Time for Remembering

His step was springy, his shoulders squared, his eyes aglint with reminiscence as he strode on to the West Point parade ground to review the Corps of Cadets. He wore the inevitable dented grey hat, a grey suit with a Mack, gold and grey arm band, and a West Point medal surmounted by the name plate: EISENHOWER '15. Forty-four years before, "Eisenhower from Kansas, sir," the man in grey mufti had enrolled at West Point, class of 1915, after a couple of years' hard slogging at shocking grain, forking wild ponies and stoking fires at an Abilene creamery.

Amid the Gothic battlements of West Point, President Eisenhower was marking time with his memories last week, relaxed and more thoroughly happy than he had been for a very long time. The class of 1915 was the one "the stars fell on," and 40 of its 59 generals were on hand for its 40th reunion--among them Bradley, Stratemeyer, Harmon, Van Fleet. On hand, too, was Mamie Eisenhower, looking well in summer prints; she seemed to know everyone there.

At the class reunion dinner, the President and his classmates savored double-thick steaks--one of them specially salted, peppered, garlic-salted, cooked eleven minutes on one side and eight minutes on the other in a charcoal pit--followed by Sicilian pastry, cream-filled and dripping with lime ice. Teary-eyed, the old soldiers chorused their Alma Mater and venerated favorites like The Corps: The Corps! Bareheaded salute it, With eyes up, thanking our God.

"There's My Old Flag!" At the West Point Museum, the President pored over Custer's last battle map of the Little Big Horn country, and the courier's note that brought his last despairing cry for rein forcements. "Oh, look at this," cried the President, espying "Little Phil" Sheridan's gold-plated Winchester. Then, through an open doorway, the President spotted the flaming-sword emblem of his Supreme Headquarters in Europe, and he blurted: "Oh, by gosh, there's my old flag. I'd forgotten I sent that up here." Afterward, the President noted to a couple of cadets that the day was June 6, "a big day in my life. This is Dday, the day we attacked across the Channel, and the day my son was graduated from West Point."

At a garden party behind the Superintendent's Quarters, the President accepted the class of 1955 edition of Howitzer, the academy's yearbook. Forty years before to the week, almost to the day, graduating Cadet Eisenhower had read of himself in Howitzer: "This is Senor Dwight David Eisenhower, gentleman . . . who claims to have the best authority for the statement that he is the handsomest man in the Corps . . . At any rate, you'll have to give it to him that he is well developed abdominally. In common with most fat men, he is an enthusiastic and sonorous devotee of the King of Indoor Sports, and roars homage to the shrine of Morpheus on every possible occasion . . . At one time he threatened to get interested in life and won his 'A' by being the most promising back in Eastern football--but the Tufts game broke his knee and the promise. Now Ike must content himself with tea, tiddlywinks and talk, at all of which he excels . . ."

"Something of the Heart." West Point last week was a place for remembering. One day the mist clung low toward Constitution Island, where General Washington's men laid the two iron chains across the Hudson that kept the Royal Navy out of Highland waters, and white clouds puffed and scudded like shellbursts around the big rock cliffs. Along with about 800 other ex-cadets, the President marched in the traditional alumni parade, slow-paced at 60 steps to the minute so that the older men could keep up. Watching over the parade was the academy's oldest living graduate, 95-year-old Major General Henry Clay Hodges Jr., class of 1881, and it was a very gay proceeding. "Oh look," the President yelled, when he saw Mamie applauding with the crowd; the President doffed the dented grey hat and swept it gracefully across his middle, essaying a courtly bow. "Hey, Ike," came a shout from another quarter, and there stood Richard and James ("Shorty") Walsh, wizened, pixylike Irishmen who had worked 50 years in the West Point tailor's shop, and remembered fitting the Eisenhower uniform when the President was a plebe back in 1911. For a military man it was an unexpected thing to do, but the President broke ranks at once, jog-trotted clear out of the parade, and began gagging with the Walshes; when he subsequently caught up with the slow-marching alumni, he grinned and noted his unmilitary lapse: "Let's not mess this up." "Leadership," the President said in a speech after lunch that day in the high-ceilinged Washington Hall, does not consist of calling names and desk-pounding but of "something of the heart and head. Bad deportment is never to be confused with strength of character. If a man is sure of himself and the integrity of the processes he has used to reach his decision, he can be strong, but he can be mild." "You'll Do, All Right." On his last day at the Point, standing before a giant West Point emblem and its motto, DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY, the President delivered the commencement address to the 469 graduates of the class of '55. It was only the second time in the academy's 153 years that a cadet had returned as President to speak to a graduating class, and the occasion, for all the scurrying of TV crews, was properly solemn.* --"In the year 1915," the President began, "I was one of 164 cadets who. through four West Point years, had eagerly looked forward--just as you of this class have done--to the moment of graduation. Actually, we thought of it as liberation, but 40 busy years have somewhat changed that youthful viewpoint . . . None of us could have realized that the world in which our fathers and we had lived was, at that moment, disappearing.

"Obviously," the President continued, "change is inescapable in human society . . . [But] now, within a single generation, a natural process has become a cataclysmic rush. This should generate neither a despairing belief that the tide of events is beyond human control nor an apathetic acceptance that human ability is not equal to the immense problems newly arisen . . . This country now approaches a Big Four conference [that] can at best be only a beginning in a renewed effort that may last a generation."

The U.S., said the President, is strong by power and by principle, dependent upon its caution and its wisdom. "By caution, I mean a prudent guard against fatuous expectations that a world, sick with ignorance, mutual fears and hates, can be miraculously cured by a single meeting. I mean a stern determination that we shall not be reckless and witless, relaxing our posture merely because a persistent foe may assume a smiling face and a soft voice. By wisdom, I mean a calm awareness that strength at home, strength in allies, strength in moral position, arm us in impregnable fashion to meet every wile and stratagem that may be used against us. But I mean also a persevering resolution to explore every decent avenue towards a lasting and just peace, no matter how many and how bitter our disappointments. I mean an inspired faith that men's determination and capacity to better their world will in time override their ability to destroy it . . .

"As soldiers," the President said to the cadets, "you will live by the traditions of the service, built in the halls and on the campus of this greatest of all academies of its kind, and on many battlefields, from Bunker Hill to the Korean mountains." The President counseled the cadets to be "stout of faith in yourselves, your alma mater and your God." So saying, the President stepped to the front of the dais and began to pass out the diplomas, characteristically reserving his most scrutinizing appraisal and his warmest words of encouragement for Cadet John Paul Doyle Jr., "The Goat" (last ranking cadet) of the class of 1955. "You'll do, all right," concluded the President to Cadet Doyle, amid booming roars of applause that carried out clear across the majestic Hudson. And so, in his own human way, had the President. 61st in the class of 1915.

*The first, in June 1868, was President Ulysses S. Grant, class of 1843.

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