THE PRESIDENCY: The Camp David Conference

Midway in the second day of their man-to-man talks at Camp David on Maryland's Catoctin Mountain, President Eisenhower turned to Nikita Khrushchev with a personal appeal. Said he: "You have the opportunity to make a great contribution to history by making it possible to ease tensions. It is within your hands." Nikita Khrushchev, unchallenged ruler of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellites, was in an unusual position. His was the line that the U.S. was blocking world peace. Yet, in the strangely relaxed and friendly atmosphere of the guarded mountain retreat, Dwight Eisenhower, determinedly serious, was pinning him down to the specific issue of Berlin as the major threat to peace. Again and again the President refused to be led down the semantic path to a discussion of such generalities as disarmament and trade. Again and again he brought the conversation back to the Russian threat to Berlin, until, on the third day, he got Khrushchev to agree to a removal of all vestiges of ultimatum or threat on Berlin negotiations.

Five Strikes & a Spare. Eisenhower and Khrushchev flew from Washington to Camp David together in a helicopter, accompanied only by their interpreters and secret-service details. Their principal aides—Secretary of State Christian Herter and Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge; Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and U.S.S.R. Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov—also helicoptered together. First evening the two parties sat down to a roast beef dinner, afterwards watched U.S. Navy movies taken on the North Pole trip of the nuclear submarine Nautilus, and also took in a western movie. The sleeping arrangements: Eisenhower, Herter, Khrushchev, Gromyko had adjoining single rooms in the south wing of Camp David's main residence, Aspen Lodge.

In midmorning of the second day, Eisenhower and Khrushchev took a breather, wandered together into Camp David's recently installed two-lane bowling alley, watched a Navy yeoman put together five strikes and a spare, and autographed his score card of 218. In mid-conference that afternoon, Eisenhower and Khrushchev took off together in a helicopter for Eisenhower's Gettysburg farm. Khrushchev inspected Eisenhower's prize herd of Black Angus cattle, dropped by the main farmhouse to greet

Eisenhower's daughter-in-law Barbara and the four Eisenhower grandchildren. There Eisenhower and Khrushchev reached substantive agreement of a sort. They agreed to defer President Eisenhower's return visit to the U.S.S.R. until the flowers bloom in the spring. Reason, according to Khrushchev: Eisenhower agreed to bring his grandchildren to Russia, would prefer spring's warmer weather.