On the High Wire

Suitably clad in resplendent attire, the world's two great high-wire artists met last week in Belgrade. Clad in gleaming white jodhpurs and close-fitting achkan (three-quarter length jacket) of cinnamon homespun. India's arch-equilibrist Jawaharlal Nehru had come to return a visit paid him last winter by Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito, a man even more skilled at walking the tightrope of neutralism. There was no real business to be transacted between them, but at least the two could compare notes and talk about their favorite topic--advantageous coexistence.

Uniformed in sky blue and surrounded by a jackbooted, blue-coated honor guard, the Yugoslav dictator himself was at the airport to meet his guest. Roses, babies'-breath, gladioli and big white daisies were strewn in profusion as the two, accompanied by their retinues, drove in a Rolls' Royce to the palace where Nehru was to be billeted during his week's stay. All along the road, cheering Yugoslavs waved their own and India's flags.

After a private dinner that night with President and, Mme. Tito, Nehru next morning accepted an honorary citizenship of Belgrade and warmly praised the independent stand taken by Yugoslavia, despite "pressure or fear of the consequences." Tito responded by saying that the theory of coexistence is spreading, "and in this regard I think I shall not go wrong if I say that a special tribute is due to our countries . . ."

Nehru had good reason to praise and even to envy his neutralist counterpart in Europe, for if he himself had walked the tightrope of peaceful coexistence without accident thus far. Tito was doing it with a careless bravura that far outstripped him. Even observers from the warring camps below had been forced to gasp once or twice during the last few weeks as the Yugoslav seemed dangerously near to falling from his wire on one side or the other. But the very day that Khrushchev and Bulganin arrived in Belgrade, a U.S. Senate committee approved a $40.5 million grant to Tito. That was breathless balancing indeed. Last week he performed even more daringly.

Only a day or two before Nehru's arrival, the Yugoslav government concluded a three-day conference with ambassadors of the West, designed to reassure them that he had not been taken into the Russian camp. A communique was issued, announcing "a wide measure of agreement between the four Governments" (U.S., Britain, France and Yugoslavia). Within an hour after the ambassadors and Tito had basked together at a final lunch, the Yugoslav government announced an item that Tito had neglected to impart to his luncheon companions: he had just accepted Khrushchev's invitation to visit Moscow.

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