Frenchman had come to the U.S. for the U.N.'s tenth anniversary ceremonies in San Francisco, but before the birthday party, Dulles, Macmillan and Pinay had to discuss a puzzling problem in world diplomacy: the true reason for the Communists' sudden switch from cold-warriors to peace-shouters. Standing in Sir Pierson's paneled library. Dulles gave the U.S. evaluation of what had caused the Kremlin to accept an Austrian treaty that was less favorable than the one it had rejected out of hand a year before, and to go to Belgrade "to walk on glass."

Russia, Dulles said, was faced with bankruptcy of its old policy. Cold war and hot threats had failed to cow Western Europe or to halt the rebirth of a rearmed, democratic Germany. The Soviets were overcommitted: with less than a third of U.S. industrial capacity, they were at tempting to keep up an atomic armament race with the U.S. An enormous part of Russia's armaments was disappearing in the maw of the Red Chinese dragon, and the Soviet people, under cruel economic burdens, were restive. It appeared the Soviet leaders wanted a "respite."

The West, Dulles continued, should be willing to grant a respite, if Russia was willing to pay the price. Essentially, the democracies want to apply a weed killer to Communist expansion and subversion of democratic systems. If the Communists truly desire peaceful coexistence, they would prove it by enforcing the Litvinoff Agreement of 1933 to terminate the international activities of the Communist Party. A second proof of Russian sincerity would be the reunification of Germany as a sovereign democratic state--neither "neutralized" nor satellite. A third proof would properly be the honoring of Soviet commitments, taken at Yalta, to permit self-determination in the Balkan states and Poland, and emancipate those unhappy slave states. If Russia satisfied these three preconditions, said Dulles, then the West would ease its pressure.

Firm Ground Rules. Pinay and Macmillan had no serious quarrel with Dulles' evaluation of the situation and his program to test Russian sincerity. In the study there was an air of confidence that had been missing from Western councils since World War II. The three men drew up a list of ground rules for the Big Four conference at Geneva--a list that they will present to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in San Francisco this week:

1) The conference, which will begin on July 18, should have a fixed terminal date. Depending on Russian preference, it should last from four to seven days, but the adjournment date should be agreed on in advance.

2) The chiefs of government should meet twice the first day. On subsequent days the foreign ministers should meet in the morning, the chiefs in the afternoon.

3) The meetings should not be hamstrung with a formal agenda. Each chief of government should introduce relevant questions; each should present in turn his own ideas of the causes of world tension.

4) The conference at the summit should be restricted to business, with sumptuous parties and endless toasting ruled out.

Having mapped out their base camp in the careful approach to Geneva's summit, the diplomatic Alpinists adjourned until next day, when they met with Germany's Konrad Adenauer in the Waldorf Tower. After three hours all plans were dovetailed, all differences ironed out. The ministers agreed to meet with other NATO representatives in Paris on July 10, as a prelude to Geneva. As the diplomats parted, the new confidence was salted with a grain of caution. Said Antoine Pinay: "It would be very naive to take signs as proof of Russia's peaceful intentions. You don't tear up your insurance policy merely because an architect comes and tells you your house is well built."

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