"This divide between the American and British attitudes to diplomacy was not absolute, of course. Diplomats on both sides were skeptical about letting their leaders loose at the summit, and not all Americans believed that dialogue with the Soviets was pointless. But Republican exploitation of the Cold War and of the Yalta myths made it particularly difficult for U.S. policymakers to show much flexibility in the 1950s, whatever their inclinations. Consequently the initiative for summitry tended to come from Europe. On the Western side in the late 1950s it was Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, who made the run for a summit— rather surprisingly, it might seem, considering his past. In 1938 he had been one of the few Tory opponents of Munich. He felt Yalta had been “a failure and a disaster” because “in an atmosphere of fervid rush and hurry, vast decisions were reached in a few crowded days.” And he noted in his diary in February 1957, weeks after taking office: “I am said to have lost touch with public opinion in England because I have not already set out for Moscow to see Khrushchev. All this is pure Chamberlainism. It is raining umbrellas.” But, as Churchill once observed, “how much more attractive a top-level meeting seems when one has reached the top!” Once into his stride as premier, Macmillan saw the political benefits of summitry and in February 1959 he contrived a personal visit to Moscow. Politically the trip was a great success, helping Macmillan win an election by a landslide later that year. But Britain, like France, was no longer a serious presence at the top table. The real momentum for a summit in the late 1950s came not from Western capitals but from the Kremlin."