Europe's Image of Kennedy

...How would Kennedy go about being the leader of the free world...

...Kennedy will not devalue the dollar, said a professor of economics, but will reassert American economic leadership by new budgetary and taxation policies that will help to stabilize European prosperity by checking the current speculative and inflationary tendencies in London, Milan, Dussel-dorf—and even Paris...

...Image-making continued among my faculty colleagues, after class, in the salle des professeurs...

...The Yugoslavs, those terrifyingly unique "neutrals" in a world full of "positive neutralists," put the issue with dazzling clarity...

...This excuse, or pretext, has disappeared...

...Kennedy's reply stressed his "warm affection for the British people" which was formed while his father was U.S...

...Other Socialists, less autobiographical, were equally satisfied...

...Europe has, in an impressive moment of self-scrutiny, put its hopeful good will at the disposition of the new President...

...However, after reflecting somberly that "basic ideas" could be pursued by different "ways and means," the Yugoslav spokesmen sounded the more hopeful note that a more active American policy "could make important constructive contributions to better coexistence and more normal international cooperation...

...Edgar Faure, a former Premier who, during the Fourth Republic, released the Sultan of Morocco from an implausible exile to regain his throne and who now favors an "Algerian Algeria," expressed satisfaction with Kennedy's "clear-sighted prevision, several years ago, of the need for such a policy...

...THE ANXIETIES of the Old Guard in each country have been quickly submerged under the imperative of a system of collective security and collective welfare that is centered in Washington...

...The caption below was a paraphrase of a quotation from FDR: "To some generations much is given...

...Now to business...

...Nikita Khrushchev's message expressed the "hope that under your Administration Soviet-American relations will regain the form they took under the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt...

...From others, on the contrary, much is asked...

...The official Polish press followed this line, but poignant questions were whispered rather than shouted— would a Catholic President reach some accord with the Vatican that might ease life in this tense, disordered, still deeply Catholic country...

...How to "get inside" this tough young President—an American from the next generation of political experiences and personal memories— must remain a problem that deeply concerns the older men who govern Britain, but they are facing it hopefully...

...In Brussels, there was rejoicing that "new blood is going to flow in the veins of the great Republic...

...The popular enthusiasm manifested throughout Europe is the more impressive as it claims no precise knowledge of the man, calculates no specific benefits from his policies...

...That evening I bought copies of every European newspaper available in Aix and set myself the problem: What difference did it make to Europeans who won...

...There was equally amiable attention to both candidates...

...These close personal links with Eisenhower, on which Mac-millan has always counted heavily in Commons debate—to the great irritation of Laborites—seemed frail reed at the moment...

...Adlai Stevenson tried it and was rejected twice . . . One would need to be drenched in pessimism and distrust not to believe that the next President intends to take up the business left unfinished by Franklin Roosevelt and to pursue it with zeal...

...But, in the absence of a definitive preference for either, the real object of interest was the potency of the office to be filled by one of them—the Presidency itself...

...It was evident at 2 pm that afternoon, when I summarized the numerical results and invited my hitherto-inert class to speak...

...In the great wave of public discussion stimulated by Kennedy's election, Europeans are seeking an image of their own future...

...the true duties of a modern state...

...As compared with European enthusiasm, the "modified rapture" of some Americans seems due to the cvnical view that no campaign statements signify more than the candidate's estimate of what will get him elected...

...and by another fact: the military and economic power of the United States, alone capable of keeping the adversary in check...

...In mid-February, leaving the Kennedys just enough time to install their new nursery in the White House, the Chancellor will appear under the auspices of the German-American Society...

...There is little conviction as to how he should do it, but great conviction that he should and that none but he can do it...

...This was in Aix-en-Provence, an ancient university town in the deep south of France, and I had just opened the 10th session of my course on "Great Contemporary Problems...

...On two key points—distrust of "personal diplomacy" and determination to "fix with rigor a global line of inflexible resistance by the free world"—Schumann found a "unity of outlook" between Presidents Kennedy and de Gaulle...

...A young man of military age asked what Kennedy's program for peace-with-independence in Algeria would be—or was this just a campaign speech designed to flatter the "irresponsible anti-colonialism" of American voters...

...The more so as Kennedy's team is bound to include many younger American intellectuals whose temperamental affinities, and wartime amities, were rather with those who lead the Labor party—with Hugh Gaits-kell and Healey, even with R. H. S. Crossman and Harold Wilson...

