A New Title: "Just Call Me Excellency

"I've always acted alone. Americans admire the cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, the cowboy entering a village or city alone on his horse. He acts, that's all: aiming at the right spot at the right time."

Henry Kissinger was terribly embarrassed when Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci quoted him describing himself as a character out of Zane Grey. He did not deny that he had said those words--"Why I agreed to it [the interview], I'll never know," he confessed later--but it was a little hard to imagine just how the precise, bespectacled professor of history at Harvard could see himself as a lean, flinty-eyed macho on horseback. Still, in a way Kissinger's self-portrait was not so preposterous as it sounded. Proud, private and consummately confident of his ability, Kissinger has always acted alone, rising to his present eminence with the aid of almost no one but himself.

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in the German town of Fuerth, Kissinger grew up as the Nazis were coming to power, and so found himself an outcast. Heinz, as he was then called, was denied admission to high school, forced to attend an all-Jewish school, and often beaten up by gangs of pro-Nazi toughs on the way.

His family's escape to America in 1938, when Kissinger was 15, hardly ended his sense of isolation. At George Washington High School on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Kissinger generally avoided his classmates, often crossed to the far side of the street when he saw other youngsters approaching. His greatest ambition was to become an accountant.

The Army, in which he enlisted in 1942, changed all that. Kissinger's linguistic ability quickly won him a post as a translator and interrogator in counterintelligence and, eventually, a job teaching modern German history to officers. He also raised his sights. Germanborn Fritz Kraemer, an Army instructor who became his friend and mentor, informed him that "gentlemen do not go to the College of the City of New York," so Kissinger obtained a scholarship and went to Harvard.

Once there, he did brilliantly, winning an A.B. in government in 1950 and a doctorate four years later. By 1954 he was teaching at Harvard and serving as consultant to several Government agencies, including the National Security Council's Psychological Strategy Board. He was also writing, making major contributions to the literature of international relations, demonstrating ways in which the display of force could and should be used to avert international catastrophe.

His earliest books--Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, The Necessity for Choice and The Troubled Partnership--all called for balancing military power in order to achieve greater international stability. A 1968 study of Bismarck, whom Kissinger admires for his grasp of geopolitical realities, argued the importance of restraining contending forces by manipulating their antagonisms and of moving decisively to carry out policy decisions. "A policy that awaits events," wrote Kissinger, "is likely to become their prisoner."

In some ways, Kissinger has changed little since President Nixon --ignoring the fact that Kissinger had opposed him in the 1968 election --named him national security adviser in 1969. He still retains his thick German accent, lives alone in a six-room town house in Washington's Rock Creek Park, and spends so little time there that friends say only the library looks used. He has retained his taste for rich foods, his interest in chess and his tendency to neglect his appearance. He still puts in 18-hour days and expects his aides to do the same. One of those aides, in fact, tells of laboring until midnight on a position paper that Kissinger then handed back with a request that it be improved; another midnight, another version, and another rejection. When Kissinger received the third version, he asked: "Is this really the best you can do?" When the aide said it was, Kissinger sighed and said: "Very well, then, I'll read it."

In other ways, though, Kissinger has changed considerably. He has developed a wry sense of Galgenhumor, of which he is the chief victim. After being attacked by another Administration official as an "egotistical maniac," he remarked: "It took me 18 years to achieve total animosity at Harvard. In Washington, I did it in 18 months."

-Along the way, he has acquired a somewhat less than convincing reputation as a swinger. Divorced from his wife in 1964, Kissinger has dated a covey of actresses, including Jill St. John, Liv Ullmann and Mario Thomas as well as TV Producer Margaret Osmer and Rockefeller Aide Nancy Maginnes. He obviously enjoys his reputation as the "playboy of the Western Wing," but he spends almost as much time with his children--Elizabeth, 15, and David, 12 --as he does on the social circuit. He also makes it clear that his work comes before anything. Of the actresses, he once remarked: "I am no fool. I realize the game. I am their celebrity of the hour, the new man in town. I don't kid myself."

It is too early to tell whether or how his new responsibilities will affect his social life. They have not yet dulled his sense of humor. Last week, when reporters asked him whether he preferred to be addressed as Mr. Secretary or Dr. Secretary, he hesitated only a moment before answering. "I don't stand on protocol," he said with a grin. "If you will just call me Excellency, it will be O.K."

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