Invitation Declined

Russia's Ambassador Georgy Zarubin was ushered into the White House at 11:30 a.m. last Wednesday to keep his well-heralded appointment with the President. A moment later, standing before Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles, he began reading off Marshal Bulganin's invitation to a 20-year nonaggression pact between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., pausing at the end of each sentence so the interpreter could translate.

Three days later the President released the text of the invitation and the U.S.'s polite but pointed refusal. Noting that the United Nations Charter already covers Bulganin's proposed treaty points, Ike wrote: "How can we hope that the present situation would be cured merely by repeating those words in a bilateral form? 1 wonder whether again going through a treaty-making procedure at this time, on a bilateral basis only, might indeed work against the cause of peace by creating the illusion that a stroke of a pen had achieved a result which, in fact, can be obtained only by a change of spirit."

He went to Geneva last summer, the President wrote, in search of just the kind of peace Bulganin now seemed to have in mind. But what has happened since the Geneva Summit Conference? Russia, said Ike, has refused to try to reunify Germany through free elections, and has refused the "open skies" proposal as a step to practical nonaggression. Obviously referring to the Soviet diplomatic offensive in the Middle East, the President added: "To us it has seemed that your government ... in various areas of the world, [has] embarked upon a course which increases tension by intensifying hatreds and animosities . . ."

The Soviet proposal was a spectacular playon the eve of Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden's trip to Washington-for a deal between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., a nightmare prospect for the U.S.'s allies in both Europe and Asia. (In 1954 Russia proposed an all-European accord that would have excluded the U.S. from Eu rope.) Bulganin doubtless hoped it would reinstate him in his favorite propaganda role of peacemaker. Eisenhower's skillful, moderate reply not only exposed the hollowness of the Russian plea but clearly implied that the real hope of settling the cold war lay in the continued solidarity of the anti-Communist nations.

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