At one of the earliest meetings of the North Atlantic pact, Paul Henri Spaak provoked a good deal of laughter by rolling an orange along the conference table to soothe an angry and hungry Sir Stafford Cripps. The idea that prompted him has become a tradition in NATO negotiations: on the ability of its members to settle their differences quickly and without rancor depends the happiness and security of the West.

There is much soundness to the tradition, and it is extremely important that President-elect Kennedy understand and sympathize with it. Yet few of the essential differences, in particular the recent ones, can be considered negligible lovers' quarrels.

The principal immediate problem is a military one. General Lauris Norstad, the brilliant Supreme Commander of Allied Forces who is probably about to retire, has recommended that NATO not only be given control over American tactical nuclear forces in Europe but acquire a strategic nuclear force of its own as well. He feels, in fact, that NATO should become a "fourth atomic power" with an armory including everything from short-range Honest Johns to 1500-mile ICBM's.

Norstad is not the only man dissatisfied with the idea that only the U.S. should possess the capacity for total atomic warfare; the Pentagon, Harold Macmillan, and Konrad Adenauer have all in one fashion or another complained of NATO's inability to do anything more than "blunt and delay" an enemy attack through its ground and air forces. These murmurings have had their results. Last November, Robert R. Bowie of the Center for International Affairs presented a report to Washington recommending that the U.S. (1) strengthen conventional non-nuclear forces in Europe, and (2) provide NATO forces with strategic nuclear weapons. The State and Treasury Departments immediately surprised everybody by agreeing with each other to accept it.

Last month, at the meeting of the NATO Council of Ministers, the U.S. cautiously suggested that they "study the possibility of" organizing a middle-range ballistic missile force. The proposal, which is a clever one, would station five Polaris submarines holding 18 missiles each in the alliance area if the allies agreed to buy another 100 missiles. (The cost about a million dollars apiece.)

When Kennedy comes into office the NATO powers will still be studying the proposal, which is just as well. The U.S. ought not to commit itself to supplying the alliance with a strategic force or even (since it is hard to say where the strategic leaves off and the tactical starts) with nuclear warheads, before it can answer a number of fundamental questions about deterrence. Is a non-nuclear war in the area possible? Nobody has a certain answer, but the most likely is No, it is not. And the argument that to give SHAPE as well as SAC the power to push buttons would be absurdly dangerous is singularly persuasive, however sure the U.S. is that the Supreme Commander will always be an American. Another point that Kennedy might well consider is that disarmament negotiation will embarrass the West significantly more if it alters Europe's status as a limited military arena.

Other members of NATO, of course, have other ideas. France will allow no nuclear weapons on its soil that it cannot control, for a rather broader reason than perverseness. General de Gaulle will explode a third bomb in the Sahara this fall, and although it is likely to take more than seven years for France to build an arsenal of its own, he insists on constructing a purely French striking force.

This attitude, naturally, causes some of the more serious schisms in the alliance. Adenauer especially writhes when he hears of it, for his plans for NATO involve tightening it into a close, almost supra-national body. He favors the NATO striking force proposal largely for the political reason that it might bring France to NATO's terms, but evidently he underestimates the strength of de Gaulle's nationalism, and Washington should beware of any suggestion that the force might be a useful unifying device.

Some such device, admittedly, grows increasingly necessary as other splits develop within the pact. Great Britain, as the leader of the seven-nation European Free Trade Area, is becoming profoundly uncomfortable with the other economic axis, the "Inner Six" Common Market. The curious position of the Outer Seven's neutrals, the recent hardening of the Six' common tariff wall, and London's own indecision have, over the last year, made it more and more difficult for Britain to associate the Seven with the Common Market even if it should want to. Possibly the U.S. could use the Organization for European Economic Cooperation to exert pressure on the Seven to join, or even to help form an Atlantic Economic Community of the sort that Under-secretary Dillon once spoke of. But this measure would be of highly doubtful value; economic integration is by no means always a good thing, and before acting the Administration should wait for an emergency situation that proves that the two blocs indeed cannot co-exist.

The U.S., of course, has is own troubles with the NATO allies, the chief one at the moment being the deficit in its balance of payments. Some deficit must always exist to enable other countries to build up dollar reserves, but the $3 billion that the U.S. has achieved this year is too high. In seeking ways to bring it down the government has demonstrated that it can easily go wrong. In 1959, for instance, the Administration conceived the "Buy American" policy. In the same year, and again in 1960, the Treasury, the Budget Bureau, and the Air Force tried to push through a policy to reduce ground forces in Europe for which annual expenditures were reckoned at more than $1 billion.

The State Department, Army, and Navy have so far managed to restrain them in spite of last fall's gold rush. Next year's conventional forces have not been weakened, although the government has quite understandably asked the other NATO countries to contribute more troops. If the deficit is to be reduced, this is the manner in which it ought to be done; Kennedy should quash any more squabbles like those of the last two years as extra-ordinarily irresponsible. He should also remind the European countries that the dollar shortage is virtually over and that it is time for them to open more markets to American goods.

Yet when he asks them to make contributions to the West's foreign aid budget or to the NATO armies, he must remember that they form nothing like a United States of Europe. The nationalism of de Gaulle, the supra-nationalism of Adenauer, the unilateralist leanings of an important segment of the British Labour Party, the bitterness of France or of Belgium over its allies' behavior in U.N. debates on colonialism, are all powerful influences on the workings of NATO. Kennedy must be ready to roll a lot of oranges, for tact has become the most useful virtue the U.S. can cultivate in dealing with its best and oldest friends.