They Hate Ike

The poison pen pals of the U.S., who began smearing Ike Eisenhower more or less covertly before the New Hampshire primary, were hard at work last week on an around-the-clock, coast-to-coast basis. In Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago and New York, the smudgy little dodgers, the slick pamphlets and the "confidential" newsletters oozed a campaign of character assassination such as the U.S. has not seen since the 1928 campaign against Alfred E. Smith.

In sum, their messages are incoherent, self-canceling and wildly contradictory. But their common purpose is the big smear. With a calculated appeal to the varying prejudices of their intended readers, they portray Ike in bewildering succession as a Roman Catholic, a sick man, a Jew, a warmonger, a white supremacist, a coddler of Negro troops, a tool of Russia, a lackey of Wall Street, a front for New Dealers and a pal of Joe Stalin's.

Behind Headlines. "Is it true that the general is suffering from several serious ailments? . . . Is it true that the general does not dare to submit to cross-examination by the reporters of the nation's press for fear of collapsing?" So asks a press release issued by a Connecticut abrasives manufacturer named Edward B. Gallaher. The loaded questions are part of an open letter from Gallaher to Ike Campaigner Jim Duff. The "letter" will be published, says the press release, in the June issue of Gallaher's Clover Business Letter ("some 300,000 subscribers").

Another kind of smear comes in a 16-page pamphlet, Headlines and What's Behind Them ("for students, writers and speakers"). A streamer on the front page blares the message: REDS, NEW DEALERS USE IKE IN PLOT TO HOLD POWER. Behind Headlines is pince-nezed Joseph P. Kamp, who edited the Awakener--well-loved by the Nazis--from 1932 until its death in 1936. In 1944 he was cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced (in 1949) to four months in prison. Kamp's touch is far from subtle: he fans anti-Semitic feelings by picturing prominent Jews who are supporting Ike.

Harder & Lower. Kamp's enthusiastic admirer, Gerald L. K. Smith, hits even harder and lower. In his The Cross & The Flag, Smith writes: "A dispatch out of London reveals that the leading Jewish paper [unnamed] of that city now admits that Eisenhower is a Jew." Smith's Patriotic Tract Society distributes scurrilous anti-Ike ammunition from a St. Louis post-office-box address. Prize offering (25 copies for $1): a photostat of a page in the 1915 Howitzer, the U.S. Military Academy yearbook, in which Cadet Dwight David Eisenhower was called "the terrible Swedish-Jew, as big as life and twice as natural." This gag was explained long ago by Eisenhower and classmates as a piece of cumbersome West Point horseplay.

The Rev. Gerald B. Winrod of Wichita, Kans. reports by pamphlet that "the international Jewish banking fraternity" is ready "to sovietize" the U.S. Writes Winrod (whose Nazi-line pamphleteering got him indicted for sedition in 1945) : "Woodrow Wilson failed them. Franklin Roosevelt served them to the end of his days. Harry Truman remains their pawn. Dwight Eisenhower is their choice in this, the catastrophic year of 1952."

Robert H. Williams of Santa Ana, Calif, has still another pitch. Williams, onetime ghostwriter for Columnist Upton Close, publishes a monthly newsletter, Williams Intelligence Summary. In mid-1951, he carefully trimmed a 1945 news photo of four Allied generals toasting the Allied victory in Europe, at which time Russia's Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov presented Eisenhower and Britain's Field Marshal Montgomery with Russian victory medals. The Williams version left Ike and Zhukov alone in what was intended to look like a suspiciously friendly pose (see cut). Williams printed and is still circulating the picture with the caption: "Zhukov, Communist general, decorates Drinking Partner Eisenhower at Frankfurt, Germany."

A Man's Enemies. Recently, an organization called the Partisan Republicans of California (flatly disowned by the G.O.P.) showered members of Congress with a slick-paper brochure entitled: "Annual Report to Republicans." Among the expensive red and black illustrations: a cartoon of a hairy-handed Joe Stalin pinning a medal on barrel-chested Ike./- The caption: "When an archcriminal decorates an individual, this individual must have served him well."

Just why Ike has been especially singled out by the poison penmen is a mystery to both his friends and his legitimate political rivals. The inkwells of bigotry are far removed from any responsible political headquarters. But if a man is judged by the enemies he makes, Ike Eisenhower is down for some high marks from his friends.

/- Eisenhower, who usually wears only three ribbons on his jacket (Army & Navy, D.S.M.s and the Legion of Merit), holds 43 foreign decorations, e.g., Britain's Order of Merit (limited to 24 living holders), France's Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor, Russia's topflight Order of Suvorov, Poland's Cross of Grunwald, Tunisia's Grand Cordon of Nishan Iftikar. Last week France awarded him the Medaille Militaire, the highest French military decoration.

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