Washington-U.S.A.

...It is generally agreed that Vice President Richard Nixon and the Republican party will benefit most from this international stretch-out...

...And it remains to be seen whether Moscow can contain Peking even if Khrushchev wants to do so...

...No political realist thought for a moment that a Premier-to-President talk in the mountains of Camp David would quickly lead to an armistice or even a truce in the cold war...

...The postponement of the Eisenhower visit to the Soviet Union has the additional effect of thrusting the whole question of personal diplomacy still further into the 1960 Presidential campaign...

...And the clarifying statement issued by the White House when the extraordinary import of the President's comments on Berlin became apparent did not entirely dispel the uneasiness caused by his ambiguous words...

...Even among those persons in Washington who privately questioned the propriety of the visit, there is little tendency to say, "We told you so...

...But it is still quite possible, of course, that Moscow, or more likely Peking, will almost compulsively disturb the international equilibrium at a time and in a way that could embarrass the American advocates of the new diplomacy...

...There has been some speculation that Khrushchev's latest admonitions to Communist China to keep the peace indicate that he is becoming as concerned as the West over the war-making potential that Communist China is so rapidly developing...

...Although there is no definite indication that a summit conference will precede Eisenhower's visit to the Soviet Union next spring, it is generally believed that the President's trip was postponed primarily to allow time for a summit meeting...

...The well-being of the Eisenhower grandchildren was hardly the determining factor in the postponement...

...This same sort of atmospheric analysis followed the 1955 Geneva summit talks, which brought no appreciable improvement in the East-West standoff...

...Indeed, there is some feeling here that the West, and particularly the U.S., was a bit hasty in dismissing the disarmament program which Khrushchev so dramatically presented before the United Nations General Assembly...

...The further the Khrushchev visit recedes into the past the more difficult it is to assess the 12 days that seemed to shake the United States...

...Both the cold war optimists and pessimists tend to take a wait-and-see attitude toward the eventual outcome of the Khrushchev visit...

...There has been a good deal of criticism in Washington of the efforts that were made to needle and even embarrass Khrushchev...

...may relax its defense and then suddenly realize on the brink of yet another crisis that the claws of the Russian bear are as sharp as they have ever been...

...Perhaps the atmosphere has been cleared, but it is still difficult to find any genuine evidence of a change in the weather...

...Khrushchev appeared to have no real appreciation of either the freedom or the essential unity of the nation...

...Such research could of course have far-reaching beneficial effects, but Russian and American scientists working side-by-side in a laboratory are hardly going to melt much cold war ice...

...At the very time that final preparations for the Khrushchev visit were being made, for example, Communist forces were trying to overthrow the Government of Laos...

...Did he really think that Americans know so little about the Soviet Union that they would accept his idyllic view of the Communist state...

...At best, the optimists seemed to think that such a meeting would at least be a first tentative step toward easing the tensions of a decade...

...But the dominant view in Washington still seems to be that negotiations with the Soviet Union ought to be pursued, while we continue to keep our guard up...

...He may be a man with a mean temper, but he is also a man who obviously can control himself and his temper...

...and the USSR...

...The flashes of anger which accompanied his answers to such questions served to show Americans that they are dealing with a tough and frequently ruthless man...

...The greatest danger, of course, is that the U.S...

...In many ways, his final television address from Washington was one of the most curious aspects of his whole trip...

...All the issues which divide East and West remain pretty much as they were before...

...But the pessimists have not been too noisy, either...

...But he surely must have expected to be asked about Hungary or some of the other less savory aspects of his long career...

...and not with the convivial imbiber that some superficial reporting from Moscow and elsewhere in Europe had made him out to be...

...Even President Eisenhower's attempt to reassure the Western world that the Soviet threat to Berlin had all but disappeared indicated that no real progress had been made on this crucial issue...

...It is unlikely, however, that a single summit meeting will bring about any more concrete results than did the Khrushchev visit to the United States...

...Yet it is difficult to see how even a series of summit conferences will create an atmosphere of mutual trust...

...As Khrushchev suggested during his American trip, and as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and others have also suggested, summit meetings will probably have to be put on some sort of a regular basis if any of the basic cold war issues are ever to be settled...

...But whatever Khrushchev's private thoughts on Communist China may be, the first test of the new international climate that the optimists hope will be one of the long-term results of the Khrushchev visit undoubtedly will come in Southeast Asia...

...Wouldn't it have been better, some persons are wondering, to expose the plan by insisting on immediate discussion of it, rather than just to disregard it...

...Unfortunately, the President's remarks at his news conference about the abnormality of the situation in Berlin left many persons in both Washington and Bonn with the feeling that Eisenhower was ready to retreat somewhat on this question if Khrushchev would give on some other key cold war issue...

...Now the optimists are talking a good deal about the improvement in the diplomatic climate that has been brought about by the visit...

...If the Khrushchev visit did nothing else, it certainly demonstrated the vast gulf between the U.S...

...The first concrete result is likely to be nothing more than the implementation of an agreement to cooperate in cancer and heart disease research...

...And what purpose was served by his outbursts at Washington's National Press Club, in New York and in Los Angeles...