A VOYAGE OF REDISCOVERY AND RECONCILIATION

P: A just about everyone knows by now, Richard Nixon has a passion for order and neatness. His trip to five European capitals this week, his first presidential journey abroad and the first European trip by an American President since 1963, is the very model of thoughtful planning and meticulous execution. Unfortunately, events--and the men who control them--do not always lend themselves to order and neatness. By their very nature, problems have a way of cropping up at the most inappropriate times. Even before the President left on his eight-day journey, it was obvious that the U.S. had a lot of work to do if it was to successfully defend and preserve its stakes in Europe.

Charles de Gaulle, ever the scene stealer, presented the President with a problem on the very eve of his departure. Word out of London had it that De Gaulle, who has steadfastly opposed British entry into the Common Market, had proposed that Britain join France, West Germany and Italy in a four-power European economic directorate that would replace the Common Market. His reported price: that Britain withdraw from NATO, as France in effect has already done. London and Paris started a shouting match over whether or not De Gaulle had actually made such a proposal--and the curious case caused a new outbreak of Anglo-French hostility (see box following page). True or false--or, more likely, a bit of each--the affair was bound to embarrass the President by highlighting the rifts that still rend Europe.

Then there was Berlin, where East Germany's Walter Ulbricht was once again applying the squeeze. Though it was unlikely that the Russians would ruin their chance for a new Soviet-American understanding by allowing Berlin to reach crisis proportions during Nixon's visit, the very fact that the divided city was again an issue was a sobering reminder that Russia and the U.S. still have to remove major roadblocks to any overall understanding. Similarly, the threatened maneuvers of Russian troops in East Germany and Ulbricht's interference with traffic to and from Berlin recalled the Communist might and will that only a few months ago subdued Czechoslovakia.

A Contrast to Predecessors

Still, neither De Gaulle nor Ulbricht could dim the clear purpose of the President's journey to Europe. That purpose, he said before his departure, was "the strengthening and revitalizing of the American-European community." The Viet Nam war had preoccupied the U.S. with Asia, almost to the exclusion of its historic concern with Europe. By undertaking a voyage of reconciliation so early in his presidency, Nixon seemed to many Europeans to be making a dramatic political gesture. In Europe, where the masses regard Nixon as even more of an enigma than U.S. Presidents are usually held to be, he is considered among leaders as a pragmatist with whom they can talk no-holds-barred business.

In form and background, Nixon's journey will be in sharp contrast to other postwar European visits by U.S. Presidents. Harry Truman went to Potsdam in 1945, deeply concerned about rebuilding a continent shattered by six years of war. In five trips, Dwight Eisenhower was greeted everywhere with heartfelt gratitude as the liberator of Western Europe from fascism. John Kennedy and his beautiful, elegant wife toured like movie stars in ceremonial splendor. Lyndon Johnson visited Europe only twice as President. He went to Bonn in 1967 for the funeral of Konrad Adenauer, and--almost as an afterthought as he flew back to Washington later that year from Southeast Asia--descended on Rome to plead for Pope

Paul's understanding of the U.S. cause in Viet Nam.

To prepare for his trip, which will take him to Brussels, London, Bonn, Berlin, Rome and Paris, President Nixon spent much of the past fortnight immersed in briefings and discussions of each of the countries he will visit, asking pointed questions of State Department experts. In style, his travels will differ greatly from Lyndon Johnson's. He is leaving his bubble-top limousine at home (he will use Charles de Gaulle's 22-ft.-long Citroen in Paris). There are no standing orders at each stop for a rubdown table, a shaving mirror at a precise height lit by a 150-watt bulb, an extra-length bed or stocks of Dr. Pepper. There will be no grand galas or public spectacles; most of Nixon's time will be spent behind closed doors, more in the manner of a business executive than a head of state.

