Friendly Neutral

The distinguished visitor with the brown, gem-cut face and Oriental costume stepped agilely from the Independence and shook President Truman's hand. He looked startled at the first manifestation of democracy, U.S. style; photographers were shouting to the President: "Bring Mr. Nehru over here." The President willingly obliged. But Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, regained his smile as Harry Truman welcomed him to the U.S. The President had a pleasant little speech ready: ". . . Destiny ruled that our country should have been discovered in the search for a new route to yours."

Then, with a clash of cymbals from the Army band and whir of limousine motors, Pandit Nehru was whirled off for the start of his three-week "voyage of discovery of the mind and heart of America."

He referred to himself as a "simple man from a country of simple ways," but the U.S. soon found that his position on world affairs involved complexities, not to say contradictions. To Congress, he declared that India would not "acquiesce in any challenge to man's freedom from whatever quarter it may come. Where freedom is menaced, or justice threatened or where aggression takes place, we cannot and shall not be neutral."

Congress applauded. Those who wanted to know where India stood in the present world crisis could ask no more--if Nehru's statement meant what it seemed to mean. However, in other speeches throughout the week Nehru made it clear that he was against aligning India with the U.S. in a concerted effort to contain the only aggressor in sight. Americans who looked upon U.S. policy as a bulwark against the Communist threat to freedom would find little satisfaction in some other Nehru remarks of the week: "We have no intention to commit ourselves to anybody at any time . . . How can peace be preserved? Not by surrendering to aggression, not by compromising with evil or injustice, but also not by talking and preparing for war."

On these terms of aloof friendship, Pandit Nehru set out to see the U.S. He got the red-carpet treatment, full of pomp, plush and protocol. It began with a night at Blair House as the guest of President Truman, two state dinners, a trip to Mount Vernon, tea with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Then came a quiet Sunday visit to Hyde Park to place a wreath on Franklin Roosevelt's grave, a ticker-tape parade through lower Manhattan. At the end of six days he was already beginning to feel overwhelmed. Said Pandit Nehru, smiling: "No one should have to see America for the first time."

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