"Thank You, Mr. President"

From the moment Dwight Eisenhower walked into his second presidential press conference last week, the atmosphere was different. The week before he had been nervous and tense, had taken up half of the time with his own personal statements, and had summarily brought a scant 15 minutes of questions & answers to a close by waving goodbye and walking out (TIME, March 2). This time Ike was relaxed and confident as he walked in the door of the conference room of the old State Department building. He nodded a friendly greeting to the 220 newshawks, and called several of them by name. Then, after two brief announcements, he brought raised eyebrows and appreciative grins by throwing the conference open to questions.

The correspondents were quick to make the most of the opportunity, began popping a series of good questions which got good answers. Items:

P: Will it be difficult to balance the budget? Of course, replied the President. If it were not difficult it would have been done a long time ago, because nobody wants an unbalanced budget.

P: Will the President recommend statehood for Alaska? Not yet. Hawaii, said Eisenhower, is ready for statehood, but Alaska is more of a dependency than on a self-supporting level.

P: Is Senator McCarthy's investigation of the Voice of America helping the fight against Communism? Well, said the President, he doesn't know exactly what McCarthy is aiming to do; meanwhile, he'd rather not answer.

P: What rules should bind or limit congressional investigating committees? It would be extremely dangerous, he said, to try to limit the power of Congress to investigate. It is a power which they must have, and must be treated properly and used properly by their long-term restraint. Congress is a coordinate branch of government which establishes its own rules and follows them. Frankly, he thinks it would be completely inappropriate to comment specifically on individuals in Congress and their methods, because presumably the Congress approves these or they would not go on.

P: Will it be unwise for Congress to change his proposed resolution (see below) on World War II agreements? The President was not one to say that his proposal cannot be improved. But the U.S. would be in a very awkward situation with respect to places like Berlin and Vienna, if all World War II agreements were repudiated. Nor has the President any interest in going back and raking up the ashes of the dead past. His resolution repudiates the idea of enslavement of any people.

P: Would he go out of this country for a meeting with Joe Stalin? He would meet anybody if he thought there was the slightest chance of doing any good. He would go to any suitable spot, say halfway between, and talk with anybody and with the full knowledge of our allies and friends as to the kind of thing he was talking about. But any worthwhile program for peace in the future must provide some kind of terms and provision that make certain it is a self-enforcing treaty [i.e., dependent on something more concrete than a Stalin promise].

A few minutes after Eisenhower had given his answer on the Stalin meeting, there came a lull in the questioning. Abruptly the U.P.'s Merriman Smith, the Senior White House correspondent, snapped "Thank You, Mr. President"--thus recapturing from Ike the Roosevelt and Truman-honored privilege of letting Smith end the conference on behalf of the press corps. Then, as the reporters trooped out for their telephones, Ike's eyebrows momentarily shot up in surprise, and he threw back his head and laughed.

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