Bermuda & Beyond

Side by side, the President of the U.S. and the Prime Minister of Great Britain rode to the U.S. Air Force base in Bermuda on a grey, drizzly morning this week. At the base they chatted amiably for a while before the President boarded the Columbine II for the four-hour flight to Washington. "I hope I am not making you late for church," said Dwight Eisenhower. "Oh no," Harold Macmillan assured him. After a cordial parting, Ike climbed aboard and Mac raised both arms in a farewell V. The historic four-day Big Two conference that had just ended had fulfilled its essential purpose: to repair the damage that Britain's desperate armed adventure in Egypt had done to the traditional U.S.-British alliance.

"Spilled Milk." The urgent need for repair was evident all along to both the U.S. and Britain; as soon as Harold Macmillan succeeded broken Anthony Eden as Prime Minister, a Big Two meeting was inevitable. Ike himself suggested Bermuda as the place, feeling that it might help soothe the British hurt feelings to hold the conference in British territory.

From the start, the tone of the meeting was cordial. Macmillan was waiting at dockside with outstretched hand as the President, arriving in Hamilton harbor aboard the missile cruiser Canberra, stepped ashore from a U.S. Navy launch. "Harold, how are you?" Ike said warmly. That evening, the Big Two's big four--President, Prime Minister, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd--gathered for a roast-beef dinner in the private dining room of Macmillan's suite. Despite white dinner jackets, it was a friendly and informal meeting. Before ranging off into the problems of 1957, Ike and Mac exchanged reminiscences of the wartime days when Diplomat Macmillan served as British Minister Resident at General Eisenhower's Algiers headquarters.

In the round-table discussions that started the next morning, frankness was the rule, brushing away misunderstandings and bolstering mutual confidence, more vital to an international alliance than agreement or disagreement on particular issues. At the conference's first formal session, Macmillan started off by saying that the recent rupture between the two nations was a matter to be mentioned and then firmly set aside; Eisenhower said that the U.S. had no desire to talk about "spilled milk."

Macmillan made plain the British feeling that the U.S. 1) puts too much faith in the U.N. and 2) overestimates the rationality of Egypt's Dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom the British consider utterly reckless and untrustworthy. But both the Prime Minister and the President recognized, as Macmillan said, that Britain and the U.S. need each other's friendship and support, and cannot afford to let misunderstandings get in the way.

Well Satisfied. When the conference was over at week's end, the areas of foreign-policy disagreement seemed to have shrunk in both size and importance, and the two governments had reached some new common ground. Especially gratifying to the British were two major decisions: P: The U.S. will join the military committee of the Baghdad Pact (Britain, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey), as the British have long urged. Eisenhower & Co. made the decision shortly before the conference, announced it to the British as a highly pleasant surprise. The U.S. will not become a full member of the pact (as the British would like even better), but will take part in its planning for defense against Communist armed aggression, thereby strengthening both the pact's punch and its prestige.*P: The U.S., under an agreement reached at the conference, will supply Britain with guided missiles, thereby filling a serious gap in British defenses and balancing military-manpower cutbacks dictated by

Britain's severe economic pinch. Under existing law, the U.S. cannot turn nuclear warheads over to the British, but will store them at U.S. depots in Britain.

In addition to the big decisions, the joint communique at conference's end 1) reaffirmed joint support for European unity and German unification, 2) reminded the world in general and Dictator Nasser in particular that the U.S. and Britain still stick by the U.N. Security Council's October resolution on the rights of all nations to passage through the Suez Canal, and 3) set forth an unexpected joint declaration on nuclear-weapons tests. As long as Russia continues to block a general disarmament agreement, the communique said, the U.S. and Britain will have to continue "nuclear testing." Meanwhile, they will use "restraint" to keep radiation under hazard levels, and will permit Soviet observers at the nuclear tests if the Soviet Union will in turn permit Western observers at its tests.

At parting, the President and the Prime Minister had good reason to be, as their joint communique put it, "well satisfied with the results of this conference." The Big Two alliance was back in business.

*Announcement of the U.S. decision drew a prompt response from the Kremlin. U.S. membership on the military committee, shrilled an Arabic-language broadcast from the Soviet Union, is dangerous to the existence of peace-loving Arab states. It "provides the Pentagon with new opportunities of encouraging Baghdad Pact members to organize various provocations and plots and to interfere with the affairs of Arab countries."

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