Lights & Bells

So entwined are the destinies of all the world's nations in 1959 that a bold new initiative by one of the superpowers has something like the effect of a lucky shot on a pinball machine. Last week, as a consequence of Dwight Eisenhower's historic decision to invite Khrushchev to the U.S., lights were flashing and bells ringing all around the globe.

In Europe Ike's pre-Khrushchev consultations had triggered eventful and long-postponed decisions. France's Charles de Gaulle, after a year devoted to cautious, almost imperceptible maneuver against both Moslem rebels and self-professed French patriots, drew himself up at last to announce his plan for staunching the hemorrhage of civil war in Algeria. In Britain Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, capitalizing on the sunburst of Ike's public personality, quickly called elections that could give the Tories five more years in power.

More startling, and potentially perhaps even more important, were the effects of Ike's initiative behind the Iron Curtain. In the U.N. Security Council Russia accepted with uncharacteristic calm the proposition that its cherished veto power did not apply to the dispatch of a U.N. team to investigate Communist aggression in Laos. And from Moscow came a determinedly noncommittal Kremlin announcement on the border dispute between Red China and India. Clearly concerned lest Mao Tse-tung's aggressiveness sabotage Khrushchev's dream of establishing "Big Two" relations with the U.S.--and probably concerned, too, at the setback to Soviet wooing of the "uncommitted" nations--the U.S.S.R. for the first time in its 42-year history failed to rally full-throated to the support of a fellow Communist state. Said a State Department official, with unconcealed satisfaction: "Moscow is just learning about the problem of having allies."

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