"Kan Pei!"

Perhaps it was the cheerful afterglow of New Year's Eve, but suddenly last week everybody was talking about peace. No sooner did President Johnson, on his Texas ranch, pledge the U.S. to wage "an unrelenting peace offensive" (see THE NATION) than Nikita Khrushchev chimed in from Moscow with a similar idea.

Glaring Omission. In sheer heft, Khrushchev's proposal easily outweighed Johnson's. Addressed to every nation in the world that has diplomatic relations with Moscow, Nikita's message rambled on for 20 pages about a four-point plan for an international treaty renouncing the use of force to settle territorial disputes. Since the letter amounted to little more than what the United Nations Charter already included and contained a fistful of jokers in addition (limiting the West's ability to defend Berlin, surrendering Formosa to Red China), U.S. officials showed considerable restraint when they merely characterized the plan as "disappointing" and "nonobjective."

The note said nothing at all about Russia's most important squabble--the one with Communist China. But this was surely a topic of conversation when Khrushchev, bundled up in a fur hat and fur-trimmed coat, suddenly arrived for a visit with Polish Communist Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka in a lavish hunting lodge 125 miles north of Warsaw--the same frigid site where Nikita met Gomulka a year ago for discussion of Communist problems and some hunting in the nearby woods.

Far to the south, Khrushchev's Red rival, Chinese Premier Chou Enlai, was also talking peace as he interrupted his current tour of Africa to visit his only pals in Europe--the Communists of Premier Enver Hoxha's Albania. In an interview on French television, taped while Chou was in Morocco, he came up with what, for him, was a startling thought: war between East and West is not inevitable. The remark was strictly for capitalist consumption, of course; in Albania, Chou found genuine enthusiasm for his usual militant opposition to the whole idea of Communist coexistence with the West.

Joined Hands. Chou's visit to Tirana was not all politics. His New Year's Eve began at the workers' club of the Stalin textile plant, where Chou and his tubby Foreign Minister Chen Yi joined hands with Hoxha and other Albanian greeters to whirl gaily through local folk dances. Seeking more merriment, the group moved on to an army officers' club, where Chen Yi burbled: "Words fail me in this ocean of friendship!" and later to a party at the headquarters of the Artists and Writers Union. At last, amid shouts of "kan pei!" ("bottoms up" in Chinese), Chou finally sat down to a sumptuous banquet. Communist Ruler Enver Hoxha described it as "a family dinner, just as if you were at home." After such a hectic night of pub crawling, Chou probably wished that he were.

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