Red Flags & Black Armbands

All week long, Soviet Ambassador Mikhail A. Menshikov shuttled back and forth between his embassy on Washington's 16th Street and conferences at the State Department over Nikita Khrushchev's visit. A major general and a colonel of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, the Kremlin's secret police, gumshoed quietly across the country, turning up in such unlikely places as Des Moines and Ames, Iowa to check security angles at airports, hotels and along principal streets. The State Department gulped at the word from Moscow that the size of the Khrushchev official party had reached almost 100, headed up by his wife, Nina, sixtyish; two daughters, Julia, 38, and Rada, 29: son Sergei, 24; and son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei. Then State turned to making arrangements for some 300 U.S. newsmen who have applied to follow the grand tour.

Cameras to Corn. By week's end, detailed plans were well along for Nikita Khrushchev's arrival in the nation's capital. At 10 a m. next Tuesday, when he alights from the TU-114 propjet plane at Andrews Air Force Base. 15 miles southeast of Washington, the Soviet Premier will be welcomed to U.S. soil by President Dwight Eisenhower and other Government and military leaders. Metropolitan police. Secret Service and State Department security officers will line his route from the airport to Blair House, his official guest quarters across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. A minimum number of Soviet red flags will be displayed by the U.S. in Washington; there will be no parades through red-flag-decked streets. On his first night, Khrushchev will attend a formal dinner given by the President, and the next day will visit the Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville, Md., address a luncheon at the National Press Club (with nationwide radio and television coverage), tour the capital, and play host at dinner for President and Mrs. Eisenhower.

After that, a minute-by-minute round of sightseeing and speechmaking will crowd the rest of his busy, 13-day schedule in the U.S. Highlights: two banquets in New York on Sept. 17; an address the next day to the U.N. General Assembly; a luncheon in Hollywood, complete with stars and starlets; sightseeing in San Francisco; a visit to an Iowa corn farm near Des Moines and to the University of Pittsburgh; and two days of conferences with President Eisenhower, possibly at secluded Camp David, Md.

Politics to Prayers. Along with the bustle of preparations and plans, loud opposition to the Soviet leader's visit continued to be heard across the land. In Washington, a Committee for Freedom for All Peoples distributed black armbands to be worn while he is in the U.S., appealed to the nation for "solidarity with the victims of Communism by a concerted manifestation of national mourning.'^ Among the committee's backers: three U.S. Senators--Connecticut's Thomas Dodd, Illinois' Paul Douglas and New Hampshire's Styles Bridges, and two members of the House of Representatives--Majority Leader John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and Minnesota's Walter H. Judd. In Boston, Roman Catholic Richard Cardinal Gushing asked people ''to pray in the street, pray any place," during the days that Khrushchev would be in the U.S.*And in Los Angeles, despite a plea by Vice President Nixon that the Soviet leader get a courteous welcome, the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars urged its members to boycott all events connected with Khrushchev's tour.

*Said the Christian Century: "Roman Catholic spokesmen are generally critical of President Eisenhower for inviting Premier Khrushchev to this country. As usual, a cardinal or an archbishop spoke first and then others fell into line, including the obedient Catholic press . . . However, the wisest Catholic leaders must know that criticism can be overdone."

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