The Spirit of San Francisco

Every newcomer to San Francisco is overtaken with a sense of complete be wilderment. The mind, however it may be prepared for an astonishing condition of affairs, cannot immediately push aside its old instincts of value and ideas of business, letting all past experience go for naught . . . There is a period when it wears neither the old nor the new phase, but the vanishing images of one and the growing perceptions of the other . . .

blended in painful and misty confusion.

-- Bayard Taylor, New York Tribune, reporting the Gold Rush of 1849.

Amid the morning mists and hillocks of San Francisco, where men once shouted "Gold!", there gathered last week a distinguished concourse of 38 foreign minis ters and 260 delegates representing 60 of the 81 countries on earth. They were met by the Golden Gate to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the U.N. ; four of them -- Russia's Vyacheslav Molotov, Great Britain's Harold Macmillan. France's Antoine Pinay and the U.S.'s John Foster Dulles -- expected to fix up the housekeeping and feel out the climate for the Parley at the Summit in Geneva.

Pledge to Support. Formally assembled in the Opera House, the heads of the delegations pledged support to the U.N., their pledges taking weight from the growing awareness that the cold war has entered into a new and more promising phase. Every where the phase evolved into a phrase -- "the spirit of San Francisco" -- spoken in 32 languages and as many convergent definitions. "We cannot but feel in the air a new infusion ... a new sense of opportunity," glowed New Zea land's Sir Leslie Knox Munro.

Britain's Harold Macmillan added: "The tensions between East and West have seemed unending. But recently there has been a lifting of the cloud . . ." Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak was carried away: "Let us make no attempt to explain or even to understand all the whys and wherefores; let us merely note, but note with joy, that throughout the world there is at least a desire to talk . . ."

In such an atmosphere of yearning, the Big Four foreign ministers met one evening at the Pacific Union Club, a squat, brownstone mansion atop Nob Hill, to savor California cracked crabs, guinea hen on ham, and strawberries Mary Pickford (coated with pineapple sherbet). "A month ago we were in Vienna," toasted the host, John Foster Dulles. "Tonight we dine in San Francisco. Within the month we will be at Geneva. We can all hope that the sources of friction between us have been reduced by our efforts." The city lay beneath them, glistening myriad lights at night, to the edge of the spreading bay.

Plan for Parley. In the Whist Room on the first floor, the Westerners presented to Vyacheslav Molotov their plan for the Parley at the Summit, advocating a four-to-six-day conference with no set agenda, to be presided over in turn by the U.S., France, Britain and the Soviet Union. To the Western plan, Molotov made no objection; his demeanor was that of a man who had declared peace and was waiting for the others to recognize it.

The U.S., however, did not agree with Spaak that the "whys and wherefores" of Soviet relaxation were unimportant. The U.S. noted soberly that Molotov's conciliation was born of Soviet weakness and Western pressure. This was the gist of Dulles' speech at San Francisco (see below), and the key to the frame of mind that President Eisenhower would carry to the Parley at the Summit. The U.S. waited to be shown what tangible results could be distilled from the new optimism at San Francisco.

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