Foreign News: The Man Between

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India's Jawaharlal Nehru was the busiest man in London last week. Britain's Anthony Eden wooed him, Burmese and Indonesian envoys sought him out. Communist China's chief representative conferred with him twice. So did U.S. Ambassador Winthrop Aldrich, who got the full treatment on the "Asian" view of Formosa, featuring Red China's indisputable right to Formosa and the U.S.'s "interference" in Asia's affairs.

Only when the assembled Commonwealth Prime Ministers met for social events did Nehru's heavy-lidded eyes droop tiredly. "This is the real hard work of conferences," he said to Australia's Robert Menzies at one banquet. "I'm not sure I'm enjoying myself."

The Weight of Concern. At other times, conferences of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers have been quiet family affairs. Australia's Menzies, a veteran of many of them, explained: "We earnest fellows come from the six corners of the world. Winston addresses us ... and after all, that is a wonderful experience. When Winston has finished, he turns round to Anthony and says, 'Would you care to say something?' ^Things go on . .. I make a few statesmanlike remarks . . . And when we have solved all the problems of the world . . . the communiqué will arrive. We will correct the grammar. Then Winston will say, 'I don't like the sense in which you have used that word.' . . . And then we all go home."

This time the secret conclaves around the dark oak table in 10 Downing Street were tense and weighted with concern. Sir Winston told them somberly that since their last meeting in June 1953, the hydrogen bomb had come to dominate the world scene. "Hitler was mad and bad—the Russians are only bad," cracked the old man. "They have far more sense than to start an atomic war which will lead to their own destruction." He predicted that in three years Russia would attain atomic equality with the West. Heretofore, he declared, only U.S. superiority in nuclear weapons has prevented the free world from being overrun.

Nehru dissented. Speaking softly, he urged the total abolition of all atomic weapons and experiments: "The hydrogen bomb has made war obsolete as an instrument of policy, and the continued development of the weapon threatens all civilization." Menzies "utterly disagreed."

Scruples & Swaps. Gingerly, the other ministers explored Nehru's views on Formosa. It was soon apparent that Nehru, with milder backing from Ceylon's Sir John Kotelawala, simply thought that the U.S. should abandon the Nationalists. The others, with some individual variants, favored Eden's plan, which would swap the offshore islands and U.N. recognition of Red China for a cease-fire and Communist acceptance of a neutralized Formosa.