Packed & Ready

Preparing for his Korean trip in a manner painfully familiar to all ex-servicemen, General Dwight D. Eisenhower last week rolled up his sleeves for six "booster" shots--yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, typhus, typhoid and tetanus. Though this is a process which virtually guarantees the victim two sore arms and a fever, Ike showed no visible signs of discomfort as he bustled through a busy week of conferences, callers and ceremonies.

He started most of his working days with an 8 a.m. conference with officials of Columbia University (his resignation is effective Jan. 19). Then he drove down from Morningside Heights to his headquarters in Manhattan's Commodore Hotel. There the harried management had moved the wooden barrier far out into the sixth-floor lobby in an attempt to clear a passage through which Ike and his visitors could reach an elevator without being smothered by the crush of reporters and photographers.

Diplomats & Dignitaries. In & out of Ike's suite poured a stream of callers. Among them: diplomats (U.N. General Assembly President Lester Pearson of Canada, India's U.N. Mission Chief Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit); Washington officials (Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna Rosenberg to report on her recent trip to Korea, General Walter Bedell Smith, Ike's wartime Chief of Staff and now head of the Central Intelligence Agency) ; foreign dignitaries (Air Marshal Lord Tedder, Bank of Greece Governor George Mantzavinos); politicos (Louisiana's Republican Chairman John Minor Wisdom to talk about building a two-party system in the South, New York's Representative John Taber, next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who guardedly guessed that next year's budget can be held below $70 billion) ; and prospective members of the Eisenhower Administration (see below).

On Thanksgiving Day, Ike took a break, had a leisurely dinner with his family. Just before the turkey came on, photographers trooped in for shots of Ike preparing to carve the bird. Noticing the dismay of his three grandchildren at the delay, Ike quickly cut off a few slices and divided them among the kids as an advance helping. Asked why he held the bird in place with a small dinner fork rather than the usual carving fork, Ike gave an embarrassed grin. "It's already packed," he said, ready for the move to Washington.

Pipes of Peace. Next day, representatives of two groups which had favored Democrat Adlai Stevenson during the campaign came in to smoke the peace pipe. First in were ten C.I.O. leaders; when the hour-long talk was over, C.I.O. Secretary-Treasurer James Carey cormmended Ike for a "very intelligent discussion" of the Taft-Hartley Act, then added with conscious irony that ever since its establishment the C.I.O. had enjoyed good relations with the occupant of the White House and that it hoped to continue on the same footing. (Only occupants of the White House since the C.I.O.'s birth in 1938: F.D.R. and Harry Truman.) Also full of new-found affection for Ike were four top officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ike had, they agreed, done some boning up on civil rights issues during the campaign. Said N.A.A.C.P. Executive Secretary Walter White: "The general's position is better now than it was in September."

At week's end, Ike left the Commodore headquarters for the privacy of 60 Morningside Drive, official residence of Columbia's president. His avowed intentions were to watch the Army-Navy game on TV and to pass a restful Sunday broken only by one conference. Republican bigwigs began to trek up to Morningside Drive, but Ike himself became a shadowy, unseen figure. Probable purpose of his self-imposed seclusion: to avoid pinpointing the time of his departure for Korea.

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