JOURNEY TO A DIFFERENT EUROPE

Before we talk to our opponents, let's talk to our friends. Let's begin that right away. A strong, independent Europe within the Atlantic alliance could make for a healthier Atlantic community, at the same time providing a strong negotiating hand with the Soviet Union.

SO said Richard Nixon during the 1968 campaign, and next week he begins to carry out that pledge with an eight-day working trip to Western Europe. He has had no official contact with Western Europe since 1960, and no U.S. President has toured its capitals since 1963, when John Kennedy visited. The Continent Nixon will find is a very different place. In 1963, the Berlin Wall was still new; Charles de Gaulle had not yet challenged NATO; Konrad Adenauer still held sway in West Germany; the Viet Nam war had yet to poison the ambiance of European friendship for America. Europe was still united by fear of the Russians.

Now most of these factors have changed. Western Europe is more restive, more independent--although the fear of Russia, which had markedly declined in recent years, was somewhat revived by Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Last week the East Germans, backed by the Soviets, once more began harassing West Berlin. The provocation, they said, was Bonn's decision to have a new West German President selected in West Berlin on March 5 (see THE WORLD). By coincidence, Nixon's visit comes only a week before, though it was announced well after Berlin had begun to heat up.

Nixon will be well briefed. He dined at the White House with NATO Secretary-General Manlio Brosio, and at week's end he started a laborious study "of "the book"--a black-bound 300-page volume prepared for him by the State Department and the National Security Council staff. It details his tentative schedule, suggests drafts for everything from airport statements to formal toasts, and sets forth factual background and policy recommendations for each of his meetings with European leaders.

Intricate Logistics. Last week an advance party of about 70, led by White House Counsel John Ehrlichman and Protocol Chief Emil ("Bus") Mosbacher, started to cover the six-city itinerary and work out the logistics. This week

Nixon plans a series of briefings with the two key aides who will accompany him--Secretary of State William Rogers and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger--and senior specialists in European affairs at State. He has also scheduled a long session on international monetary matters with Treasury Secretary David Kennedy.

Monetary problems, notably the chronic U.S. balance of payments deficit and the international role of the dollar, will be one of the shared difficulties Nixon must discuss in each of the capitals he visits--London, Bonn, Rome, Paris. There are many others: the state of NATO, Soviet adventurism in Eastern Europe, the volatile Middle East, Britain's continued isolation from the Common Market, the proposed treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons that some nonnuclear powers--notably West Germany--have feared might cut them off from peaceful applications of atomic technology. Also, Nixon wants to sound out the Atlantic allies carefully before broaching a summit conference to the Russians; by contrast, Lyndon Johnson dealt directly with Moscow and kept the Europeans posted only after he had decided.

Nixon wisely chose to begin his tour in Brussels, headquarters of NATO and the Common Market, hence the symbolic capital of European unity. To start in London would have given the impression that the President favors the British; to start in Paris, that he is trying too hard to woo De Gaulle.

Air Force One and three other Boeing 707 jets will first touch down, next Sunday, at Melsbroek, a military airfield near the Belgian capital. White House press facilities are already being installed in the Brussels Hilton, and Nixon will stay either in that motel-modern setting or in the opulent apartments of former King Leopold II in the 18th century palace. At NATO's new headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, the President is expected to address the 15 ambassadors of the NATO permanent council.* He will also meet Jean Rey, head of the Common Market executive commission.

In London, Nixon will spend virtually an entire day with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, probably with time out for tea with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. One particular area of concern to Wilson is U.S. cooperation in advancing Britain's nuclear technology. The British would like to fit multiple-target nuclear warheads to their Polaris missiles, as the U.S. has already done with some of its intercontinental missiles. Since the U.S. is increasingly sensitive to French charges of favoring Britain with nuclear know-how that it denies to others, the British regard the warhead question as a key indicator of how freely Nixon will continue military cooperation.

Nixon will stay at baronial Claridge's, not far from the U.S. embassy. The hotel's vaunted service will doubtless suffer. Scotland Yard already has plans afoot to infiltrate the staff with plainclothesmen disguised as waiters, news vendors, elevator operators and striped-pants front-desk functionaries.

Among Four Eyes. Next stop is Bonn. The Germans will be delighted to see Nixon because of all the Western Europeans, they feel most dependent on U.S. military might. Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger will meet the President at Wahn airport and take him by helicopter to his modernistic bungalow in the Palais Schaumburg park to begin their private talks unter vier Augen (among four eyes). From Bonn, Nixon will make the ritual visit to West Berlin, where John Kennedy made his historic "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech from the city hall steps in the spring of 1963. It will be a difficult act to follow. U.S. and German planners have scheduled Nixon's principal speech before solidly pro-American workers at the Siemens electrical factory. There was talk of dropping the now routine VIP tour of the Wall, but with the Soviets and East Germans tightening their squeeze on the city, the propaganda value of a stop at the East-West border overcame all objections.

There will be a special security problem in Berlin. The city's Free University is the center of youthful opposition to the Bonn regime and to continued U.S. influence in Germany. Last week left-wing students there denounced Nixon as "the shifty agent of the most reactionary kind of American bourgeois society" and resolved to demonstrate against him. Most of West Berlin's 20,000-man police force--including 5,000 reservists--will be turned out during Nixon's three-hour stay.

Lenten Retreat. Even in Italy, a steadfast supporter of the U.S. and a firm advocate of British membership in the Common Market, there is a new desire for independence. The new Foreign Minister, Socialist Pietro Nenni, announced as soon as he took office that Italy would open diplomatic relations with Communist China; in his view, NATO must be strictly limited to Europe and used as a force for detente rather than heightened tension. Still, Italy has recently strengthened its fleet in the Mediterranean, a gesture of serious commitment to the alliance. Pope Paul will be making his Lenten retreat when Nixon first arrives, but the President will return to Rome just before leaving for Washington in order to see him. One question on the Vatican's mind: Might the U.S. be interested in re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Holy See?

Between stops in Rome, Nixon will confront the toughest adversary of the trip--Charles de Gaulle, who has not seen a U.S. President on French soil since well before he pulled French forces out of the alliance and forced NATO out of France in 1966. The meeting should be cordial, if inconclusive. Some of the causes of U.S.-French friction have eased. Viet Nam peace talks are under way, with Paris as the host city, and it has been hard for the general to resist saying "I told you so." De Gaulle has modified his anti-U.S. role in Europe in the wake of Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia, though he is hardly expected to show renewed enthusiasm for the Atlantic military alliance. The general's once Olympian position has been challenged by last May's student riots and workers' strikes, as well as the ensuing monetary crisis that forced him to the brink of devaluing the franc. But De Gaulle's hostility toward use of the dollar as a reserve currency and his support for an increase in the price of gold remain unchanged.

President Nixon has made it plain that the aim of his trip is to demonstrate the renewed U.S. emphasis on Europe and give him firsthand acquaintance with Western Europe's statesmen, rather than to do any hard or detailed bargaining. He believes that the U.S. can no longer act from its own unilateral design for the world, and he looks on this voyage of consultation as only the first of a series while he is in office. For their part, the Europeans have been equally cautious. They were caught less than fully prepared for Nixon's arrival so soon after succeeding to the presidency--but they are very much interested in appraising him face to face.

* Brussels will shortly get a new U.S. ambassador : John Eisenhower, son of the ex-President and father of Nixon's son-in-law.

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