The Sandman

CHILDREN, THE SANDMAN IS COMING. "Do you still believe in storks and peace doves?" queried the Vienna daily Express as Nikita Khrushchev started his visit to Austria. Austrians evidently did not. Simply by cold silence they turned Khrushchev's first good-will tour outside the Iron Curtain since the summit into a road show flop.

Most of the diplomatic corps, including U.S. Ambassador H. Freeman Matthews, boycotted the airport reception; only 500 people turned up to watch Khrushchev bounce down the ramp all smiles. The scattered crowds on the streets to town barely outnumbered the 8,000 cops and nearly 1,000 plainclothesmen assigned to protect Khrushchev from Vienna's big refugee population. Since the Soviet press had already promised a "huge and joyous" reception, Soviet cameramen did what they could; they rounded up a loyal band of local Communists, herded them from stopping place to stopping place, scrambling about to shoot the same few faces from every possible angle. Though they dutifully reported in Pravda that "the center of Vienna has blossomed into smiles--the Schwarzenbergplatz is a sea of people," the Soviet newsmen complained bitterly to Austrian colleagues about the "barbaric" and "uncultured" welcome.

Khrushchev's own manners were no help. At a special performance of The Magic Flute by the Vienna State Opera, he dozed off to sleep, an amazing affront to opera-loving Viennese. And next day, when Communist-led workers in an automobile factory gave him the warmest reception of the trip, Nikita turned beaming braggart. "I am like the merchant who comes to the market with a bag full of goods," he said. "I can say to all of you: Wrap up all your goods and send them to us. We can buy all of Austria." Nikita was just as cavalier about Berlin. The 2,000,000 people in the Western sector were not important in themselves, he observed. "If I told Russian men to make a little more of effort, they could make that many people in nine months."

Chancellor Julius Raab was carefully cordial, remembering that "it was he [Khrushchev] who in 1955 initiated changes in Soviet foreign policy which made possible the conclusion of the state treaty" ending the occupation. Raab's motive: the reparations agreement under which Austria has been paying Russia $25 million a year in a wide range of manufactured goods ends next year. Raab would like to convert the agreement into a straight trade deal, so that the Russians would buy what the Austrians have heretofore been forced to give them free. He also wants to avoid any Khrushchev temper tantrums that would embarrass Austrian neutrality.

But as Nikita and party climbed into an air-conditioned bus with radiotelephone, television set, and bar for a tour of the green Austrian countryside, no good will began to blossom. Though Khrushchev has no reported heart condition (but is eminently qualified at a hefty 66 years old), the Russians called off a night on 12,461-ft. Gross Glockner, Austria's highest mountain, for unexplained "medical reasons." And in Vienna one old lady gave the popular verdict: "He's getting a lot less attention than that good-looking Shah of Iran, who visited here last month."

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