Ratified & Gratified

The worrywart reporters covering President Eisenhower's holiday at the Augusta National Golf Club last week began to get on Press Secretary James C. Hagerty's nerves. Hagerty finally handed out lapel buttons reading "Relax." That was hard for the reporters to do, and even harder for Dwight Eisenhower. Most of his Georgia vacation was spent working, worrying and waiting.

Ike worked long hours polishing and redrafting his State of the Union Message for delivery this week. He also worked out details of his other messages to the new Congress. The schedule: Jan. 10, a message requesting an expanded foreign-trade program; Jan. 11, a message requesting an increase in postal rates and increases in postal and civil-service pay; Jan. 13, a message requesting increases in military pay; Jan. 17, the Budget Message; Jan. 20, the Economic Message; Jan. 24, a message on health, requesting Congress to revive Ike's health-reinsurance plan; Jan. 27, a message requesting a $50 billion highway program.

Every day the President conferred by long-distance telephone with John Foster Dulles in Washington. The subject was, naturally, the vexing and dilatory conduct of the French National Assembly (see FOREIGN NEWS). The presidential plane Columbine III stood, almost like a getaway car, fully fueled and ready to rush Ike back to Washington if the French refused to ratify the Paris accords.

When, toward week's end, the French Assembly finally approved West German rearmament, Ike issued a formal statement that called the vote a matter of "great gratification." Relieved of the necessity for an agonizing reappraisal, Ike had a few days of relative relaxation before flying back to Washington this week for a conference with G.O.P. congressional elders on his legislative program for the 84th Congress.

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