Red Bricks

On the road to Mandalay, Nikita Khrushchev's voice rolled out like thunder. "They ruled you and tried to tell you it was God who sent them to rule you," he said of Burma's departed British colonizers. "The English were sitting on your necks and were robbing your people." At road stops, he made much of geography--"Our country is both European and Asiatic, and territorially it belongs more to Asia." In Maymyo, to an audience of Burmese soldiers long engaged in fighting Communist guerrillas, he thought it best to speak on disarmament.

To a political crowd in Rangoon, he talked of a possible new war, plotted, of course, by the Western powers--"They are training the West German army for use against the Soviet Union." To an enthusiastic assemblage of Rangoon University students, he propagated the Communist faith--"The days of capitalism in the world are approaching their end . . .

Our system will win."

Artifacts of Achievement. For six triphammer days, while Premier Nikolai Bulganin traveled in genial, flower-showered near-silence at his side, the chief of Russian Bolshevism carried the brick-loaded Red hod through Burma. He heaved some bricks at the West, crashed others through the plate-glass facts of history. Some he carefully mortared into the structure of Communism's new policy in Asia. All in all, he must have accounted it a good week's work. The Burmans had not displayed the tumultuous enthusiasm of the Indians, but when the pair left Rangoon to return to India, some university girls wept at the airport, while cheering Burmese boys raised clenched fists in salute.

Near by on the apron stood a gleaming twin-engined Ilyushin transport plane, the gift of Moscow's traveling leaders to Burma. Less in evidence but more significant were the other artifacts of achievement left behind: ¶ joint statement of principles flatly aligning Burmese Premier U Nu with Communists on such issues as the surrender of Formosa to the Red Chinese, admission of Peking to the U.N., unconditional prohibition of nuclear weapons.

¶ An economic agreement under which Russia will help Burma build factories, begin irrigation projects and undertake farm development in return for long-term payments in Burmese rice. The U.S., which has a rice surplus of its own, has not been able to get together with Burma on any such deal.

¶ Russian commitment to build and equip a technical institute in Rangoon.

Two years ago, Neutralist U Nu refused further U.S. free technical and economic aid to his country on the ground that it would prejudice his "neutral" stand. But now he accepted the Soviet gifts "with a feeling of deep appreciation." Said Bulganin: "We leave your friendly and hospitable country enriched . . ."

"Judge for Yourselves." Back in India once again, the busy travelers found unexpected help in winning over the man whom Pravda has called "our unconscious ally." Jawaharlal Nehru may have had misgivings over some of the rambunctious remarks his guests had made, but that was not why Nehru was mad last week. He was miffed at John Foster Dulles, who, in receiving the Portuguese Foreign Minister, had joined in a communique which referred to disputed Goa in the phrase the Portuguese use for it, as a "province" of Portugal.

U.S. Ambassador John Sherman Cooper called three times on Nehru, trying to quiet his anger, and Dulles issued a further explanation (which did not satisfy the Indians) that the U.S. remains "neutral" in the dispute over the colony which has been Portuguese since 1510. It was all too easy for Khrushchev to repeat "Look who your friends are," to endorse India's claim on Goa and denounce the U.S. as a colonialist power.

Then the Russians moved northwest to another disputed ground, Kashmir. To them, the rich and populous region is not in dispute at all: since the other claimant is Pakistan, a sturdy ally of the U.S., the Russians are all for India's claims (which India stubbornly refuses to submit to U.N. plebiscite). After two vigorous days amid Kashmir's storied pleasures, the two returned from what Bulganin referred to as "this northern part of India." Pakistan had formally protested their visit to Kashmir. Huffed Khrushchev: "No other power in the past has dared to tell us what we should do and whom to choose as our friends."

Like a medicine show's drumbeat, Khrushchev's insistent appeal hit the Indians' ears. "Judge for yourselves who is your friend and who are your enemies." For the visitors, it was a good note to end on. Packing up the accumulated crockery of three weeks of giftgiving, and leaving behind an accumulation of promises, Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin prepared to move on. There was still more work to be done in Afghanistan.

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