Pursuit of Peace

Along with a flurry of visits to local Civil Defense offices by worried citizens, the swift collapse of the summit meeting brought an outbreak of name calling and blame hurling by worked-up politicians. Illinois' rumpled Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen charged that Adlai Stevenson had "torpedoed" the summit by advocating U.S. concessions in a pre-summit interview with a French reporter (see PRESS). Pennsylvania's Republican Senator Hugh Scott followed up by accusing Stevenson and Presidential Candidate Jack Kennedy of "gross suspicion of appeasement."

Open Path. Against this background of alarm and recrimination, President Eisenhower spoke out in a calm and calming appraisal of the summit collapse. "In evaluating the results," he said in a televised speech to the nation, "I think we must not write the record all in red ink." The summit had brought about a strengthening of Western unity. "The conduct of our allies was magnificent. My colleagues and friends --President de Gaulle and Prime Minister Macmillan--stood sturdily with the American delegation."

The shattering of summit illusions, the President stressed, did not mean an end to the search for peace. "Despite our recent disappointment, progress toward the goal of mutual understanding, easing the causes of tensions and reduction of armaments is as necessary as ever. We shall continue these peaceful efforts, including participation in the existing negotiations with the Soviet Union. We shall not back away, on account of recent events, from the efforts or commitments that we have undertaken. Nor shall we relax our search for new means of reducing the risk of war by miscalculation, and of achieving verifiable arms control."

The U.S.. said the President, "must continue businesslike dealings with the Soviet leaders on outstanding issues, making clear that the path of reason and common sense is still open if the Soviets will but use it." Long ago, he went on, he had pledged that he would "journey anywhere in the world to promote the cause of peace. I remain pledged to pursue a peace of dignity, of friendship, of honor, of justice."

As a step toward that distant goal, the President announced that his Administration was planning to submit to the United Nations a plan for international U.N. surveillance from the air--an updated version of his Russian-spurned "open skies" proposal of 1955. As an illustration of how much aerial surveillance could detect, the President displayed a blown-up photograph of the North Island Naval Air Station at San Diego. The photograph had been taken at an altitude of 13 miles (from a U-2 of the same type as Pilot Francis Powers flew over Russia), but visible in it were parking-lot stripes a mere six inches wide.

Out of Step. Next day. at a breakfast meeting with 23 congressional leaders of both parties, Ike showed that he was pursuing peace on the home front too. He told his guests that he was wholeheartedly in favor of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's scheduled inquiry into the summit collapse. He agreed with Committee Chairman William Fulbright that there had already been too much talk about softness toward Communism--on both sides. "There are those who think I ought to be giving the President unshirted hell," said Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson the next day, "but I was proud as hell of my country after that meeting."

But it was still an election year. Missouri's Democratic Presidential Hopeful Stuart Symington charged that the President had subjected the country to a "humiliating disaster" at the summit. Adlai Stevenson declared that Ike's "bland" explanations in his televised speech were unsatisfactory. And Jack Kennedy insisted that the nation was confronted with a "failure of leadership."

From the Republican camp, Vice President Nixon fired back, charged that Symington, Stevenson and Kennedy were "out of step with their own party." And --if the spirit of the Democrats at Ike's breakfast meeting was any indication--maybe they were.

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