Paris Must Wait

France had braced itself for 14 days with Nikita Khrushchev. French Communists plastered the Paris Red Belt with pamphlets calling upon the faithful to give Nikita "an unforgettable welcome worthy of the traditions of the Parisian working class." France's Catholic bishops forbade clergymen to greet Khrushchev in their churches, urged laymen to recite the prayer Pro Pace (For Peace) in his presence. De Gaulle prepared himself by watching movies of Khrushchev's U.S. tour and huddling with Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who had flown over to give the general a few British attitudes to keep in mind.

At week's end came the deflating word from Moscow: Nikita was "immobilized by an attack of grippe and would not be in condition to be in Paris the 15th of March."

Politely, Moscow suggested that the visit be rescheduled as soon as possible after the "seven or ten days" that it would take Nikita to shake off the virus. No less politely, De Gaulle sent along "his sincere wishes" for Khrushchev's prompt recovery.

Of course, nobody was content to leave it at that, in a world that speaks of diplomatic illnesses and remembers Khrushchev's phony toothache during Macmillan's Russian trip. If Nikita was not really sick, no known external situation seemed to require him to postpone his French trip, and the explanation had to lie in an internal crisis, or trouble provoked by his Chinese partners. He had been gadding about so much lately that something might well require his presence in the Kremlin to help resolve.

The other possibility was that his sickness was genuine, but more than the flu. After all, the Kremlin has not yet matched the White House's reputation for providing explicit credentials, down to blood pressure charts, on its head man's illnesses. Khrushchev had just spent two weeks in the tropical heat of Indonesia, where he had shown clear signs of weariness, and then had returned to wintry Moscow. But San Francisco's Mayor George Christopher, who carried on an eight-hour conversational joust with the 65-year-old Khrushchev at the Kremlin last week, came away saying that Khrushchev "looked as if he would like to go on for another eight hours." If and when Khrushchev's French trip was laid on again, it would undoubtedly be more modest--fewer towns, fewer banquets. In fact Khrushchev had already sent word that in France he intended to confine himself to two courses and two wines per meal. The trip might also have to be shorter, for everybody's international tourist calendar is already jammed up: De Gaulle himself is scheduled to visit the Queen in London in three weeks, and Canada and the U.S. next month. Home is almost the last place to find a head of state these days.

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