The Press: Greek Chorus

Before President Kennedy set out on his European trip, the nation's newsmen, almost to a man, had asked: "Is this trip necessary?"

"President Kennedy intended, at the beginning of his term, to stay in Washington as much as possible." said the New York Times a little sternly. "He embarks on a crucial journey to confer with the leaders of our two principal allies. President de Gaulle and Prime Minister Macmillan. and to confront our principal adversary. Premier Khrushchev. There is a compulsion on prominent persons, as on almost all the rest of us. to arise and go. Geneva, Saigon, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Havana, in time the fogs of Venus and the mountains of the moon. These can be reached, now or soon. But what do we do when we get there? This is the question of our day."

No Illusions. Hardly anyone had predicted easy going for the President, even in friendly France. "The fellow who'll be doing all the talking." wrote Austin Wheatley in the Detroit News, "will be Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle. The New Frontiersman will run into a very old Frontiersman. He probably knows what he's up against—a man aloof, lonely, enigmatic, humorless, sometimes Machiavellian, sarcastic, self-confident, courageous, irritating, pigheaded, visionary, indispensable and a hard bargainer." Frank Conniff, national editor of Hearst papers, suggested more succinctly that Kennedy might find the old general "teeth-breaking." In the breast of the Times's James Reston lurked the hope that the U.S. President might learn a trick or two in Paris, notably the trick of reserve. Reston quoted a De Gaullism on the subject: "There can be no prestige without mystery. In the designs, the demeanor and the mental operations of a leader, there must always be a 'something' which others cannot altogether fathom." Reston's unstated conclusion: Kennedy is altogether too fathomable.

"Nothing of substance will be accomplished in this protocol visit to General de Gaulle." said New York Post Paris Correspondent Joseph Barry. But Barry found a bitter solace in his gloom: "It had to be done, and if it's worth doing at all, as G. K. Chesterton once put it, it's worth doing badly. Since nothing will be achieved, it's as well there will be no illusions at the start."

Faint hope stirred in some corners: the Nashville Tennessean mused that "some of the fog can be cleared away as the heads of two friendly and allied states talk things over in an atmosphere of reason." But in Europe there were no illusions at all. William Randolph Hearst Jr., setting out on one of his journalistic junkets, sensed a "European atmosphere of doubt about the wisdom of the trip and misgivings about its outcome." And the French press was plainly not enthusiastic. "It would be vain to hope." editorialized Paris' Le Monde, "that the discussion magically ends the differences . . . between France and the U.S."