The Baffling Week

PRESIDENT STAYS BY FIRESIDE AGAIN EISENHOWER GOES FOR AUTO RIDE

So ran the headlines over Thomasville, Ga. datelines last week during what longtime White House reporters deemed the most baffling of all Dwight Eisenhower's presidential weeks. Reason for bafflement : for the first time no one even tried to keep up the appearance that the vacationing President was in daily command of U.S. affairs.

The President's cold, which had nagged him for weeks, was about over. On the rare occasions when he emerged from the Milestone estate lodge of ex-Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, he looked vigorous. But the fact remained that Dwight Eisenhower was neither vacationing nor working with much zest.

"It's Really Something." Up by about 7:30 each morning, Ike showered, shaved, ate a small steak for breakfast, then pulled a chair up to a coffee table near a fieldstone fireplace to work for an hour or so with Press Secretary James Hagerty. Not all the work was trivial, but neither was it lengthy or taxing, e.g., the President's hand was evident in the latest "summit conference" letter to Russia; he gave final approval to the strong foreign-trade message issued last week, made changes in a foreign-aid speech to be delivered this week. A few times, Personal Secretary Ann Whitman dropped by to take a little dictation. Perhaps twice a day the President talked by telephone to the White House staff. As for the rest, the days fell into pattern: lunch, a nap, bridge (with Humphrey; veteran golfing companion Bill Robinson, Coca-Cola president; and Ellis Slater, retired president of Frankfort Distillers), supper, bridge and bed by about 10:30.

On past vacations, President Eisenhower has always kept in close telephone touch with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. This time he did not talk to Dulles, despite the revolution in Indonesia, the realignment of Arab powers in, the Mideast and the critical problem of U.S.-British mediation between France and Tunisia (see FOREIGN NEWS). On past vacations, Cabinet members have shuttled to and from Washington to see Ike. This time none visited the vacation point.

On past vacations, Press Secretary

Hagerty has always parceled out enough substantive news to make daily, work-done headlines (TIME, Jan. 27). This time Hagerty barely went through the motions. On past vacations, Outdoorsman Eisenhower has permitted only really foul weather to keep him indoors, and even then has chafed at the weather. This time he hardly seemed to care: each morning he asked Hagerty for the weather forecasts, grinned and mock-shivered at the answer (Thomasville temperatures were in the 20s and 30s) returned contentedly to the firqside. Not until his eighth day in Thomasville did he venture forth to go quail hunting. He was so gruff with newsmen who came out to see him ("It's really something when you have to make this a news event to write about") that they wrote waspishly of his carelessness with his 20-gauge shotgun. A welltrained man with small arms, he gestured with his piece without seeming to bother about where it pointed, sat in the hunting car with his hand over its muzzle.

"That Is His Business." If the apparent don't-care attitude of this whole vacation was baffling, even more baffling was the one occasion when the Thomasville vacationers seemed to care greatly. That was when newsmen began questioning Jim Hagerty about the announcement that the President would take a 3,000-mile detour from Thomasville to Phoenix in the Columbine III to drop Mamie Eisenhower off at Elizabeth Arden's Arizona Maine Chance health farm.

Question: Would Mamie's two female companions be billed for their trip in a Government plane?

Hagerty (flushing): Of course they don't get billed. This is the President's plane and the President's guests.

Question: Why didn't the President fly directly back to Washington and let Mamie go it alone?

Hagerty (angerily): I think when the President of the U.S. wants to go anywhere with his wife, that is his business and nobody else's Question: Was Mamie going to Pheonix to "rest and be slimmed down"?

Hagerty (gruffly): I haven't anything on that at all.

Hagerty told the reporters bluntly that they were getting out of bounds with the questions--and he was probably right. But they could hardly be blamed for close questioning when, for the biggest news about the President of the U.S. was that there was no news at all.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.