While the President is prepared to review shared difficulties with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Premier Mariano Rumor and President Charles de Gaulle, he goes not to bargain but to explore. There is a lengthy agenda of mutual problems to discuss. The invasion of Czechoslovakia has deferred hopes of detente with the Soviet Union and raised serious questions about the efficacy and future role of NATO--which will be 20 years old in April. There is no visible end to the West's recurring monetary cri ses, which have challenged now the dollar, now the pound, now the franc. Ratification of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty has proceeded slowly, partly as a consequence of European resentment that the U.S. did not thoroughly consult its allies before agreeing on the text with the Soviet Union. Protectionist sentiment is mounting on both sides of the Atlantic, and there is the possibility of a "Nixon round" of negotiations on nontariff barriers to international trade.

The Importance of Confidence

The talks will also range outside Europe to cover new initiatives in aid to underdeveloped countries and touch on the problems of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Arab-Israeli skirmishes threaten once again to erupt into full-scale war. Moscow's foreign policy is increasingly obscurantist, and the President is anxious to sound out European sentiment before making any overtures toward summitry with the Soviets. Nixon is eager to have a summit meeting, but he wants to meet the Russians not simply as the head of a superpower but as the leader of a newly vigorous alliance.

The war drags on in Viet Nam, though the continuing peace talks in Paris, however sterile to date, have muted some of the strident anti-Americanism that gripped Europe during the Johnson years. Racial strife and political assassinations in the U.S. have diminished America's image in European eyes. U.S. technological superiority and widespread domination of Europe's industry have stirred understandable resentment. Also, France is no longer alone in doubting that the U.S. would be willing to subject itself to Russian nuclear retaliation by launching ICBMs in response to a Soviet attack on Western

Europe. Says Britain's Defense Minister Denis Healey: "It is most important for the President to maintain European confidence in the American commitment to defend Europe. If confidence in the U.S. guarantee is maintained, Europe will be much more enthusiastic over U.S. talks with the Russians."

TIME Senior Correspondent John L. Steele completed last week an exploratory trip that traced the President's itinerary in advance. The Western Europe that Nixon will find, Steele reports, "is economically prosperous, politically divided, and both intensely curious and a little wary about the new President of the U.S." He adds: "The visit is welcomed, because it is seen hopefully as a sign of renewed attention to the Western alliance after years of enforced concentration on Viet Nam. One finds keen satisfaction that Nixon chooses to come here early in his White House tenure, before his policies toward Europe and the world have fully jelled."

Economically, Western Europe is booming as never before. Even Britain, beleaguered by chronic trade deficits, seems on the verge of turning a balance of payments surplus this year for the first time since 1962. Yet Europe's political leaders stumble from crisis to crisis. Prime Minister Wilson is widely distrusted in Britain, where even the trade-union movement, his onetime power base, has been alienated by the Labor government's efforts to hold the line on wage increases. In France, De Gaulle's facade of infallibility was battered by the riots and strikes of last May and the ensuing threats to the franc. Chancellor Kiesinger finds himself assailed by a student New Left and a nationalist right equally impatient with West German dependence on Washington. Italy's Premier Rumor has just formed a new government that may be the last gasp of Italian middle-of-the-road politics. All this has led to "the end of optimism," in the words of a London-based senior U.S. diplomat. Despite widespread pessimism, however, Western Europe since 1945 has obviously transcended the primitive destructive passions that regularly tore it apart for centuries.

Belgium: Missiles and Margarine

Brussels, the President's first stop, is the capital of a tiny nation divided by ethnic schism. Yet, as the headquarters of both NATO and the Common Market, it is also the capital of European cooperation. It is, as well, the European base for a growing U.S. industrial complex. The main route into the city from Zaventem airport passes through what is known locally as "Little Texas"--an unmistakably American creation that includes a new Esso research center as well as plants built by IBM and Honeywell. Nixon will enter the city with King Baudouin. On the President's first-night Brussels schedule were conferences at the Palais Royale de Bruxelles with Belgian Premier Gaston Eyskens and Foreign Minister Pierre Harmel.

