Vienna: The New Word Is 'Jocose':
BEICHMAN, ARNOLD
VIENNA: THE NEW WORD IS JOCOSE' By Arnold Beichman VIENNA OUR FIRST TASTE of "peaceful co-existence" came in the air? suddenly. Our turbo-prop BEA Viscount surprisingly pointed its...
...But here, miles from Vienna, we were nosing down, down and entering air of sharp turbulence...
...After all...
...German and Russian—and no provision for simultaneous interpretation...
...We apologize for the turbulence and are very sorry...
...Peculiarly, at this dinner nobody mentioned China...
...the new disarmament proposals: the imminent "summit" conference...
...Such attempts had been made in the past, but nowadays, the tommy-gunner's trip was pro forma...
...They must be up to something...
...We don't know why...
...At the May 14 afternoon meeting of the Foreign Ministers—Dulles, Macmillan, Pinay, Molotov and Figl—the light touch was in evidence...
...The 40-odd passengers must have breathed a little quickly...
...Viennese police waiting outside the palace...
...My difficulty is that I can't forget that, amid all this cautious optimism, the Russians ordered our Viscount turbo-prop to let down from smooth air at 19,000 feet to turbulent air at 3.000 feet—and down we went...
...Nobody takes taxis, the soldier told me, because from Schwechat to Vienna proper, you pass Soviet check-points so you travel at your own risk...
...It didn't make sense, because a turbo-prop's greatest efficiency is at high altitudes...
...After we cleared customs and immigration, we were surprised to find no taxis at Schwechat...
...I know I did, remembering the planes shot down over Berlin a few years ago...
...There were four tables with six to eight people at each, including two interpreters...
...Macmillan to Dulles, and Molotov to acceptance of the treaty by all "including the Austrians," whom he singled out for their statesmanlike act...
...it meant an immediate speed loss of 50 miles an hour, an uncomfortable few minutes...
...Flying over clouds, the trip from London had been smooth...
...coincided with the last conference of foreign ministers at Belvedere Palace, and the streets around the Ringstrasse were jammed with sightseers, smart-looking MPs from the occupying powers...
...I'd like to say, it never looked worse—or as the Communists put it...
...It looks like a fine summer ahead —Bulganin and Krushchev going to Belgrade to give Tito a taste of peaceful co-existence...
...Not Vienna, we don't want it there: certainly not Geneva...
...Arnold Beichman, formerly of the New York Times and Post and now a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, is attending the Vienna Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions...
...We embarked and 1 noticed a young British MP in the front seat alongside the driver, holding a tommy-gun at rest...
...mid-July or August...
...My arrival on Saturday...
...Nowadays, of course, means the signing of the treaty, the Austrian State Treaty...
...Where we get our news and how is not to be mentioned in any dispatches...
...So it looks like Lausanne or perhaps Stockholm...
...The Bristol, a block away from the Soviet-occupied Grand, is run by our Government and through its corridors during recent days have been trooping U.S...
...Sure enough, in a few moments, the public address system buzzed for attention: "This is the captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen...
...We have been ordered down from our altitude to 1,000 meters by the Russians...
...Quite possibly, as the Russian proverb goes, one doesn't mention rope in the household of the hanged...
...Even Molotov laughed when that was translated...
...May 14...
...The Hotel Bristol is the place for news, although not for attribution in any manner...
...Geneva had had its meeting last summer, and now Lausanne ought to get a chance...
...correspondents and State Department personnel...
...We speak on "our own authority...
...When Macmillan suggested Scotland, somebody asked: Did Macmillan mean during the grouse-shooting season...
...I asked one of the crew later on if he knew why we had been told to let down...
...The dinner was also "jocose...
...When Dulles suggested that formal speeches at the treaty-signing the next day be no more than two minutes, Molotov said it could be one minute or twenty as far as he was concerned...
...Soon we were over Vienna and then the long flat glide, an uncomfortable approach to an airport by a heavy plane, and we were down...
...The question of a place for the "summit" conference produced much jocularity...
...Or, then again, maybe nobody's mentioning China and its coastal suburbia because everything is going so well in Europe, and, particularly, in Austria...
...Molotov, still jocular, may even show up there to discuss the ascent to the "summit...
...echoing Lenin, "the worse, the better...
...Saturday night came the dinner of the Foreign Ministers at our Ambassador's residence with Dulles as titular host...
...Well...
...On my own authority...
...The tommy-gun is in case the Russians stop the bus and try to seize a passenger...
...After the dinner, there was lots of mingling and conversation...
...But events seemed to have moved rapidly after dinner and the toasts —Dulles to the sovereign heads of governments...
...English...
...All caution by the West has been thrown away, and at the moment the only question is when and where the "summit" parley will be held...
...Our turbo-prop BEA Viscount surprisingly pointed its nose down as we passed over Linz at 19,000 feet...
...But nothing happened...
...Austria's red-and-white banners are to be seen all over Vienna...
...He shrugged: "I don't know why the Russians do anything...
...the British airport, just a large bus...
...Then Dulles, resisting Geneva as the scene of the meeting, pointed out that when he was a lad of 14, he spent a year in Switzerland and he remembered the rivalry between Geneva and Lausanne...
...The conversation was slow because there were four working languages—French...
...The joyful tidings are that Molotov is being "jocose...
...By nightfall, all the statesmen had returned home, to refresh themselves before going off to San Francisco for the tenth anniversary of the UN...
...We were ordered down over the corridor to Vienna and we went down...
Vol. 38 • May 1955 • No. 22
