When the U.S. and Soviet leaders meet this week in Washington, Western Europe will be looking on like a bashful cheerleader, too nervous to cheer very loudly but too loyal to let the side down. This ambiguity has led to some confusion. In public pronouncements, all the West European leaders welcome the summit meeting and endorse its probable main achievement--the signing of a treaty to eliminate American and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear weapons, the kind that could strike at the Soviet Union from Europe and at Europe from the Soviet Union. But many European government officials in private, and many newspaper and strategic analysts in public, say they are resigned to the treaty and express worry about where it will lead...

One Dark Spot in Pleasant Trip - Adam Bridge, vice president of Shartle Brothers, spent May and June talking to Europe's men in the street - and explaining to a few that he wasn't Harry Truman. Bridge, talking in his office last week, took off his Truman-like eyeglasses, smiled his Truman-like smile and laughed. "But the mistaken identity didn't make me feel so good," he remarked. But no matter what impression Bridge made on them, the English, French, Norwegians and Italians the executive met seemed courteous and friendly to him. In fact, the only inhospitality of his trip was the shout of "Go home, Americans!" that some Communists at London's Hyde Park sent his way. Bridge was passing by the park, long a forum of controversial discussion in London, when he noticed a "Save the Rosenbergs" rally in progress. Bridge and his wife and their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Parker of Dayton, decided to find out what made the speakers, who were obviously Communists, tick...