THE COLD WAR: Extra Mile to the Summit

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A blizzard of Cyrillic characters blew into the chancelleries of Western Europe and, to the public eye, all but obliterated the measured phrases of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's State of the Union message. Russia's Premier Bulganin, who seems determined not to let the President of the U.S. get a word in edgewise if he can help it, loosed a new series of letters suggesting that the chiefs of government of all NATO countries and all Warsaw Pact countries, plus assorted neutrals, get together "in the next two or three months" to talk over everything from atom-free zones to disarmament. KREMLIN SUGGESTS MEETING AT GENEVA, bannered Paris' Le Monde, adding in a smaller headline below: "In His Speech to Congress, M. Eisenhower Insisted on Economic Aid."

Man & Moment. In editorial pages, Eisenhower's speech was generally praised for its air of resolution, and its emphasis on the importance of economic aid. Wrote the pro-Socialist Neue Rhein Zeitung: "What he told his countrymen will calm them and us." The British, who often prefer eloquence to solidity, were vaguely disappointed. Said the London Times: "There is no mistaking—there never has been—the passionate sincerity behind the President's words or his willingness to 'go the extra mile with anyone on earth if it will bring nearer a genuine peace.' But such phrases show a disquieting tendency to leave it to others—which particularly of course means the Russians—to suggest the first steps." The Daily Telegraph was more enthusiastic. "Perhaps, after five years of frustration, the man and the moment are at last well met."

The Discombobulator. In his hurry to snatch the headlines from Eisenhower, Bulganin had not even waited to get a reply to his December round of notes, which he had timed to distract the NATO chiefs at the summit meeting in Paris. U.S. Secretary of State Dulles scoffed at the Russian proposals as "old," "barren," and intended to "discombobulate the efforts of the NATO countries to work out a coordinated answer to the earlier letters." They did, since they arrived between two sessions of the NATO Council, meeting in the Palais de Chaillot to discuss the wording of the allies' replies to Bulganin's first round of letters.

The Soviet Union was clearly exploiting its initiative politically to probe for soft spots in the NATO façade, and the Russians obviously hoped that in their latest bagful of old schemes—e.g., a ban on nuclear tests, the Polish plan for an atom-free zone in Central Europe, renunciation of the use of force in the Middle East—Westerners with a desire to disengage might find items to lure them on.