Six Crises (50 page)

These questions were running through my mind as our plane put down at Babice Airport near Warsaw. As Pat and I stepped out on the ramp and looked over the airport area, I said to myself, “Here we go again—it's Moscow all over.” The only people there to greet us were members of the official government party, personnel from the American
Embassy, and a few other diplomats—and the inevitable red roses for Mrs. Nixon.

I had been briefed before leaving Moscow not to expect any crowds in Poland—first because I was arriving on Sunday, the only day Polish workers were allowed off, and more importantly, because the Polish Government had not announced the time of my arrival or the route of my motorcade. Khrushchev had been given a cool reception in Poland only three weeks before, and the government did not want to be embarrassed by having the people greet an American more warmly than they had the Soviet Premier himself. In explaining this to me, Frank Siscoe, Counselor at our Embassy in Poland, said I should not interpret the absence of friendly crowds as a lack of warmth of the Polish people toward Americans. It was just that it was Sunday and that Russia was a great threatening giant on the border of Poland.

We went through the usual airport ceremonies and then got into open cars for the motorcade into the city. As we drove toward the airport exit, I saw the first indication that things might be different in Warsaw than they had been in Moscow. The crack Polish Honor Guard, which had used the Russian goose step as it marched in review, now did an astonishingly unmilitary thing—the men applauded and cheered us as we drove by. The thought occurred to me that Khrushchev would have real problems in getting these men to fight on his side in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

As we turned into the highway, I noticed small clusters of people shouting at us from the side of the road. Then something hit me in the face. But it was not a rock: it was a bouquet of roses.

I turned to Dr. Oskar Lange, the Vice Premier, and asked him what the people were shouting. “Niech Zyje America,” he replied, “Long live America.”

As we drove through the suburbs, approaching the heart of the city, the crowds grew larger and larger. They were clapping and cheering and hundreds threw bouquets of flowers into my car, into Mrs. Nixon's car behind us, and into the press buses which followed. As we reached the downtown area, the situation got completely out of hand. The crowds overflowed the sidewalks and pressed into the street, stopping the motorcade altogether. The government had tried to discourage crowds and consequently had not anticipated any.
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Very few police
were on hand, and those we could see were busy trying to clear a single lane for our motorcade through this avenue of humanity.

We moved at a snail's pace, stopping time and time again because of the throng of people who surged around us. I stood in the back of the car and waved back my greetings and appreciation. Whenever our car was stopped I had a chance to look closely into the faces around me. Some were shouting, others were singing, and many were crying—with tears running down their cheeks. It was the most moving experience of all my trips abroad.

I knew this welcome was not for me personally. It was an expression, a spontaneous outpouring of warm feeling, toward the country I represented.

“Niech Zyje America.”

“Niech Zyje Eisenhower.”

“Niech Zyje Nixon.”

“Sto lat!”—“May you live a thousand years!”

Two-hundred-and-fifty thousand people lined the streets of downtown Warsaw, according to the official and unofficial estimates. It was unprecedented and unexpected. So many flowers and bouquets were thrown at us that our driver had to stop the car several times to clear the windshield. Dr. Lange could not believe what he saw. I could not believe it. The press corps could not believe it. But there it was before us—a crowd almost twice as large as that which had greeted Khrushchev only three weeks before.

Several newspapermen ventured into the crowd and they were told, “This time we bought our own flowers.” Upon Khrushchev's arrival, the people explained, the Polish Government had declared a school holiday, had transported children and government workers to his motorcade route, and had even provided the flowers for the people to throw in a “spontaneous” welcome. Many had kept the flowers and had not thrown them to Khrushchev. And now they proudly exclaimed, “This time we bought our own flowers!”

It took us more than two hours to inch our way through the crowds. When we reached Myslewicki Palace, the government guesthouse where we were staying, the newsmen asked me for a comment on our reception. I said “tremendous” and “wonderful” and at the same time knew that words were completely inadequate to express what was in my heart.

Only later, when I had collected my thoughts, did it occur to me what I should have said. My reception in Warsaw was a message to free people and to those throughout the world who yearn for freedom, telling them that the torch of freedom still burns in the hearts of millions of Poles despite fourteen years of Soviet occupation and Communist rule. And it was an unmistakable message to Khrushchev, a warning more pointed and eloquent than a thousand speeches or state papers, that he was sitting on a powder keg.

This warm reception from the Polish people followed me wherever I went in Poland and it posed an unexpected and strange problem. Wherever I spoke—at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Warsaw University, at the cathedral—I had to be particularly careful of what I said. I could speak of friendship and peace but I had to steer clear of such words as “independence” or “freedom” for fear of sparking a demonstration which might bring dire consequences on an unarmed people.

At one gathering, for instance, I mentioned that “we must all work for a better life for our children.” A woman in the crowd shouted back: “Yes, freedom for our children!” Others took up the chant and in a few seconds it appeared there might be a riot. Then several quick-thinking Polish Government officials in our party struck up “May he live a thousand years” and the force of the crowd was diverted back to a “safe,” nonpolitical display of affection. But the combustible potential was always just below the surface.

