Pen Pals

"There is a slight gain, perhaps," cracked Secretary Dulles one day last week. "The last letter from Mr. Khrushchev is approximately one-third of the length of the last letter from Bulganin." Latest exchanges of the months-old correspondence on a parley at the summit:

P: The Western proposal, two weeks ago, that ambassadors get together this month to set up a foreign ministers' meeting "to bring out possibilities of agreement";

P: The Khrushchev answer, last week, that ambassadors ought to fix only housekeeping details, that foreign ministers ought to talk only about substantive matters "by common agreement." i.e., subject to Communist veto, and ratify a summit meeting regardless of disagreements;

P: The Eisenhower rejoinder, at week's end, that K.'s latest was "manifestly not an acceptance," backstopped by the overall U.S. position that the U.S. is not interested in any summit propaganda spectacle, only in serious negotiations.

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