...I can't say why," declared a youthful professor of history as we walked off the college grounds together, "but I am pleased that America has a new President who is young and confident and energetic...

...The White House is going to become what it has been but rarely since the war: the central source of energy for Western power...

...The hope is that Kennedy will use his great office to promote the welfare of the world...

...Gaullists as well as Socialists found reasons for satisfaction in consulting their own desires...

...That's settled...

...He hopes, the public announcement made explicit, to see the new President...

...awed by the power newly conferred upon this young man, each reached for some picture of the words and deeds by which he would shape a near future more congenial than the recent past...

...But we are supposed to talk about the "great contemporary problems," I countered, and this is surely not one of them...

...Said Healey of Macmillan: "I cannot help feeling that sometimes he is a little too clever...

...In considering to what point the United States, and with it the West, which shares its destiny, must henceforth fight with its back to the wall, we can only wish Mr...

...Denis Healey, Labor's official spokesman on foreign affairs, found this foretaste of Macmillan's intention to continue basing his policy positions on personal intimacy with the new President hard to swallow...

...Said the important journal Kommunist, in words reflecting the tough "rational" view: "One must not forget that great changes are not to be expected, not only because they would be in opposition to American tradition, but equally because the basic ideas of the two candidates on foreign policy were not very different...

...Commentators of every political persuasion were fashioning a President Kennedy to correspond with their hearts' desires...

...It reveals a more sympathetic understanding of the "agonizing reappraisal" to which Kennedy invited the American people, when he announced that the prestige of the United States had sunk to a new low during the years of stagnant affluence...

...Writing under the appropriate title, "The New President: Images and Hopes," Observer's Washington correspondent found this American attitude merely hard-boiled rather than truly hard-headed...

...The last word might well be left to Paul Reynaud, dean of the former Premiers of France and now elder statesman, who, 20 years ago, sent to Franklin Roosevelt the desperate and unanswered final appeal to save Europe from the Nazi holocaust...

...Cuba...

...This chain of hope is new in a Europe which no longer considers "Yankee Go Home" to be a sophisticated expression of political thinking...

...From Washington, Pierre Mendes-France himself cabled an election commentary to L'Express, the men-desiste and once stridently anti-American weekly, which gave its full cover to an action photo of Kennedy with the headline: "A New Roosevelt...

...Maybe it's because my wife is expecting a new baby this week...

...Kennedy as much courage in the exercise of his power as he showed in the conquest of the White House...

...Guy Mollet stated this view plainly: "The Democratic party is to the left of its adversary...

...Chancellor Konrad Adenauer—who acquired under the John Foster Dulles regime, and maintained under the Christian Her-ter regime, a degree of influence in the Atlantic community that other European chanceries often resented as a "veto power"—cannot face without anxiety the problem of his relations with the new team that will accompany the "dynamic young" President into the seats of power...

...Astonished, I stalled for a moment of reflection...

...Would Kennedy really create a Youth Peace Corps in which American students could volunteer to serve where needed all around the world...

...The new Europe, having gained a substantial measure of well-being and equilibrium, can now acknowledge its need of American leadership for military security, economic prosperity, political power...

...It is time at last to understand—like the American voters—that greater production and fairer distribution are the first...

...The feeling is that the American Presidency is more important for all than the quarrels of each...

...It is simply the human enthusiasm of new hope inspired by the prospect of vigorous youth facing great opportunity...

...It can avow the decline of American prestige as the measure of its own decline, and profoundly wish for American revitalization as a generator of its own vitality...

...Their concern was at the level of high policy—involving their image of American power in new hands...

...In Rome, the election of a Roman Catholic was the supreme symbol of the powerful new force sweeping through dusty old cobwebs of traditional prejudice...

...It reveals a clearer understanding of the Presidency as the only office that can formulate American initiatives and activate American leadership in the world...

...New Deal!—have been heard on all sides...

...When taxed by the Labor Opposition for the lack of official control arrangements over the Polaris missiles, his Defense Minister replied: "We are content to rely on the close cooperation and understanding that we have with the United States on these defense matters and which has recently been reaffirmed by the President...

...So the Minister felt obliged to add: "I agree that in a few days we shall have a new President and no doubt in that case this may have to be reaffirmed...

