American Image

Far below the eastbound presidential jet, the flat expanses of the Middle East gave way to the brown plains, the broad desert, the towering, snow-topped mountain ranges of the Indian subcontinent. And as the earth's face changed beneath the speeding plane, something of the old, old world changed imperceptibly too. In Pakistan, Afghanistan and India last week, the shapes and colors and sounds of older centuries mingled and fell around Dwight Eisenhower, as in a vast kaleidoscope, into strange patterns. Each pattern formed a new sensation, each sensation was etched with the faces of the multitudes reaching out from the tangles of the past toward something of the promising future.

By the hundreds of thousands, the people swarmed about the President, engulfing him in seas of teeming, shouting, cheering bodies. They sang and they danced, they performed ancient and breathless feats of prowess in his honor, and they overwhelmed him with music and food and flowers. Their leaders uttered thousands of words of praise for him and his nation, told him their problems, led him to exotic rituals, to farms and fairs and shrines, swept him into ceremonials of such splendor as no Westerner before had ever experienced. It was a wonder that a man of 69, with his medical history, could withstand the exhausting torrents of pomp and tumult ("He's got the stamina of a Karachi camel," said one Pakistani); but Ike, who had seen nothing like it in his whole career, was buoyed up by his own delight and astonishment.

Pipes & Pathans. Six hours out of Turkey, he landed in the brassy, brilliant sun at Karachi's airport to be greeted by Pakistan's President, blunt, Sandhurst-trained General Mohammed Ayub Khan. Together they rode into the city in an open white Cadillac, past half a million cheering people--women in veils or tentlike burgas, tens of thousands of schoolchildren waving flags, armed sailors and soldiers carefully spaced to prevent unruly exuberance. Down the freshly cleaned streets they drove, past prairies of rubble still redolent with the smell of refugees, even though special squads had worked all night to deodorize the area with scented water and citronella (the refugees had been settled elsewhere), on through the jumbled slums where Pakistani women, their pastel veils and head scarves fluttering in the sun, watched from roof tops. At Victoria Road, the two Presidents switched to a stately carriage drawn by six handsome horses. Under a gold-trimmed, brocaded red sun umbrella, Ike sat and waved, raised his hands to the crowds, and 60 colorfully garbed horsemen, former Bengal Lancers, trooped along with him carrying their traditional lances. When at last Ike alighted at the presidential palace, he turned in wonder to a flock of news photographers and said: "I hope you hard-boiled boys were a little bit impressed by this."

But the photographers--and Ike, for that matter--had not seen anything yet. In a day and a half of Pakistani hospitality, he attended a society matron's dream of a dinner party (held under two huge, orange-and-black-striped tents that were floored with rich Oriental rugs), heard the eerie caterwauling of pipes played by a countermarching military regiment, watched Pathan tribesmen from the northwest frontier as they danced in wild, hair-tossing abandon, observed part of an Australian-Pakistani cricket match, marveled at an exhibition of tent-pegging (in which shrieking horsemen galloped full speed at tent pegs and picked them out of the ground on their lances as they swooped by).

Midst all the grandeur and panoply Pakistan's Ayub had a case to sell to the President: the Kashmir question. General Ayub tried to convince the President that India's Nehru must consent to the reopening of negotiations on the disputed land. After all, Pakistan is a U.S. ally while India is neutralist, ran the argument, so Pakistan deserves U.S. support. Ike listened carefully but was noncommittal.

Ike left Pakistan as triumphantly as he entered. "Our discussions," declared Ayub, "have absolutely opened my eyes. It has been a matter of real education and information for us ... You are indeed a great man.''

Kush & Pushtu. Only 70 jet min. away, beyond the crumbled desert hills of Pakistan's northwest frontier, past the snow-covered valleys that nestle in the Hindu Kush where Alexander and his Macedonians trod, lay Kabul and the feudal kingdom of Afghanistan (pop. 13 million). The Afghans, bordered by both the Soviet Union and Red China, are uncommitted in the cold war and wooed with aid from both the Soviets and the U.S. Even as Ike's plane winged over the mountains, an Afghan squadron of Russian-made MIGs took off to escort him toward Kabul, and Ike landed at an airfield built by Russians. There, in the freezing morning, khaki-clad King Mohammed Zahir greeted the President and his party.

As in Karachi, the streets of Afghanistan were thronged with shouting people, and everywhere--along the roads, and in medieval-looking Kabul--there was evidence of Russian achievement: the road to town was Soviet built, so were a silo and a milling and baking plant, so was a housing project. (U.S. aid has gone mostly for technical-assistance projects in the back country.) In his luncheon toast to the Moslem King, Ike stressed mutual "great spiritual values" and readiness to "advance the cause of freedom." The King, too, told Ike his troubles and seemed delighted that the President could understand his urgent geographical need to stress neutrality.

Babus & Bonfires. The welcome in the dusk that same day in India, where Ike had gone to fulfill a "cherished wish" and to "do a little bit of personal discovery," was the most stupefying mob scene since the death of Gandhi. It was getting dark as Eisenhower, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Rajendra Prasad began the drive from the New Delhi airport into the city. From villages and country valleys and the city itself had come more than a million people, who had heard about the visit from radios, newspapers and village criers. In bullock carts, buses and trucks (supplied by the government and private businesses), on bicycles, and on foot, they came in one deafening torrent--ragged peasants, neat little babus (civil servants), fierce-looking Sikhs, lovely sari-clad women--jamming through the streets, shouting, cheering.

