Zing & Wow

The new boy is, if anything, getting finer press notices abroad than at home. So great is European interest in President Kennedy that editors are pressing their Washington correspondents for an unprecedented flow of stories, dealing not only with Kennedy and his policies and advisers but with his family, his entertaining (the French welcomed the serving of champagne at the White House), and his cultural life.

"Suddenly, splendidly, America has been captured by a man inspired," rhapsodized Rene MacColl, U.S. correspondent of Lord Beaverbrook's London Daily Express. "What a transformation has taken place in Washington. Where before there was doubt, dreariness and defeatism, now a great wave of excitement and eagerness has transformed the United States. When Kennedy and Khrushchev finally meet--wow!" Other British newsmen were not far behind. AMERICA GOES TO IT, headlined the London Daily Mail, feeling buoyant even after Kennedy's sobersided State of the Union message; KENNEDY'S CALL PUTS A ZING IN THE AIR. The hardheaded Economist, which had been cool to Kennedy before his election, warmed up in a hurry: "This remarkable young man has shown that he has a very precise and positive conception of the duties of the presidential office." Added the Manchester Guardian: "At last, the Western alliance has a leader courageous enough to treat his fellow citizens and his allies as adults."

Virile Language. Across the English Channel, the French press, conquering an early disposition to water enthusiasm with Gallic doubt, has taken to Kennedy and his French-descended wife. "His virile language," said Roger Massip of Le Figaro, "is designed to stir up the energies of a great nation which is threatened by the excesses of her prosperity." Said the normally skeptical Le Monde: "There is every reason to believe that [Kennedy diplomacy] will result in spectacular developments in the near future."

In West Germany, a widespread pre-election press anxiety about Kennedy's youth"was coupled with old Adenauer's worries that some of Kennedy's advisers would be soft on Berlin. All this is forgotten. "The free world has a leader again," exulted Cologne's Neue Rhein Zeitung--and it didn't mean Adenauer. Frankfurter Allgemeine lauded Kennedy's Cabinet picking as "a masterpiece of natural political talent." Even Kennedy's firm demand that Bonn hike its contribution to help stanch the U.S. gold drain was accepted with equanimity. Bonn's earlier proposal of help, admitted the Frankfurter Rundschau, had really been "an insignificant concession."

"Flat & Stale." The argument about Kennedy's youth has turned into a questioning of the age of European leaders. "In the old Eisenhower days," wrote Columnist Peregrine Worsthorne in London's new conservative Sunday Telegraph, "when the swish of the golf club was more often heard in Washington than the smack of firm government, it was easy enough to overlook the dismal condition of [Prime Minister Harold] Macmillan's government. Today, however, with Washington bubbling over with new men and new ideas and the fresh inspiration of a young and dynamic leader, British politics looks by contrast singularly flat, stale and unprofitable."* Kennedy's victory gave a boost to West Berlin's Socialist Mayor Willy Brandt, who has stressed his age similarity to Kennedy (47, v. 85 for the Christian Democrats' Chancellor Adenauer), in his campaign to replace the Chancellor. Last week, digesting a speech of Italy's Premier Amintore Fanfani, Rome's big and rightist Il Tempo praised Fanfani's "Kennedy attitude."

Anti-Adlai. So far, under Kremlin orders, the Russian press has given Kennedy the benefit of every doubt. Leaving behind the anti-Eisenhower tirades that began with the U2, Soviet newspapers have been so gentle with Kennedy that Pravda has even referred to his "beautiful wife."

The old propaganda line is still visible --most of Kennedy's public utterances have been transmuted into tenders of his desire to seek peace with Moscow--but Adlai Stevenson, not Kennedy, is blamed for recent "slanderous attacks on the Soviet Union."

Russia's kindness-under-orders will presumably last until Premier Khrushchev meets President Kennedy, and then decides what attitude to hold. But the rest of the press responses in Europe, from left to right, are more spontaneous and seem to reflect a genuine willingness to believe the best, and hope for the best, in U.S. leadership.

* Many Britons agree. In a recent poll, only 59.1% expressed satisfaction with the Prime Minister, against 72% last July and 66% after the 1959 elections.

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