Out of the White House early last week went a secret letter addressed to Nikita Khrushchev. In the most dramatic, though private, Western move since the foreign ministers' conference began. President Eisenhower made a last-ditch personal attempt to break the stalemate in Geneva.
Burden of Ike's letter was a solemn warning that unless the Geneva conference made some progress toward ending the seven-month-old Berlin crisis, the U.S. would not agree to an East-West summit conference. In essence, Ike told Khrushchev the same thing that he told a White House press conference two...