IN MID-PASSAGE AT MIDWAY

BY different means, around the U.S. and halfway across the Pacific Ocean, Richard Nixon found heart and voice last week to confront three of the crucial questions that have troubled the nation in the second half of this decade. Their solutions evaded Nixon's predecessor, and Nixon himself has yet to show that he has new answers. But he is now involved and committed, a partisan no longer above the battle.

At General Beadle State College in South Dakota, the President roundly castigated student militants and denounced campus disorder. At the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, he took up the cudgels for the much-criticized U.S. defense establishment (see following stories). Reported TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, who was travelling with the President: "Richard Nixon is rather possessed by two thoughts at this stage. He is deeply worried that the nation, as he puts it both publicly and privately, is turning inward, and he feels that his mission in the Presidency is to keep the U.S. great. In truth Nixon really viewed his two speeches as a-one-two punch, a single declaration. The finale of this scenario was to come at Midway."

So the President moved across the globe toward Asia to grapple directly with South Viet Nam. Nixon flew to Midway Island for his first meeting as President with Nguyen Van Thieu, the South Vietnamese chief of state.

Not Wedded. Both Presidents faced a grave dilemma that could profoundly influence the effectiveness--or in Thieu's case the survival--of their regimes. The National Liberation Front has thus far refused to countenance any suggestion of a political settlement in South Viet Nam that would perpetuate Thieu's "puppet regime." Yet the U.S. might damage Saigon's hard-won political stability if it were to jettison Thieu at this stage. In fact, the Midway meeting was designed to bolster Thieu's position with tributes to South Vietnamese courage and Washington-Saigon solidarity.

On the other hand, if Washington totally embraces the present Saigon government for an indefinite period--or even during the transition phase until elections are held--it may make a settlement with the Communists extremely difficult.

There were unmistakable signs last week of shifting stances both in Washington and in Saigon. Thieu is considering avenues to compromise that he cannot afford to discuss publicly for fear of alienating important hard-line factions among his political supporters. He again let it be known that he could agree to holding elections in South Viet Nam before 1971, the year they are now scheduled to take place, if that would speed a negotiated end to the war. The N.L.F. called for such special elections in its ten-point proposal early last month in Paris.

At the same time, Secretary of State William Rogers posed a scarcely concealed threat to Thieu. Rogers, while still a novice in the nuances of diplomacy, is a canny attorney who is not given to ill-considered statements. "We are not wedded to any government in Saigon," he said in a Washington press conference. He added that "the only principle to which the Administration is wedded is free choice," suggesting that the U.S. could accept any government that resulted from free elections in South Viet Nam; he did not insist that Thieu be included.

The more immediate question, how ever, is not the regime that will result from elections but the regime that will be in charge until elections are held. Thieu wants the U.S. to back him in opposing any coalition government that includes the N.L.F., now or later, and he has repeatedly proclaimed that he will give up U.S. support rather than submit to a coalition. In the long run, Saigon may find that President Nixon --under growing pressure from his own electorate--will have to abandon Thieu in order to end the war.

Urgent Change. Rogers indicated that the Administration fully expects the South Vietnamese to begin taking over some of the combat burden borne by U.S. troops. "I have no doubt that the government of South Viet Nam is moving in this direction," he said. "They are willing to take over more of the responsibility." As Nixon met with Thieu last weekend, the urgency of that change was inescapable.

At Midway, President Nixon was in mid-passage between a war he had inherited and a war that would soon become his own liability if he could not move effectively toward ending it. In any case, the White House now believes that a new phase of serious negotiation with Hanoi promises to begin soon in Paris. Both directly in public and elliptically in private, the North Vietnamese are not simply contenting themselves with scoring propaganda points but are starting to go further. They are pressing for details of some of Nixon's eight points.

If, as the White House now suggests, Hanoi's inquiries are intimations of hard bargaining to come, it is doubly vital for Washington and Saigon to show a common front. On the surface at least, Midway was just such a display.

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