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But the visit produced a strangely significant vignette. On hand to greet him and his smiling wife Nina was Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, longtime preacher of the proposition that tensions around the world can be relaxed. The day Khrushchev got to New York Mrs. F.D.R. had signed a friendly, full-page advertisement in the New York Times, with 56 others—WE SUPPORT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S INVITATION TO PREMIER KHRUSHCHEV. But as Eleanor Roosevelt guided Khrushchev through the framed portraits, ship models, bound volumes of past Roosevelt glories, she seemed to grow more and more perturbed; Khrushchev was paying little attention to her. seemed anxious to get away; he did not stop even to sip the coffee she had prepared. "One for the road," he grinned as he grabbed a seed roll from the table to munch on the way back to New York.
Said she sadly, "This gentleman is interested in power—and I have no power."
The K-Dud. Khrushchev had a couple other pro forma visits on the day's schedule. He chatted amiably for 22 minutes with New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who came to call at the Waldorf and delivered a little homily on the Bible and man's faith in God, then posed for one of the liveliest pictures of the week. Khrushchev dutifully went to the top of the Empire State Building and got into a bootless argument over whether the view was as handsome in Moscow. Said Khrushchev: "New York is a fine city, but I like Moscow best of all." He led his entourage on a 35-mile-an-hour sweep through Wall Street and up Broadway—distinguished by two tiny trails of ticker tape fluttering out of a lonely window.
The big item on Khrushchev's schedule —and obviously the big, open failure of his first week abroad—was his disarmament speech to the United Nations, which turned out to be a fabulous dud (see FOREIGN NEWS). That night, when he showed up in his dark suit for a United Nations dinner, Khrushchev seemed dispirited and worn out. He proposed his toast listlessly and headed home at 10:25 p.m. He had some of the bounce back next morning when he swept through Harlem on the way to Idlewild Airport for his flight west in an Air Force Boeing 707 jet. Said he: "It seems that some provocative elements have a negative attitude toward us." But after all, these people were but "a few drops in the sea." Getting back to mingling with the workers again, he said, would "make me feel like a fish in a mountain stream."