...A survey conducted among French political leaders that very day by Le Monde showed the process at work...

...Since the electoral decision became known, there has been no news-maker to rival Kennedy—a phenomenon the more impressive because there has been, in fact, no news since the vote...

...The Financial Times, organ of the city, agreed that Kennedy "will bring a new vigor to American diplomacy...

...Indeed, the London press now insists that Macmillan will trump Adenauer's haste by going to Washington in January—even before Kennedy's inauguration—in order to be "the first"—as befits Britain's "special connection...

...Now for the first time a man actually born in the 20th century has claimed the first seat of the mighty in the free world...

...would be eligible...

...JEAN CAP FERRAT THE ELECTION OF John F. Kennedy touched off an explosion of interest in Europe—after months of campaigning that had engaged public attention far less than Dona Fabiola's romance, Brigitte Bardot's attempted suicide and Farah Diba's production of a son and heir for the Shah of Iran...

...The coed who posed this question also wanted to know whether girls would be eligible, whether students in other countries (including a young hopeful in Aix-en-Provence...

...An illuminating review of the postelection week, in the astute and informed London Sunday Observer, stressed the curious differences between American and European reactions...

...In Bonn, too, governing circles were finding cordial things to say about the "diplomacy of movement" that would be sparked by the White House...

...The election of a Catholic, said a professor of law who disclaimed any personal preference, was an auspicious start for the new regime—proving that America was not a declining capitalist country steeped in bourgeois prejudices and giving new confidence in the dynamic and generous American vision of the world...

...In London, the Daily Mail (Conservative) announced: "The long sleep is over...

...Each was seeking some image of what he should and would do...

...Algeria...

...As I took up the strategic issues raised by de Gaulle's ill-starred project of a force de frappe (an independent nuclear deterrent Daniel Lerner, presently visiting professor of sociology in Aix-en-Provence, is the author of Sykewar, The Nazi Elite, and The Passing of Traditional Society...

...Maurice Schumann—a dynamic young supporter of the General and a favored candidate to succeed Michel Debre as Premier—was pleased by Kennedy's youth and dynamism...

...The difficult passage to personal intimacy, which may by now he indispensable in Anglo-American relations, or at least indispensable to the effective functioning of the nuclear deterrent, has been opened...

...The discreet remarks about "disengagement" pronounced by Eleanor Roosevelt—and indeed by no less a personage than Adlai Stevenson—cannot have failed to trouble the aged Chancellor's reveries and visions...

...Knowing that risk belongs to the future, to whoever tries to run it, the news of Senator Kennedy's success may properly inspire a certain upsurge of hope...

...Such behavior among great statesmen might seem puerile were it not so serious...

...This process of image-making continued through the day...

...Would the new "Roosevelt" put American-Soviet relations on a basis that will finally bring some ease to this hard-pinched country that hates Germany, obeys Russia, loves America and wants to be Poland...

...Contrary to my expectations, there was little interest in technical matters—the functioning of the electoral college, the proportion of Negro voters and similar questions raised by college students when they are supposed to be "serious" about politics...

...The determination of Europe to maintain its enthusiastic optimism— undismayed by American inside-dopesters "drenched in pessimism and distrust"—reveals the new, and virtually unanimous, acceptance of American leadership among Europeans...

...It will take cleverness, as well as patience, for Macmillan to develop with the new team at the White House the kind of intimacy born of wartime friendship with Eisenhower and many of his closest advisors...

...Kennedy for proposals less scandalous than one hears nowadays in Paris...

...It reveals, finally, the profound hope that the candidate courageous enough to make the diagnosis will become the President capable of applying the remedy...

...The mood, inarticulately conveyed by the hotel personnel silently gathered behind my chair, was: "Ah, good...

...Seeing popular American desire for recovery of its great economic dynamism as the determining factor in Kennedy's victory, Mendes-France drew the appropriate conclusion: "Too often in the past European governments justified their orthodox or conservative policies in terms of American patronage and influence...

...Their specific questions indicated that they had followed the campaign more closely than I had supposed, and had retained many elements profoundly involved with their own interests and aspirations...

...The most euphoric words associated with America among living generations of Europeans—Franklin D. Roosevelt...

