The West's Good Week

In the high-stakes power and propaganda contest called the cold war, the U.S. piled up one of its biggest weekly scores so far. Capturing men's imaginations round the world, and replying persuasively to Russia's Sputniks, the U.S. Navy's atomic submarine Nautilus completed a historic transpolar voyage under the vast Arctic ice pack, fulfilling in a 20th century way the centuries-old dream of a northern passage from ocean to ocean (see Armed Forces). And in the arena of diplomacy, the U.S. scored high when Nikita Khrushchev, tangled in his own diplomatic web, rejected a U.N. summit meeting in an awkward turnabout that brought international jeers.

This week the U.S. prepared to go to the United Nations General Assembly to lay out its case for defending stability and order in the beleaguered Middle East. With a strong symbol of achievement in Nautilus, with diplomatic decks cleared of Khrushchev's summit trip wires, the U.S. could hope against hope that the free world could now get on with the business of achieving order, prosperity and independence in the Middle East.

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