NO NEW LIGHT
By RICHARD H. ROVERE IT can surely be said that, from the American viewpoint, no harm was done by the Washington conference of the Prime Minister and the President. In this country, there was not very much interest in the meetings and only a dim under- standing of what they were about and why they took place. Though there was not much else in the news, aside from the Bulganin Notes which more or less bracketed the conference, the press treated the whole affair rather casually. In general, I think, the impression was that the Prime Minister had come here to satisfy some political needs of his own and to discuss certain matters that seemed urgent to him whether or not they were urgent 0 us. To be sure, this was a mistaken impression; the matters under discussion were of great importance to everyone. But no one got any strong sense of this either from the vapid communiqu6s or from Sir Anthony's speeches and his session with the Washington reporters. The chief comment heard about the Declaration of Washington was that it was a statement of policy conspicuously inferior in form and content to the President's reply to the first Bulganin letter. The Prime Minister's speeches and his news conference were uninspired but agreeable. They fired no imaginations and threw no new light on any of the day's problems. On the other hand, it can perhaps be argued that solidarity is increased by a merely commonplace performance; there is something pleasant and reassuring in the thought that the Prime Minister can take a leisurely boat trip here and address the American people with banalities similar in spirit and tone and phrasing to those they are accustomed to hearing from their own President. Had he had anything of real consequence to say, the real novelty of the occasion—the lion and the unicorn replacing for the moment the bald eagle on the television screens—might have been missed by everyone.
As to matters of substance, though, there are, it seems to me. only two rather small points that are worth making. One is that although, from the appearance of things at the moment, the administration stuck by its guns on China trade, the fact that Possible changes were discussed in an unheated atmosphere suggests that changes may be in the making. A year or two ago, important sections of the press and important Congress- ional blocs would have been moved to near-hysteria by the knowledge that the Prime Minister and the President were considering a relaxation of restrictions. No one would have Wished to acknowledge the question as a negotiable one. Now it is clearly negotiable, and no one is much offended by the thought. Similarly, a year or two ago, no one in American Politics—or at least very few people—would have raised the kind of searching questions about our policy toward Israel as have recently been discussed in Washington and around the country. The Eden mission did not contribute to the development of this more rational climate, but it did help to demonstrate its existence. That seems about the most that can be said for it at the present time.
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