Hay & Chilled Wines

Never had Washington seen so many foreign ministers at one time.

All week long, the candelabra and chilled-wine circuit hummed with hostesses plotting and providing. Mostly it was the embassies that entertained the visitors; being conscious of the high importance of congressional favor, they also invited key Senators. Robert Taft's attempt to cut EGA authorizations (see The Congress) set off Senate debates which lasted until 11 p.m., and spoiled dinners all along Massachusetts Avenue's Embassy Row. Many a hostess who invited a Senator had to settle for just his wife.

The British embassy managed a stag dinner for Ernie Bevin with Secretary Acheson and Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vandenberg. Acheson also dined at the French embassy, but other hosts had to be content with lesser functionaries such as Under Secretary Webb (the Italian embassy) and Counselor "Chip" Bohlen (The Netherlands). The Scandinavians entertained each other.

New State. The dining was part of the day's work, but the foreign ministers also got some diplomatic hay in. The State Department's new building in Foggy Bottom, in an architectural style no longer Greek and not yet modern, bustled with their comings & goings. Inherited from the War Department in 1947, "New State," as the cab drivers called it, was little used to such pomp & circumstance. Its bare rooms held few memories; its stark corridors suggested no history. Even its name lacked the savor of Quai d'Orsay or Whitehall.

Italy's old Count Carlo Sforza entered its wide spaces first, to plead the case for Italian trusteeship of her former African colonies. The Netherlands' Dr. Dirk U. Stikker talked to Secretary Acheson for two hours, and was pressed to come to terms with Indonesia's republicans. Britain's Foreign Secretary, heavy-footed Ernest Bevin, and France's wispy Robert Schuman met with Acheson and agreed with unexpected rapidity that a Western German government must be set up promptly, a decision that had been stalled for months in lower-level talks.

Great Step. Laborite Bevin also dropped in at the National Press Club and won reporters' applause by his simple, rough-hewn ways/and his defense of the pact. Said Bevin: "To would-be aggressors, it says: 'Think twice--think thrice' ... I believe as the years go on it will be said of this week in Washington: 'There, in that pact, humanity took its great step to enthrone the great freedoms of the world.' "

One section of humanity, dwelling in the Kremlin, got no such spiritual uplift from the pact. Russia sent a formal protest to each of the sponsoring nations, denouncing the treaty as an unfriendly, aggressive act. To their separate notes of protest, the Russians got one brisk reply, issued by all twelve--the first joint action of the North Atlantic nations. Said the foreign ministers to the Kremlin: "The text of the treaty itself is the best answer to such misrepresentations and allegations."

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