As they pressed in on the President's Cadillac, a great cloud of dust arose, and the light of bonfires and of lanterns held high by hollow-eyed Hindu functionaries gave the scene an exotic glow. Tongues of humanity darted back and forth across the road in front of the moving wheels, as helpless police tried to clear the path. The procession cut through them slowly, like the prow of a ship, and the crowd rolled back again like the stubborn seas.

Yelling, imploring, they held out their hands to touch him. Nervously, Nehru leaped from the car, made his way to an escorting Jeep, shouting for the people to make way. But his voice went unheard in the thunderous clamor, and Nehru characteristically put his chin in his hand and gazed stoically ahead. Downtown, the crowds were even stormier. WELCOME PRINCE OF PEACE, read a sign in Connaught Circus. Flowers by the pound flew at Ike until he was standing foot-deep in them, and the panting Secret Service men who had already been mauled by the mobs, began fielding the blossoms until they were exhausted. "Do you believe we would have come 40 miles to see him if he were not a god?" asked one old woman indignantly. "Did he not send us wheat when we were in need, and build us dams?"

"A Heavy Price." In contrast with the night of cries and hoarse cheers, the formal joint session of India's Parliament next day seemed a world apart. Ike's speech to Parliament had been planned as the highlight of his Asian trip but it got only a lukewarm reception (13 desk-banging applause interruptions), partly because it said some things about force that neutralist Indians did not particularly want to hear, left unsaid some others--such as a massive foreign-aid commitment or a resounding promise to fight beside India in case of Chinese invasion--that they wanted very much to hear.

His major theme was a hit: "I bring to this nation of 400 million assurance from my own people that they feel the welfare of America is bound up with the welfare of India . . . The most heartening and hopeful phenomenon in the world today is that the people have experienced a great awakening. They recognize that only under a rule of moral law can all of us realize our deepest and noblest aspirations." There was an uncomfortable silence when Ike recalled for an India that was stiffly neutral in the Korean war: "Tens of thousands of our families paid a heavy price that the United Nations and the rule of law might be sustained in the Republic of Korea."

And the Indians sat on their hands when he added: "The news from near and distant places has been marked by a long series of harsh alarms [that] invariably had their source in the aggressive intentions of an alien philosophy, backed by great military might . . . We in America make clear our own determination to resist aggression through the provision of adequate armed forces." He promised that U.S. forces "serve not only ourselves but those of our friends and allies who, like us, have perceived this danger." The Indians were left to wonder whether the U.S. would help drive out the Chinese should they attack. They were more receptive when he said: "Controlled universal disarmament is the imperative of our time."

Law & the Four Fs. That night, at a state dinner (chicken roasted in coals) at the presidential palace, an intent Ike was treated to an Indian dance recital that will forever pale memories of such White House fare as Lawrence Welk's schmalz. Behind a semicircle of flowers, their feet painted, beautiful women swayed. They wore jeweled rings in their noses, tinkling ankle bells, and spangled bracelets, and as they swirled and undulated to strange melodies, blossoms fell from their hair to litter the deep rug.

Morning brought a crowded schedule of official functions. At Delhi University, where he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, Ike argued for the establishment of a world ruled by law (see box). At the international Agricultural Fair, where he officiated at the opening of the $2.5 million U.S. exhibit, the President enunciated the U.S. theme of the "Four Fs": "Food, Family, Friendship, Freedom." But the big highlight of the occasion was the extemporaneous speech of Prime Minister Nehru. Before 40,000 people, Nehru paid Ike the ultimate in praise by likening him to the late great Gandhi.

"You are a great person in your own right," said he. "You are a leader of a great nation. All that is worthy of honor and respect . . . Our greatest leader of modern times was a man neither of wealth nor of military might nor of position, yet the millions of India bowed down their heads before him and tried to follow his great lead . . . That is a type of mind we honor . . . We have honored you. It was for many reasons, especially because you have found an echo in the hearts of our millions, and we hope and believe that your coming here will be a blessing to us and a blessing to all."

In their friendly private talks, Nehru conceded that he was "quite willing" to reopen peaceful negotiations on Kashmir with Pakistan's Ayub--which is just about what Ayub himself has been wanting. Moreover, Ike got the distinct impression that Nehru was more concerned about Communist expansion than he shows in public. Later, addressing the largest crowd of his career at an open air rally, Ike was wildly applauded when he implied that defensive alliances would be approved by Gandhi. "In a democracy" said he, "people should not act like sheep but jealously guard liberty of action." It was straight talk to neutralists, but so skillful as to give no offense.

Tilak. Before he left India, Ike satisfied a childhood curiosity when he flew to Agra to see the Taj Mahal ("I read about this when I was a little boy in Kansas . . . It is one of the things I have looked forward to on this trip more than anything else--seeing the Temple of Love"). Then he was whisked by helicopter and car to the model village of Laramda, near by. Cattle dozed, cow-dung cakes hung on mud walls to dry, bare-bottomed children ran through dusty lanes, and old men smoked their hookahs. The villagers swarmed to see "the great man from America who is something better than a maharaja," "the messenger of world peace." As he strolled through the village, girls sang his praises and showered him with marigolds, and a woman pressed her thumb against his forehead to make a tilak, a bright vertical streak of vermilion that would ward off evil.

"As you go," said Nehru in the closing hours of Ike's visit, "you take a piece of our heart." With a final wave, Dwight Eisenhower went aboard his jet and headed for Teheran, Tunisia, and the Western summit meeting in Paris.

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