TO RILL IT as a fireside chat was misleading: what
we were treated to on Monday evening was an unscripted political discussion with all holds barred. Only once did either of the two men escape fulsome generalities, and that was when the President managed to tie the old cliche about peace being indivisible to an actual example— West Berlin. Otherwise, it was soporific stuff. If the President did the better of the two, it was because he has a natural unaffected charm beside which the Prime Minister's relaxation looked contrived. Mr. Macmillan, too, made the mistake of talking through his guest to the viewing public (for I cannot believe that he, or anybody else, uses such a sententious turn of phrase in conversation when out of camera range). Still, he did better than he had done at London Air- port. Surely it should not have been beyond his capacity to memorise a few friendly words of greeting, if he could not rely on them to emerge spontaneously? To read them from a prepared script was simple bad manners.
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