President Kennedy has learned to his dismay that cannons on the White House lawn can drown out everything but Caroline and her friends. He learned this as he stood tight-lipped and at attention yesterday while cannons on the south lawn boomed a welcome for Premier Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria. After Mr. Ben Bella had conferred with the President and left, a reporter asked President Kennedy what he thought of the childish noises that came from the second floor during the ceremonies. “We will talk about that this afternoon,” he said. The President then smiled — but only slightly — whirled, and rushed into the White House. The President’s corrective measures went no further than a talking-to. "Was Caroline punished?” a newsman asked White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger last night. “Not that I know of,” he replied...

Niyi Ishola, a 28-year-old government secretary in Nigeria, admires America very much. One of his great heroes, in fact, is the late John Foster Dulles. But Ishola has a complaint. "Soviet cosmonauts Gherman Titov and Yuri Gagarin give a much better impression than your astronaut John Glenn," he says. "Both Russians wear uniforms in their photographs, and the people respect uniforms. Uniforms show discipline. In his pictures," Ishola continues sadly, "Glenn wears a bowtie." John Glenn's bowtie has not stalled America's drive to win friends and respect In Africa. But this tale of a young Nigerian's concern with astronautical polka dots reflects the difficulty of trying to analyze the impact of U.S. policies on Africa. Africans live in a world remote from the world of Americans. Africans worry about farm plots and factory sites, not Castro and Khrushchev, about building a nation, not building an image. American assumptions about what impresses Africans, or what disturbs them, often lack a true base. The difficult problem of American race relations can illustrate this a bit. Many U.S. policymakers assume that the names Little Rock, New Orleans, Oxford do not endear the United Slates to Africa. The assumption, of course, is true. The treatment of Negroes in the United Slates does bother Africans...

President Kennedy has promised no more than sympathy to those bargaining for the release of 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners. But the evidence is clear that he has given more. Official statements in Washington maintain that the committee now negotiating with Fidel Castro in Cuba for the release of the prisoners is a private one, supported by private funds. But the prisoners, if they are released, will owe their freedom in large measure to the U.S. government. It is doubtful that the private committee could complete a deal of such magnitude without active support of the Kennedy Administration

The words came cold and clipped from the government secretary with gray hair and pale English skin. "When that man enters a room," she said, "I can feel the hackles rise up and down my back. Even if I don't see him, I can feel that man." That man is Jomo Kenyatta. A court has convicted him of managing the savage Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. A British governor has condemned him as "the African leader to darkness and death." Yet, within a year or two, when the colony of Kenya assumes independence, Jomo Kenyatta likely will be the new nation's first prime minister. The gray-haired Englishwoman and other white settlers watch this onrush to power helplessly, with distaste and bitterness. To them, a man streaked in evil and blood is reaching for their rolling, green land. But whites number no more than one per cent of Kenya's six million people. Africans see a different Kenyatta...

Exact Cost To US Hard To Determine IRS Official Says - The United States government, through loss of tax revenue, will share substantially in the cost of paying the ransom that brought the 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners back from Cuba. The exact cost to the treasury and thus to the taxpayers may be impossible to determine. But one official, Mitchell Rogovin of the Internal Revenue Service, estimated today that the tax loss, at the highest, could reach $20,000,000 spread over three years. Rogovin added in an interview that the loss could be less. And he stressed he considered it a loss only in the sense that every time there is a disaster relief or community chest drive, the government loses tax revenue through income tax deductions...