...Even George Bidault, also a Premier under the Fourth Republic, but now a ferocious antagonist of Algerian independence and an advocate of a "French Algeria," could not find it in his heart to repudiate the young President-elect: "It would be unjust at this point to reproach Mr...

...With Kennedy now silent, after months of oratory, Europeans suddenly are highly articulate about this young man who has become, overnight a personage of great consequence for them...

...Daniel Mayer stated: "A superficial look might lead one to believe the programs of the two candidates entirely identical...

...If I were an American voter, I'd have voted Kennedy...

...As they went back to their own business, I sensed that each was also preoccupied with the business of the next President...

...With the results of the election European commentary underwent a dramatic transformation...

...Actually, there is hardly a point left in the world where the West can still, following the soft tactic, yield space to gain time [Berlin...

...The chorus of protests promptly convinced me that I had advanced a minority view and that—faced by the first sign of intense interest in any contemporary issue among these students—it would be the better part of pedagogic valor to honor their request...

...Yet, first among the great statesmen of the passing generation, he said that he would make the pilgrimage to the new Washington...

...Nor could he not have known the hazard involved in summoning the Americans to rise and shine...

...It is based on the labor unions, it is more hostile to racial segregation . . . in a word, it opposes social and economic conservatism...

...In London, too, there is an anxious side...

...We agreed to set aside a half-hour the following day, when the decision would be known, to discuss the election...

...Macmillan's message of congratulations said: "Since my mother was American, I know what [the Presidency] has always meant to all your citizens...

...Prime Minister Harold Mac-millan—who did not announce the granting of a Polaris base at Holy Loch three days before election without arriere-pensee—is surely reflecting soberly on the future of the "special Anglo-American connection...

...Ambassador in London and continues now...

...Even those European circles which must naturally regret the passing of the Eisenhower "team" have shown an admirable resolve to accentuate the positive...

...No longer a dynamic youth himself, the Chancellor is no admirer of "brain trusts" populated by university pundits (as his running war with Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard has demonstrated...

...This determined good-will toward Kennedy, shared in France by those locked in mortal political combat over Algeria—the most deadly issue in French public life today—conveys the underlying European attitude toward the new President...

...He reasoned that "if Senator Kennedy's sole aim was to be President, then he campaigned like a fool...

...for France)—in a class where I had hitherto tried, with conspicuous lack of success, to engage the students in discussion and debate as practiced in American college seminars—a hand shot up among the students: "Professor, won't you talk to us about the American elections...

...Kennedy was likened to "a Mendes-France with better luck" because of his "astonishing dynamism, lucid intelligence, youth filled with experience and a certain arrogance of manner revealing a well-seasoned character...

...If it was evident the European interest had risen sharply on the eve of decision, it was also evident that European commentators offered no clear and convincing answer to this question...

...Vigorous youth became the universal theme before the end of the week...

...Each picture reflected its maker's own hopes and aspirations...

...Mendes-France himself, as so many other European leaders, saw in the election of Kennedy a triumph of his own principles and preferences for the future of Europe...

...He shook the plump shoulder of an affluent society, forced it to look at areas of neglect and decay in its bed of roses, and urged it to get up and face the stern duties imposed upon a nation required to be the free world's example and leader...

...But one is always a prisoner of the forces that brought him to power, and John Kennedy will not be able to forget that the labor unions voted for him...

...Macmillan, as soon as Adenauer's opening bid is covered, will also make the pilgrimage to Washington...

...He has just begun a new study of "Eurafrica" after completing a book on the West European movement for integration...

...The leaders of the Socialist Left expressed pleasure at Kennedy's election as a victory of its American counterpart...

...THAT EVENING, as I looked through the European press of the day, the public shape of the image-making began to emerge...

...The depth of genuine concern with the American Presidency, masked by the apparent indifference to the incomprehensible antics of a Presidential campaign, first became evident to me here on November 8 at 2 pm —the hour when polling places were just opening in the eastern United States and Californians were still in bed...

...The veteran French commentator, Thierry Maulnier, explained why, after a campaign about which they seemed neither interested nor informed, Europeans have responded to the new President with such fulsome enthusiasm: "The destiny of the world, in the second half of this fearful century, is dominated entirely by a fact: the implacable will of expansion and of universal domination by the Communist coalition...

...Reynaud's comment was concise: "It is not only the President of the United States, it is also the leader of the free world, who has been elected...