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The Ideal. Making a point that he hammered again and again during his visit, Nixon said: "Material progress is important, but the very heart of the American ideal is that 'man does not live by bread alone.' Progress without freedom, to use a common expression, is like 'potatoes without fat.' There is nothing we want from any other people except the right to live in peace and friendship with them.
"The peace we want and the peace the world needs is not the peace of surrender, but the peace of justice; not peace by ultimatum, but peace by negotiation.
"The fact that one of us may have a bigger bomb, a faster plane or a more powerful rocket than the other at any particular time no longer adds up to an advantage. No nation in the world today is strong enough to issue an ultimatum to another without running the risk of destruction."
The second half of the 20th century, Nixon went on, "can be the darkest or the brightest page in the history of civilization. The decision is in our hands."
The speechmaking done, Nixon escorted
Khrushchev around the exhibition again for a look at displays he had missed that morning. Khrushchev smilingly scoffed at an electronic household "console" that is supposed to enable housewives of tomorrow to run their appliances through remote control. A model pressed a button and a dishwasher scooted out of a cabinet and across the floor. At the press of another button, an automatic floor washer and polisher emerged from another cabinet and scurried about like a creature out of science fiction. "Don't you have a machine that puts food in your mouth and pushes it down?" asked Khrushchev with heavy sarcasm. "This is not a rational approach. These are gadgets we will never adopt."
The group left the "glass house" of the exhibition and passed a voting-booth arrangement where visitors can use American voting machines to choose their favorite display. Said Khrushchev coldly: "I have no interest in that." He ignored the models in the fashion show, brushed aside the RAMAC computer that automatically answers 4,000 questions about the U.S. "To shoot off rockets, we have computers," he said, "and they are just as complicated as this."
Toward the end of the tour, on the gravel walk leading to Khrushchev's limousine, his hosts had set up a table stocked with California champagne and white and red wines. Nixon chose red wine, Khrushchev white. "A good wine," he said. Then he raised his glass and proposed a toast: "To the elimination of all military bases on foreign lands." Milton Eisenhower, who had not quite heard the translation, almost drank but stopped the goblet at his lips. The smile stayed on Nixon's face, but he did not raise his glass. "I am for peace," he said.
Khrushchev: How can peace be assured when we are surrounded by military bases?
Nixon: We will talk about that later.
We will drink to talking—as long as we are talking we are not fighting.
Khrushchev drank to Nixon's toast. At that point a Russian waiter raised a glass and proposed "one hundred years to Premier Khrushchev."
Nixon: One hundred years of life. I will drink to that. We disagree with you, but we want you to be in good health.