Next morning, he was to visit NATO's prefabricated new headquarters. There he planned a brief speech to the ambassadors from the 15 NATO member nations. Afterward, he was to hold private conferences on the state of the alliance with NATO Secretary-General Manlio Brosio and various NATO ambassadors. Before the invasion of Czechoslovakia, some NATO experts regarded the original raison d'etre of the alliance as outmoded and hoped to transform it from a military deterrent into a means of relaxing East-West political tensions. Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger, who is accompanying Nixon, has never believed that NATO is a fit instrument for detente and deterrence alike. "If we try to get both simultaneously, we shall get neither," he argues. The Czechoslovak scare forced

NATO's European members to abandon plans for lowering their troop commitments, and in fact, since August, they have worked to upgrade equipment, improve reserves and increase mobilization capability.

The Europeans are fearful that the U.S. plans to make further cuts in its 210,000-man troop level in West Germany; they consider airlifts from the U.S. no substitute for forces permanently based on European soil. No one pretends, however, that ground forces are anything but a first line of defense for Western Europe--especially now that the Soviets have more troops in Eastern Europe, and closer to the West's defense perimeter, than at any time since 1945. The Czechoslovak experience cast grave doubt on the once-fashionable doctrine of graduated response. Behind the troops must be the U.S. nuclear-missile deterrent, and the European allies want reassurance that it will be used if needed.

After the NATO meetings, Nixon was to confer with Common Market Commission President Jean Rey, a doughty Belgian Eurocrat who once observed: "Building Europe is like building a Gothic cathedral. The first generation knows that they will never see the work completed, but they go on working." Among the topics up for discussion: U.S. problems with inflation and balance-of-payments deficits, the possibilities for a "Nixon round," and speedy implementation of special drawing rights within the International Monetary Fund--"paper gold"--to ease perennial pressures on gold and on the two international reserve currencies, the dollar and the pound sterling. One current source of U.S. irritation is a proposed Common Market tax of $60 a ton on imported vegetable-oil products, from which the U.S. earns $450 million a year.

London: Crocuses and Gold

In London, where the winter grass is green and a few crocuses are already in bloom, Nixon arrives at the sprawling jumble of Heathrow airport in the early evening, there to be met by Wilson, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart and Lord Cobbold, representing Queen Elizabeth. Prime Minister and President were to be whisked off by helicopter to Chequers, the 14th-century country residence of British Prime Ministers, for a "working dinner" with Kissinger, Secretary of State William Rogers and four or five key members of Wilson's Cabinet. That night, Nixon is to chopper back to London for an overnight stay at Claridge's Hotel. He is not staying at the U.S. Ambassador's residence because of the problem of keeping 472-acre Regent's Park secure. (The Secret Service, FBI and CIA are all looking out for the President's safety--and each other: Secret Service agents derisively call the FBI men "Feebies.")

The morning schedule calls for meetings at the hotel with Tory Leader Edward Heath and selected members of the Opposition, then a private conference with Wilson, this time at No. 10 Downing Street. Queen Elizabeth will receive the President at Buckingham Palace for a luncheon of about a dozen, including Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Princess Anne.

Later, the President returns to Claridge's for an innovation that he planned to pursue also in Bonn, Rome and Paris: a meeting with a small group of hand-picked businessmen, union leaders and intellectuals for candid talk about the U.S. and the host country. Then there is a reception for Jeremy Thorpe, leader of Britain's third-party Liberals.

The ten hours of conversation with Wilson spread over two days will concentrate on defense and monetary problems. The sagging pound, devalued late in 1967, has forced Britain to abandon its once-grand military presence beyond the Continent, and concern itself solely with the defense of Western Europe. Defense Minister Healey favors not only a new pledge of U.S. nuclear support for Europe, but also what he calls "a European identity in defense." In Munich earlier this month, he said: "Nothing would do more to encourage the United States to maintain its necessary commitment than the sight of the European countries working effectively together in the alliance." Healey is also eager for the U.S. to start discussions with the U.S.S.R. aimed at eliminating costly anti-ballistic missile defense systems (see story on pg. 23), on the theory that the billions the U.S. could save by not building ABMs could be used in part to buttress NATO.

