Wesley Heights Tea Party

Sipping tea or nursing highballs, the guests sat in a wide semicircle in the living room of Vice President Richard Nixon's big stone house on Forest Lane in the fashionable Wesley Heights section of Washington. Among them were some of the most powerful men of the U.S. Congress: Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, Senate Republican Policy Chairman Styles Bridges, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, House Democratic Leader John McCormack, House Republican Leader Charles Halleck, and half a dozen others. They listened raptly to the man facing them from the sofa: Britain's Harold Macmillan, just back from his Camp David talks with President Eisenhower, had asked Nixon to arrange for the session. It turned out to be one of the most interesting tea parties since Boston Harbor.

For the first few minutes, it was just like scores of other Washington gatherings being held at that same hour. The men stood around nibbling hors d'oeuvres, chatting casually. Host Nixon moved unobtrusively from group to group, paused for a few moments to talk to Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter. House Republican Whip Leslie Arends asked Harold Macmillan about Parliament's procedures for appropriating money, chuckled with Macmillan about their mutual problems. Then the group settled down to talk about the route to the Summit. There were some frank questions--and Macmillan had some frank answers.

"Also If It Fails." Using much the same thesis he had advanced to President Eisenhower, Macmillan argued that Nikita Khrushchev holds all the strings of Kremlin power, and it is not much use talking to lower-ranking Soviet officials. A summit conference could give the West a valuable breathing spell in the crises of the cold war; Macmillan did not believe Khrushchev likely to kick over any applecarts with a summit conference in prospect. While in Moscow last month, Macmillan got the idea that Khrushchev had real doubts about Western unity; a summit conference could dispel any such notions, and, once Khrushchev is finally convinced of Western solidarity, the easing of cold-war tensions becomes possible.

Did Macmillan think the summit talks should come after a foreign ministers' conference has had a degree of success? "Yes," said Harold Macmillan, "and also if it fails." He summed up his determination to achieve a summit conference in emotional terms: "I cannot go to the Queen and ask for approval of the evacuation of millions, many of them children, to far places of the Commonwealth until I have exhausted every other possibility."

"I Detest 'Appeasement.' " Some of the Americans had plain doubts about Britain's readiness to stand firm once a summit conference is held. Both Styles Bridges and John McCormack used the word appeasement. Macmillan bristled. "I am no Neville Chamberlain," he said, "and I want that thoroughly understood. I detest 'appeasement.' I will not tolerate such an approach to our present problems, even though I realize that a war could burn my homeland to a crisp as well as Russia, Germany and France."

Some of the Americans were vastly relieved. Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey praised Macmillan highly, added (while Republicans grumbled) that he was glad Macmillan had stepped into the foreign-policy vacancy left by the illness of John Foster Dulles. Massachusetts' Republican Senator Leverett Saltonstall felt much "encouraged" by what Macmillan had said. Some of the other Americans were less reassured; they shared with President Eisenhower the strong reluctance to hold a summit conference without first a foreign ministers' conference that has made substantive progress. But at the very least, by the time Harold Macmillan left the Wesley Heights Tea Party to emplane for London next day, he had cleared up any confusion there might have been about where he stood.

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