At the Summit . . .

For both the nation and the world, 1955 may well be known as the year of the Great Cure-All. As people look away from the Government's short-lived promises of Salk vaccine for all, they turn now to another panacea--the Conference at the Summit. But amid all the talk of top-level meetings as medicine for the world's political ills, a most important fact has been only lightly brushed over: the Russians have not yet accepted Western invitations to confer.

There is no doubt that the Kremlin will accept the general idea of a conference. But the plan put forward by Pravda this past weekend bears little resemblance to the meeting the State Department had envisioned. Where the Western powers had proposed short sessions, lasting at the most three or four days, in which the four heads of government would merely uncover the areas of dispute from which further negotiations at lower level would proceed, the Russians are asking for a conference of unlimited length, to reach final decisions on the world's problems.

Certainly, the Soviet idea has a great deal of appeal. If only Eisenhower and Bulganin could sit down and talk, the arguments run, a settlement could be reached. The less ambitious scheme of the United States will probably be attacked by large segments of world opinion. Yet it is by far the better way; there are few easy solutions in international politics.

A conference of the leaders of any but the friendliest of nations contains two almost insurmountable handicaps. If final decisions are made, they are often hasty and ill-considered, based sometimes on factors as weak as personal bonds. The papier-mache treaty structure of the decade following the first world war and the conferences of the second, all the result of "high-level conversations," are indisputable proof of this handicap. The second grave defect is that meetings at the summit often will produce only propaganda and enmity. In actuality, the forthcoming four-power meeting will not be mainly among the heads of governments. Instead, it will be the first of what may be a series of foreign-minister conferences, cluttered in this case by the presence of four distinguished spectators and the kleig lights which always accompany them.

For the Summit Conference is only a symbol that nations are willing to search for solutions by peaceful means. The moment that chiefs of state cease being symbols and start to encroach upon the responsibilities of professional diplomats, effective diplomacy breaks down. Alternatives become rigid platforms from which there is no retreat with honor. The normal process of give and take is impossible.

At the present time, a top-level meeting would be extremely useful if it could separate the insignificant, petty disputes from those which cause deep international division. For this purpose, only a few days of summit discussion are necessary. Any attempt to reach binding decisions would only emphasize present divisions. The best that can come from a big-four conference is an atmosphere a little more mellow for the quiet, serious business of conventional diplomacy that follows.