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Sharp Answers. But Nikita Khrushchev was gaining understanding of a sort. He threw himself into his answers; he never faltered in setting down the Soviet line. He demonstrated clearly that he is no clown, although he knew how to draw a laugh when he wanted one. He stumbled—perhaps artfully—half a dozen times. Once he apologized for accidentally calling U.S. newsmen "comrades," once referred to the tenth anniversary of the revolution in "America" when he meant China. When he was asked about his celebrated "We will bury you" gibe at the U.S., Khrushchev explained calmly that capitalism was doomed to die not by his action but by the inexorable march of history: "We believe that Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin gave scientific proof of the fact."
Later in the afternoon, his unyielding line on Germany, on U.S. overseas bases and on U.S.S.R. censorship and radio jamming shook 26 members and guests of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called together for tea with the visitor by Chairman William Fulbright of Arkansas. Said Minnesota's Eugene McCarthy when the session was over: "He's a little like a candidate in the late stages of the campaign. He has heard all the questions many times, and his answers are sharp as hell."
Khrushchev went down from Capitol Hill to Blair House just in time to swap his tan suit for his dark suit and play host at a state reception of the Soviet embassy. The first U.S. President to cross the embassy threshold, Dwight Eisenhower led his lady and 31 other Americans in joining 23 Russians in caviar, borsch and shashlik beneath crystal chandeliers. Said Khrushchev of his trip to date: "I'm very pleased—despite the strong propaganda, a warm reception." "Had anything he had seen changed his prior conceptions about the U.S.?" "No."
Underground Welcome. Khrushchev was out at 7:47 a.m. to lead his party aboard the train to Manhattan. There, on a brisk, clear day among the skyscrapers, the tour began to lose its jovial bounciness. As a safety precaution, he got the official greeting in the dirty, cavenious incoming baggage room at Pennsylvania Station. For the next 45 hours, his hosts seemed to spend most of their energy trying to protect him from harm.
Time and again Khrushchev's motorcade of black, closed-top Cadillacs ran between silent crowds at a 35-m.p.h. clip. His route was patrolled—sidewalks, roofs, windows, gratings, manhole covers—by 3,300 blue-uniformed police and plainclothesmen. Here and there, Ukrainian and Hungarian pickets waved placards—WELCOME MURDERER, and GO TO THE MOON, LEAVE NEW YORK FOR—US but the police had even ordered the pickets not to carry placard poles.