Foreign Relations: Summit in Smalltown

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Kosygin agreed. He thanked the President for arranging the meeting, thanked "the masters of the house"—the Republican college president—for "a roof over our heads under which we could meet." (The roof, as Johnson found to his delight, had in earlier times sheltered such visitors as Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.) As to the business of the day, Kosygin said he had nothing to add to Johnson's statement: "I think it was very correctly drawn up." But by the time he got to his limousine, Kosygin had a postscript: "War should be a thing of the past."

Despite the humid 90° weather, more than 2,000 townsfolk had excitedly waited out the conference. Their hurrahs drew the normally reticent Russian out of his car after it had gone just a few hundred yards. Upstaging Johnson for the nonce, he shook hands, waved and cried: "I would like to thank you! There are many beautiful and wonderful things to be done!" Then the chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers headed down Route 322 for the 111-mile drive back to New York. He spent the day of Summit recess visiting Niagara Falls. Johnson headed for a political dinner in Los Angeles, where, perhaps a bit too sanguinely, he told his audience: "It is good to sit down and look a man in the eye and try to reason with him and to have him reason with you. Reasoning together was the spirit of Holly Bush."

Hard Road. For all the public smiles and warm words, the road to Glassboro had been arduous, and at times ridiculous. From Washington's viewpoint, there were at least four powerful arguments against the meeting—the four sterile cold-war Summits during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, most notably the 1960 Paris meeting that broke up over the U-2 incident as soon as it began, and John Kennedy's unhappy Viennese deadlock with Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. Also, Washington officialdom has a built-in predisposition against high-level meetings without detailed preparation and a concrete agenda. Finally, the Administration was opposed to a meeting that would strengthen Kosygin's hand in his Middle Eastern propaganda push, which was the main reason for his visit to the U.S.

Yet from the moment word arrived on June 16 that Kosygin was coming, the White House felt that protocol as well as good taste required at least a gesture of hospitality. As speculation increased, White House Press Secretary George Christian announced in Washington: "The President has made it clear that Mr. Kosygin would be welcome here, or at Camp David, or some other convenient place near by for either a social visit or substantive discussions."