One of the most effective ways of subtly getting across to the Polish people the way of life in America was simply to introduce to them Vice Admiral Rickover and to explain that he had been born in a small town near Warsaw, that he had migrated to the United States, a land of opportunity, and that now he was an admired and respected hero in our country for his outstanding career in our Navy and for his leadership in the planning and building of the world's first atomic submarine. Admiral Rickover, an outwardly unemotional man, was greatly moved by the reception given him in Poland. He was a hero there as well as in the United States.
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As I traveled through Poland, the character of its proud people became clear to me. And I could better understand the tremendous problems the Communists were encountering in trying to impose the drab dullness of socialist conformity upon the rich cultural heritage of
an independent people. The Polish farmer loves his land and his horses, as his father did before him. He refuses to be moved into co-operative farms on the inflexible Communist design. The religious instincts, the abiding faith of the Polish people are so strong that the Communist Government has not dared to make a frontal assault on the Catholic Church there. Family ties are so respected that the government has been unable to brainwash the new Polish generation and win its deep-rooted loyalty.

There were many incidents which revealed for me the innate strength of the Polish man on the street and the wide gap between that average citizen, with his inherent strength, warmth, and heritage, and the Communist leaders and functionaries I met. It can best be summed up in one sentence spoken by my Polish interpreter, who did not happen to be a Communist Party member. A young Communist factory manager had conducted us on a guided tour of a new steel plant. He had insisted on showing off every detail of the machinery, but he had shown no interest at all in the workers on the assembly line. As we left the plant, my interpreter said, “The trouble with him and all Communist factory managers is that they know all about machines and nothing about people.” In that sentence he captured a vital truth concerning Communist leaders I had seen in Poland, in the Soviet Union, and throughout the world. He had put his finger on a great potential weakness of all materialistic, Marxist regimes.

As our plane took off for the long flight back to Washington, I looked down on the flat Polish countryside and realized that these people, and millions like them in the other satellite countries, represent Khrushchev's greatest danger and the Free World's greatest hope in the struggle for the future.

•  •  •

My encounter with Khrushchev was one of the major personal crises of my life. But, far more important, it was a fascinating case study of the continuing crisis of our time—a crisis deliberately created and maintained by World Communism. In the person of Nikita Khrushchev, “Communist man” at his most dangerous best, I had seen Communism in action—not just in theory.

I would not be so presumptuous even to try, here in a few pages, to suggest a program to “solve” the crisis of Communism. Because I do not presume to be an expert; and only the experts on Communism, who are sprouting up all over the landscape these days, have single, simple solutions for the problem.

Their formulas are as diverse as they are well-intentioned. To list only a few of the one-shot panaceas:

—Take care of the Communists at home and you won't need to worry about them abroad.

—Everyone knows the danger of Communism is from without and not from within.

—We should concentrate on the “important” areas like Europe, and not devote so much attention to the “peripheral” areas in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

—The danger is primarily military: keep America strong at home and stop the give-away programs to undeserving foreigners abroad.

—The danger is primarily economic: if we would only “give every Asian another bowl of rice” there would be no Communism in Asia, and so on around the world.

—The danger is primarily ideological: what we have to do is spend billions of dollars more on Voice of America and other propaganda programs so that “people will like us better.”

—We should submit more of our differences with Communism to the U.N. for decision.

—We should get out of the U.N.

—The major problem is one of “understanding and communicating” with Khrushchev. Rather than being more tough, we must be more flexible.

—If our diplomats will only be tougher at the conference table, the Communists will back down. But economic and mutual security programs (which our diplomats say they must have as weapons if we are going to be “tough”) are a waste of money and tinged with “pink.”

There is no question about the loyalty of those who hold these differing views. It is not a question of one being “more patriotic” than the other. The question is not too much or too little patriotism, but too little knowledge—knowledge about the Communists and, perhaps more important, about ourselves.

The Communist threat is indivisible. It confronts us both at home and abroad, and those who emphasize one to the exclusion of the other do a disservice to the cause of freedom.

The Communist threat is universal. There could be no more dangerous fallacy than to assume that there are some peripheral areas which “do not matter.” Our failure to meet a Communist probe in Asia or Africa or Latin America only increases the probability that we will be forced to meet such a probe in Europe.

The Communist threat is total. And so must be the arsenal of
weapons we must have at our disposal to meet it. Those who would build a “fortress America” and concentrate exclusively on military strength have forgotten that Communism made its greatest gains immediately after World War II when the United States had a monopoly on the atomic bomb and massive military superiority over the Soviet Union. Military strength is vital—but unless supplemented with economic, political, and propaganda programs, it is completely inadequate.

On the other hand, those who downgrade the importance of military strength and claim that all we need to stop Communism are economic aid programs to raise living standards in underdeveloped countries, have only to look at the Czechoslovakian experience to realize that the Communists can take over countries with no serious economic problems.

Mr. Khrushchev and his colleagues are fighting the battle for the world with all weapons—military, economic, political, propaganda-using each at the time and place, and in the quantity, the situation may require. We must do the same if we are going to battle them on equal terms.

But, not only must we know the nature and complexity of the Communist threat, we must know ourselves. We must objectively assess our strengths and our weaknesses, and particularly those areas in which we have something to offer that the Communists cannot match.

Khrushchev has challenged us to peaceful competition. We should not only accept his challenge—we should extend the area of competition.

I have no doubt if the competition were limited merely to military and economic strength that we would win. But we are sure to win only if we play the game our way and not his. The answer to those who believe in an all-powerful government as the primary instrument of progress is not more power in government, but more power and responsibility in individuals. Communism provides an opportunity for maximum creative activity, at best, for thousands in an exclusive elite class. Our advantage is that our system, at its best, provides this opportunity for millions. But the system succeeds or fails to the extent that individuals respond to the challenge and seize the opportunity. Our potentially creative people must not stay on the side lines. They must play their part in the greatest drama of human history—the culmination of man's fight through the centuries for human dignity and freedom, and against reaction and slavery.