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Standing side by side in an open-top black Mercedes-Benz, the statesmen rolled off on the 22-mile drive into town. It took them 1 hr. 40 min. Church bells pealed, car horns honked, railroad whistles shrieked. Boys in Lederhosen, overalled factory workers, student nurses in starched blue uniforms, black-clad seminarians, tens of thousands of flag-waving schoolchildren shouted dozens of greetings, all meaning "I Like Ike." Eastward through the summer-evening haze, the President could make out the Hotel Petersberg, opposite Bad Godesberg where Neville Chamberlain stayed while conferring with Hitler on the road to Munich, 21 years before; northward lay the black cathedral spires of the city of Cologne that the U.S. First Army had smashed into smithereens 14 years before. Placards said: THE CITY OF PORZ GREETS EISENHOWER —TROISDORF WELCOMES YOU—GERMANY TRUSTS EISENHOWER. Mixed among them were placards pleading for help in regaining Germany's lost Oder-Neisse territories, now held by Communist Poland: MILLIONS ARE FREE, MILLIONS ARE NOT FREE. The President waved to everybody, said again and again, "Thank you, thank you. O.K. O.K."
"He's Decisive." Next morning Ike and Adenauer entered into their "formal" talks; actually, they were warmly informal. The U.S. President and the West German Chancellor kept interrupting one another like old friends. Ike was hugely amused when he put on the earphones over which simultaneous translations were to be made, and got only static; West German Ambassador to U.S. Wilhelm Grewe had dripped fruit juice onto the wiring, causing a short circuit. Eisenhower more than satisfied Adenauer that he was not about to bargain away West Germany's rights in his talks with Khrushchev, that he meant rather to convince Khrushchev of free-world strength and free-world purpose.
Later at a press conference, the President was asked about a summit conference after Khrushchev's visit to Washington. The President said: "Any summit meeting would be a grave mistake unless there was confidence among all of us that real progress of some kind could be achieved." German reporters, long fed on Washington punditry about the "sick" Ike, were impressed by the President's mastery of his topics. "He's firm," said one. Another reporter said: "He's decisive."
Into the Highlands. That evening the President left Bonn, sent a farewell message over his jet's radio to Konrad Adenauer: DEAR FRIEND—I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW GRATEFUL I AM. An hour and a half later, he was at London Airport, shaking hands with Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. In an off-the-cuff arrival speech that brought murmurs of appreciation from the crowd, the President said: "I must say my deepest reaction and sentiment at this moment is that of extraordinary pleasure and true enjoyment for being back once again in this land which I have learned so much to love." And as he rode into town with Macmillan, the President saw about him a London that would not change—jodhpur-clad girls riding in Rotten Row; jocular types with pints of bitter outside the Fox and Hound, the Three Kings, the Bunch of Grapes; the predictable athlete pumping along main roads in Kensington, eyes down, elbows high, oblivious to the motorcade.