To British Treasury officials, collective monetary security is now almost as important as collective military security. The British want to maintain a stable and united front with the U.S., keeping the price of gold at its present official rate of $35 an ounce in the face of increasing pressure; the unofficial price reached a 20-year high of $46.33 last week in Paris. They note privately that a "slightly right" U.S. Government can afford to be more daring in monetary affairs. In defense and financial matters, the erstwhile "special relationship" between Britain and America now means only special problems.

Bonn: Talks on the Rhine

When he reaches Bonn, Nixon will be whisked by helicopter with Kiesinger and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt to the Chancellor's modern bungalow hard by the Rhine River. There he will hold two conferences with the West Germans, with a break for lunch at the Villa Hammerschmidt residence of Federal Republic President Heinrich Liibke. After the second set of talks, he was to sit down with the group of private citizens he has asked to meet, and then go to the Chancellery for a black-tie dinner.

Of all Nixon's hosts, Bonn's leaders are the happiest to see him. As the only NATO member facing Soviet armor directly across its border, West Germany was the first and most anguished victim of the massive U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Kiesinger will emphasize the need for the reactivation of American interest in Europe, and his concern that U.S. agreements with the Soviet Union proceed only from close and careful consultation with European allies.

The most sensitive case in point is the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Bonn believes was thrust upon it without proper consultation. West Germany has yet to sign the NPT, though it doubtless will eventually. However, the pact's proviso that Bonn must renounce nuclear weaponry for the 25-year life of the treaty has been roundly denounced by Finance Minister Franz-Josef Strauss, powerful head of the Bavarian affiliate of Kiesinger's own party, as "a Versailles of cosmic proportions." If the Germans are not permitted to build their own bomb, they want to be confident that the U.S. will continue to protect them.

A chronic vexation to the U.S. and West Germany is the question of payments made by Bonn to Washington to offset the cost of maintaining hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in West Germany. After 24 years, the U.S. military presence is a constant irritant to West Germans, but it is also politically vital to West German survival. The question should not take much of Nixon's time while he is in Bonn. As a propitiatory gesture a week before Nixon's arrival, Kiesinger's Cabinet approved a two-year offset proposal which would cover 80% of the estimated $900 million annual foreign-exchange cost to the U.S. of keeping its forces on German soil.

Of more immediate concern to Bonn is the new squeeze on Berlin. As they have done three times in the past, the West Germans plan to hold the election of a new Federal President in West Berlin's Congress Hall. Even before it was announced that Nixon would visit Berlin a week before the March 5 election, East Germany proclaimed that the West German electors--members of the Federal Parliament and of the regional legislatures--would be forbidden to travel by land across East Germany. Last week the Communists closed a checkpoint on the autobahn from West Berlin to Munich and Hanover for two hours; they warned that it would be closed again on five separate days before the federal election, giving the specious excuse that minor blasting operations would endanger passing motorists. They also announced that joint Soviet-East German military maneuvers will take place near access routes to West Berlin early in March.

While Party Leader Ulbricht huddled last week with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin spent an hour with President Nixon at the White House and assured him that the U.S.S.R. would not in terfere with Nixon's Berlin visit. (He made no such promises, however, about the West German election.) Nixon's stop in Berlin will be brief, less than three hours. It was deliberately designed to avoid comparison with the wildly cheered 1963 visit of John Kennedy, which reached a climax with his bravura "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech of solidarity from the city hall steps. Nonetheless, if only because of renewed Communist pressure on the city, it is likely to be the only showy segment of Nixon's European swing.

Air Force One has already made dry-run landings at Tempelhof Airport, which normally handles nothing larger than tri-jet 727s. After the President de planes there, his schedule calls for reviewing troops on the tarmac and laying a wreath at the marker outside Tempelhof that commemorates the 1948 Berlin airlift. His motorcade will then move on to the border crossing point at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, a checkpoint used by West Germans traveling to East Berlin. There Nixon will mount a wood en platform for the ritual look at the Wall, a stop that will last barely ten minutes.

