Unfeigned Good Will

Rounding out the third week of his goodwill trip, Vice President Richard Nixon left behind the steaming, well-toured African continent, winged across the Mediterranean and touched down in Rome. The city lay gleaming and sparkling in the spring sunshine as the Nixon party settled into hotel suites and began once again the round of official functions.

On their second morning in Rome Nixon and wife Pat headed for the Vatican, as Italian photographers chased them along shouting: "Hey, Mr. Nixon, look this way!" Quaker Nixon had a 25-minute private session with 81-year-old Pope Pius XII, then the rest of his party joined him to hear the Pope read a personal message to the Americans.

Authentic Peace. "At this delicate hour . . ." said the Pope, "it is comforting to note the reliance placed by your illustrious President and generous people, as well as by those in every corner of the globe who share your hopes and fears, on the simple, informal, unfeigned expression of good will, as a key instrument for the settlement of international disputes . . . Authentic peace is always a work of justice; and justice can be little more than hollow mockery without reverence for the laws of God." '

There was time, too, for informal gaiety in Rome. St. Patrick's Day was Pat's birthday (44), and in a large sitting room of the Grand Hotel she had a party, puffed out 21 candles, cut a giant four-tier cake, received a basket of roses from Italy's President Giovanni Gronchi, and from the Nixon press party an ivory-handled umbrella.

Weather Eye. This birthday party was one of a mighty few purely unofficial occasions on the trip, for through the long tour Nixon rarely allowed himself to lose sight of his diplomatic job. And--as correspondents began to discover toward the end of the tour--the job was far more than handshakes and baby-patting. On his seven-nation (Morocco, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya) African go-round, he held down-to-earth closed-door conferences with African leaders, learned how to juggle tactfully the usual requests for foreign aid, came away each time satisfied that he had done something to explain the goals and hopes of the U.S.

Moreover, Nixon kept a weather eye on U.S. diplomatic and information people in African countries. He made no bones about the fact that some of them did not seem to live up to his standards. After a meeting with one high-ranking officer he complained: "How can we expect to get things done over here with cornballs like that?" Too many U.S. diplomats, he decided, were putting too much stock in pomp and form, too little in the kind of U.S. they were supposed to represent.

This week Nixon left the cheering Roman crowds, dipped down once more for a last look at Africa (Tunisia) before heading back to Washington to close the circle on a 20,000-mile tour. Immediate job ahead: a thoroughgoing report to the President on Africa's mood.

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