The Cliff Dweller

The swirl of world events that sweeps around the President of the U.S. seemed last week to be moving with even more speed and spread than usual. The President has an expression for the kind of week it was: he said that it kept him leaping "from cliff to cliff."

"Prison Has No Fears." One day Dwight Eisenhower, who had accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany exactly ten years earlier, signed an order ending the U.S. occupation and recognizing full sovereignty for the West German Federal Republic. He welcomed home Admiral Arthur Radford and Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson, who reported to him on the chances for peace or war in Asia. And he bade Godspeed to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who flew off to Europe in the hope of promoting peace there.

On Capitol Hill, the House tried to scuttle his plan for U.S. agriculture and the Senate gave support to his plan for world trade. He called in congressional leaders of both parties to talk about trade and aid and agriculture and poliomyelitis. To a Senator who warned him that there was political dynamite in the Salk-vaccine furor, the President replied that he had given the problem the most serious study and was proceeding as he thought best. "After all," he said, "when you've held this job as long as I have, prison has no fears for you."

After 27 months in office, the swirl that once outraged General Eisenhower's soldierly sense of procedure no longer seemed to bother him. At times, he said, it is difficult to keep in touch with the nation's thinking. "There are a number of things wrong with Washington," he philosophized. "One of them is that everyone has been too long away from home.''

"But We Do." At his press conference he tried earnestly to answer all questions. One was a very personal question about his wife's health. His careful reply: "I would say that her general health for the past two years has probably been better than normal, if we go back for a period of the last ten years. She did have a very serious virus a good many weeks ago, and it seemed impossible for her to throw it off. She also has an allergy to some of these drugs that some of the rest of us can take without any great difficulty, and it has been a real problem for the doctors to bring her back to her accustomed state of health. Now that is the situation. She is, of course, not as robust and strong as some people, but she is a good healthy person, I think, in the general meaning of that word."

While he treated such personal questions as serious, he was ready with a barb when a reporter asked him what he thought about Department of Agriculture officials who reportedly were urging hard-pressed small farmers to sell out to big dealers. He said he did not believe that any government official was seriously urging such a course, and added: "Someone who thought they were on a friendly basis might say, 'Well, you are not doing too well here. Why don't you sell out?' And you might say that to me--or I might say that to you--but I wouldn't." The newsmen's laughter drowned out the President's own.

To meet the demands of his busy schedule, President Eisenhower rose at 6:15 every morning, was at his desk by 7:30 most mornings. He took time to stand in for his convalescent wife at an American Hearing Society presentation and at a Congressional Club luncheon. One day he went over to Constitution Hall to expound for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce his philosophy of individual initiative: "We still believe that, in the aggregate, the initiative of the individual, his aspirations and his hope of bettering himself and his family--his ambitions--if directed equally toward the common good as toward his own betterment will produce the greatest good for all of us." Although there is talk about a greater need for governmental relationships with individuals and with business, said the President, the U.S. must never surrender the vital principle "of living by our own initiative and our individual freedoms to develop ourselves physically, intellectually and spiritually."

He also had time for state visitors and for golf. To Thailand's Prime Minister Phibun Songgram he presented the Legion of Merit, degree of Chief Commander (for sending a regimental combat team from the Royal Thai Army to assist in the Korean fighting). When the Premier bowed low and placed the tops of his fingers together before his chest, the traditional Asian "joining of palms" to express respect and appreciation, John Foster Dulles whispered to the President: "They don't shake hands in Thailand." Said Ike: "I know, I know. But we do." He gave Phibun a hearty handshake, then took him out to Burning Tree and beat him in a game of golf.

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