Visitor to India

Canada's Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, flying around the world on a 42-day good-will tour, arrived in New Delhi last week for a visit with his old friend, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru welcomed St. Laurent at New Delhi's Palam Airport, then scheduled a dozen public and private meetings with him during the next four days.

At a press conference, St. Laurent told newsmen that Nehru had informed him in advance of his plan for an immediate cease-fire in Indo-China (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Then St. Laurent declared, in what appeared to be a friendly, off-the-cuff gesture, that the plan had his complete approval. He would back Nehru's suggestion "without any hesitation or reservation whatsoever."

His stand was surprising because, for three days, St. Laurent had stoutly defended all the West's collective-security measures against Communism and the U.S.'s leadership in the world struggle. After listening politely from the visitors' gallery to a Nehru speech roundly denouncing U.S. military aid to Pakistan and other mutual-defense policies, St. Laurent told a joint session of the two houses of the Indian Parliament: "On the question of policies most apt to promote international security [there] is a difference between your attitude and ours." Canada, he said, believes in such collective-security pacts as the NATO alliance "to deter possible aggression," and he added: "We . . . know from our long experience that [the U.S.] has no other ambition than to live and let others live in mutually helpful international intercourse."

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