Pilgrim Making Progress

An order from President Eisenhower sent his personal plane, the Columbine III, across the Pacific to Honolulu last week to pick up important passengers: Indonesia's President Sukarno, his twelve-year-old son Guntur, and a retinue of 14 other Indonesians. When the plane reached Washington National Airport, Vice President Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles--both old Sukarno acquaintances--stepped forward and beamed warm greetings. The Army band boomed Indonesia Raya (the national anthem), and Nixon put a fatherly hand on Guntur's shoulder. With that, the U.S. began an all-out diplomatic effort, as carefully prepared as a major military operation, to win the mind of Indonesia's President (see box).

Sukarno, Asia's No. 2 neutralist (after India's Nehru), rose to Washington's warmth like a veteran actor responding to a friendly audience. He made a thoughtful yet noncommittal statement: "I have come here to confirm or modify the impressions of your country which I have collected for so many years." On the way through Washington, Sukarno suddenly halted the Imperial in which he was riding, leaped out nimbly and began shaking hands. While Secret Service men paled, he tousled a five-year-old's head, walked up to an elderly housewife, Mrs. Lenore Coon, and said: "Dear Mother, may I kiss you?" Bussing her heartily on the cheek, he said: "That was an Indonesian kiss." Stoutly, Mrs. Coon replied: "It certainly wasn't a Washington kiss."

As he took the city's keys, he said: "Man's life is unpredictable. I am the son of poor parents. My father was a small schoolteacher, but now I am being honored by you. There is a feeling of brotherhood here."

Revere's Bowl. At the White House President Eisenhower, waiting on the portico, took his guest into his home, gave him a state lunch, then handed him a particularly thoughtful gift. Opening the Bandung Asian-African Conference on April 18, 1955, Sukarno had recalled to his audience, mostly anti-American, that it was the anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride, and had quoted lines from Longfellow's poem. Now Ike and Mamie gave Sukarno a replica of the silver bowl that Silversmith Paul Revere wrought to commemorate Massachusetts' resistance to British oppression. A lovely gift, it made a neat point: the U.S., too, has a glorious anticolonial past.

At noon the next day, before a joint session of Congress, the Indonesian asked, "May I be frank?" Then, in faultless, forceful English, he was. Said he: "Nationalism may be an out-of-date doctrine for many in the world; for us of Asia and Africa, it is the mainspring of our efforts. Fail to understand it, and no amount of thinking, no torrent of words, no Niagara of dollars will produce anything but bitterness and disillusionment. We of Indonesia are in the stage of national turmoil through which America passed some 150 years ago. We ask you to understand."

Lincoln's Spirit. The following day, before one of the largest crowds of newsmen ever to jam the National Press Club's ballroom. Sukarno spoke again: "We are not anti-West. The object of our policy is the same as the object of your policy: to seek a larger freedom for mankind. [But] there may well be more than one road to final consummation of such a policy."

In three jampacked days in Washington--opening a 19-day tour that will stretch across the land to Hollywood--Sukarno charmed almost everyone he met. At the Washington shrine in Mt. Vernon he recited fervently, almost inaudibly, the Alfatiha, the Moslem prayer for the dead; at the Lincoln Memorial he stood with Guntur, dwarfed by the brooding figure, then walked away and looked back, saying: "I am thinking of the spirit of Lincoln."

Both sides understood each other now, perhaps for the first time. The U.S. wanted friendship; Indonesia wanted moral and financial support with no strings attached. In particular, Sukarno wanted this support against the Dutch to force them out of West New Guinea, their last remaining East Indian colony. But this raised an interesting question for both anticolonialist Sukarno and the U.S. to ponder: is it less colonialism to turn over to Indonesian rule the alien people of West New Guinea than it is to let them remain with the Dutch?

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