Later, at Charlottenburg Castle, the President was to sign the city's Golden Book for VIP visitors and hold brief talks with Mayor Klaus Schiitz and other West Berlin officials. Members of the leftist Socialist German Students Association announced an anti-U.S.

demonstration; West Berlin police then banned all street rallies, which increased the chances of a student-police clash.

Next comes Nixon's only major public speech of the eight-day trip, an address to 6,000 workers and executives at the Siemens electrical factory. Early in the afternoon, he was to leave for Rome --this time from the big Tegel Airport in the French occupation sector.

Rome and the Vatican

After the residual cold-war stresses of Berlin, Rome will be a respite. Nix on will stay in the residence of Pres ident Giuseppe Saragat, the 16th cen tury Palazzo del Quirinale, one of the handsomest buildings in all Europe. The state visitors' apartments were redec orated four years ago for Charles de Gaulle. The eleven-room Imperial Suite, where Nixon will be housed, is reached from the 200-yard Corridor of the Long Sleeve. The view of Rome from the palace is unsurpassed.

Nixon will meet Premier Rumor against a shifting political background. Rumor's new center-left government is not yet in firm command, and leftist strength is on the rise. Nonetheless, Italy remains a staunch U.S. ally. Responding to the Soviet naval buildup in the Mediterranean, it has beefed up its fleet and marine air force; the country is solidly behind Britain's bid for Common Market membership, and generally anti-De Gaulle on other European policy questions. Italy has given full support to the dollar, and was one of the leaders in advancing the two-tier pricing system for gold that staved off an international monetary crisis just a year ago. For economic reasons, however, Italy has taken up internationally a new apertura a sinistra--opening to the left. Fiat is helping the Russians build an $800 million automobile plant on the Volga River in Togliattigrad, named for the late Italian Communist leader, and Italian businessmen are pressing for establishment of diplomatic relations with Communist China as an entering wedge to that potentially vast market.

Because Pope Paul will be making his Lenten retreat at that time, Nixon will not see him on his first trip to Rome. Instead, he is scheduled to return to Rome from Paris to visit the Pope just before heading back to the U.S. early next week. Nixon will go by helicopter to the College of the Propagation of the Faith on Janiculum Hill, thence by car to the great colonnaded plaza in front of St. Peter's, past troops of bright-uniformed Swiss Guards, Vatican police and the papal Palatine Guard. Once inside the Apostolic Palace, he goes by elevator to the third floor and through ten rooms before reaching the papal library. There the party pauses while the Prelate of the Antechamber enters to announce the President's arrival. Nothing of great moment is likely to come up during the audience, or during Nixon's later meeting with the Vatican Secretary of State, Amleto Cardinal Cicognani; there is some feeling within the Vatican that the time is right for re-establishing formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., but it will be up to the Americans to suggest it. The U.S. had a charge d'affaires or minister at the Holy See from 1848 to 1868, but Protestants in the U.S. Congress voted to end the mis sion when they mistakenly heard that the American Church in Rome had been forced to move outside the city walls. Myron Taylor was Franklin Roo sevelt's personal representative, though not an ambassador, to the Vatican from 1940 until 1950.

France: The Toughest Challenge

Charles de Gaulle has not been an ad mirer of U.S. Presidents. According to Author Pierre Galante, he called Frank lin Roosevelt "a false witness," Harry Truman "a merchant." Of Dwight Eisenhower, he said: "I am told that on the golf links he is better at putting than he is with the long shots. This does not surprise me." To De Gaulle, John Kennedy "had the style of a hairdresser's assistant--he combed his way through problems." Lyndon Johnson was like "a truck driver or a stevedore--or a legionnaire." Nixon and the general should strike it off fairly well. Both are direct, practical men, and De Gaulle showed characteristic prescience in granting Nixon a 40-minute interview in June 1967--at a time when De Gaulle would not have welcomed L.B.J. into the Foreign Legion. De Gaulle respects a tough adversary, and Nixon has been advised to be polite but firm.

