FOREIGN RELATIONS: Tour of the Horizon

The Prime Minister landed at Washington National Airport in a drizzling rain. Homburg in hand, he listened intently while Secretary of State John Foster Dulles spoke a welcome: "We meet here with a background—a tradition—of having worked together for freedom and a just.peace." Sir Anthony Eden smiled: "I am deeply grateful. Foster—if I may call you that. I am quite sure that we can make a serious and positive contribution to peace."

Beneath grey skies and scudding black clouds, the dignitaries sped off downtown for what diplomats call a tour d'horizon, an overall review of common concerns. The President welcomed Eden on the White House steps. When the visitor asked: "How are you?" Ike, aware of big-eared reporters, cupped his hand and jokingly whispered his reply. During lunch (steak and apple pie). Britain's Eden remarked that the U.S. handling of Marshal Bulganin's request for a non-aggression pact (TIME, Feb. 6) had struck him as "admirable."

Then ensued three days of intermittent debate and deliberation around the octagonal table in the Cabinet room, beneath a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington. Twice the President took Eden off alone into his office ("Anthony, could you come in for a moment?") for man-to-man talks.

The Landmarks. In addition to signing the notable Declaration of Washington, the President and Prime Minister also produced a formal communiqué on the key landmarks of the international horizon, a generalized document that sometimes reflected more agreement, and sometimes less, than had actually been attained.

On the Far East, the communiqué warned Red China that the U.S. and Britain "were firmly united ... to deter and prevent aggressive expansion by force or subversion." Actually, as the course of the talks again made clear, Eden does not support the U.S. view that a Communist attack on Quemoy and Matsu could constitute aggression. Then the communiqué noted that the allied embargo on strategic trade with Red China "should be reviewed now and periodically ... in the light of changing conditions." During the talks Eden pressed the U.S. to let into Red China the strategic goods that it now lets into Red Russia.

When Eden brought up the British desire to have Red China seated in the U.N. this year, the President told him forcefully that any British move in that direction would bring on agitation in the U.S. for a withdrawal from the U.N. On the Middle East, the communiqué warned the Arab states and Israel not to use "force or the threat of force ... to violate the frontier or armistice lines." The communiqué warned that the U.S. and Britain had "made arrangements for joint discussions as to the nature of the action we should take in such an event." Actually, the U.S. and Britain already have their own separate stand-by plans for stepping in and stopping any new Arab-Israel war—plans ranging from economic sanctions to the deployment of British troops and the U.S. Sixth Fleet, with or without U.N. approval. Last week the U.S. and Britain agreed to coordinate these separate plans in a common one.