Toward the Testing

After stopping over in Bonn for a talk with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Secretary of State Herter flew into Geneva at week's end to speak for the U.S. at the Big Four foreign ministers' meeting on Germany. Ahead of him, in the negotiations at Geneva's history-haunted Palais des Nations, Chris Herter faced the sternest test of skill and nerve of his career.

There was a real danger that the U.S.British-French united front that Herter mortared together at Paris a fortnight ago (TIME, May 11) might show cracks under the stresses of Soviet probing. And the Soviet delegation, headed by tough Andrei Gromyko, would be ready to broaden and exploit any Western fissures. Even before the conference got under way, the Russians started the probing by demanding a conference-table seat for the East German puppet government. And while Nikita Khrushchev genially popped over to inspect the U.S. exhibit abuilding for the Moscow fair last week, the West caught an echo of the missile-rattling Khrushchev when he told a group of visiting West German editors that in any nuclear war "the Western powers would be literally wiped off the face of the earth" (see FOREIGN NEWS).

The evening before he left for Europe, Herter made his first major speech as Secretary of State, a TV report to the nation on the purposes of the Geneva conference. He came across on the TV screens as a man with a grasp of his job, a clear view of its problems, and confidence in his ability to handle them.

The West, said Herter, would go into the foreign ministers' meeting with a "united position," and the heart of that position is that the West will "stand firm at Geneva in upholding our rights and responsibilities in Berlin."

"I do not go to Geneva with great expectations," said he. "The past record of negotiating with the Soviets does not warrant much optimism." Still, the West intends, "in good faith, to seek some advance, even if small, toward a just peace." The U.S. is willing to go on to the summit if the Geneva meeting gives "some promise that a summit meeting would have a reasonable prospect of advancing the cause of peace." Afterward, "official spokesmen" passed the word that the West would not go to the summit at all if the Russians made any move to alter the German situation unilaterally.

Before boarding his plane next day, Herter conferred with President Eisenhower, then paid a brief visit to ailing John Foster Dulles at Walter Reed Army Hospital. As Herter left the hospital suite, Dulles called out a farewell that voiced a general sentiment: "Good luck, Chris!"

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