A couple of Dartmouth wags had a bright idea Friday. They were going to kidnap one Jawaharlal Nehru while he was visiting Harvard, and spirit him off to a suburban hideaway. Then, on Saturday, they planned to introduce him to an admiring Stadium throng as Prime Minister of the (Dartmouth) Indians.

This buffoonery could never have succeeded. The Pandit was so busy Friday, the Dartmouths couldn't have caught up.

Nehru's day began early and confusedly. At 10 a.m. his black Chrysler sped up to a Wellesley gate and was firmly deported by a guard with orders to "keep the cars out, because Nehru was coming." Despite this inauspicious beginning, the official party managed to reach Wellesley Chapel, where it met with a warmer reception. Over 1700 girls swarmed out of the classrooms and sat on the lawns and hung from the trees to see the Pandit. Sensing the importance of the occasion, they gave oral vent to their emotions:

"1950 Wellesley, Rah!

1-9-5-0 Wellll-sley;

We're for '50,

Cheer for '50,

1-9-5-0 Wellll-sley!

NEHRU!"

This would have been praise enough, but the girls outdid themselves:

"1951 Wellesley, Rah!

1-9-5-1 Wellll-sley;

All set '51,

Best yet '51,

1-9-5-1 Wellll-sley!

MRS. PANDIT!"

Nehru was overwhelmed. "I'm rather overwhelmed," he told the students. "I enjoy seeing so many young, cheerful faces." Then he told his bodyguards to seram and had the time of his life strolling over the campus amid the irrelevant burbling of a Wellesleyite entourage.

The bodyguards were back when Nehru got to Harvard. Six of them sirened up to the President's House in side-car motorcycles at 1 p.m., displaying their skill and hauteur to the students gawking without. With split-second timing, President Conant and Nehru emerged from their respective doors, shook hands, and immediately went on location in the back yard. Thirty photographers snapped for five minutes while the President and the Pandit no doubt passed small talk about mutual acquaintances in New Delhi.

Part of the crowd waited while the two lunched and then responded to their emergence by some polite applause, without so much as a Regular Cheer for the Pandit. As rubbernecks goggled, Nehru visited Lamont and Houghton Libraries. In the Lamont reading room he asked, wide-eyed, "And can the students borrow these books?"--followed by some uneasy moments while University officialdom tried to recall the right answer.

Then he went to Lowell House, where Housemaster Elliott Perkins showed him a "typical student's room"--B-14. It was the suite of the visiting preacher.

But the best part of the afternoon came at the University Observatory, when they showed the movies. Professor Donald H. Menzel narrated a torrid little epic about the adventures of some gas on the sun, while the tired Pandit's eyes dropped. At the end of the ten-minute film, Menzel exclaimed that he "could show five hours more without repeating," but he later made up for the faux pas by turning the best phrase of the afternoon: "Here's one thing where international cooperation helps. We'd like to photograph the sun all the time. That's something no one nation can do."

The allegory was terrific. Unfortunately, Nehru wasn't looking for allegories. He was in the United States to see what the place was like, to meet the every-day people, to get a fair idea of Western civilization. The Prime Minister of India, which he calls the "Third Power," simply wanted to see if America was better than Russia. That's why he liked the booming Wellesley reception so much; that's why he told the girls: "I don't know what else to say--I shall remember this visit for a long time."

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru may have thought the University's protocol interesting--perhaps amusing--but, like many a Harvard man, he found what he wanted at Wellesley.