There has been some thawing in relations between France and the U.S., though it has not affected the fundamental differences over NATO, European unity, monetary policy, and relations with the Soviet Union. These will doubtless endure even after De Gaulle has faded from the scene. De Gaulle still speaks of his "omnidirectional" nuclear force de frappe, but he no longer bestrides Europe like a Gallic Cyclops. Soviet adventurism has set back De

Gaulle's cultivation of the East bloc. His aura of omniscience was rent by the uprisings of last May; the hard-pressed franc faces another battering from new social-welfare expenditures and an upcoming round of wage demands.

Two major sources of Franco-American friction have been somewhat smoothed. The Paris peace talks have ended the general's diatribes on Viet Nam. Also, Nixon's acceptance of the French initiative for four-power talks on the Middle East shows mutual interest in a more balanced approach on both sides. The U.S. has considered France too pro-Arab, and the French find the U.S. too pro-Israel. No major breakthroughs are possible in Nixon's talks with De Gaulle, and he expects none. On the question of Britain's admission to the Common Market, Nixon could not budge De Gaulle, even if he were to try.

Despite the vicissitudes of the franc, De Gaulle insists that gold should ultimately be the sole international monetary standard, and that its official price must be increased, thereby devaluing the dollar. The threat of a fresh monetary crisis will dominate the Nixon-De Gaulle conversations. France's President hopes either to avoid that crisis altogether, or, if it comes, to make sure that it is not blamed on him alone. To that end, he wants joint efforts by the U.S., Britain and France to contain inflation and improve their balance of payments positions. Otherwise, he might have to devalue the franc by 20% or more--which would set off a shock wave of devaluations and imperil both the dollar and the pound.

While any progress Nixon makes with De Gaulle seems more likely to be in atmospherics than in substance, the formal welcome of the new U.S. President to Paris will be gracious and el egant. Parisians will be treated to the rare sight of the U.S. flag flying over the Foreign Ministry instead of the customary tricolore. The austere Quai d'Orsay palace, on the Left Bank between the National Assembly and the Invalides, will be turned over to the Nixon party during his stay. The palace walls are decked with priceless Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries, the floors with Savon-nerie carpets. The cellars are stocked with champagne, which no doubt will be poured when De Gaulle escorts Nixon to the Quai d'Orsay after their first conversations at the Elysee Palace.

President and Mme; de Gaulle will be Nixon's hosts at an Elysee dinner Friday night, and the discussions continue Saturday at Versailles' recently refurbished Grand Trianon. Nixon will return the hospitality by giving a dinner at the U.S. Embassy hard by the Place de la Concorde Saturday night: ironically, his hostess will be Eunice Kennedy Shriver, wife of the U.S. ambassador. Sunday, before he leaves for Washington via the Vatican, Nixon will confer with Henry Cabot Lodge and his Viet Nam negotiating team.

Europe's Business

The dream of a new harmony in Europe has faded unborn. "Three grand visions of the future have at various times captured the political imaginations of various of our leading men," Harvard Professor Francis Bator wrote late last year in the Brookings Institution's Agenda for the Nation: "Jean Monnet's united Western Europe; the Atlantic Community, and, least congenial to most, some scheme of U.S.-Soviet disengagement in Europe which would allow the unification of Germany. It is now clear that none of these three visions is about to be fulfilled."

Bator goes on to ask: "Is there some other vision which will do? I believe not. The truth is, there does not exist today a design which will resolve the underlying problems and hence command the allegiance of a large majority of Western Europeans." In this formless Continent of independent nation-states, Nixon's advice to Americans seems apt. "The shape of Europe's future is essentially the business of the Europeans," the President has said. "What we need is not more proclamations and declarations, but a greater attention to what our allies think."

In return, many Europeans believe that the U.S. can offer Europe much beyond the shield of monetary stability and military security. As Belgian Businessman Alec Le Vernoy observed: "There is a real chance for Nixon to help us start working together in Europe --not only in policy matters, but in our economic life, our technology, in science and business. There is much for us to do together. Maybe he can help us toward agreement on common purposes, and then we can move forward toward meeting them." Undramatic as that may be, it is the aim of Nixon's first, but not last, trip to Europe.

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