On Thin Ice

From the moment he first set foot in New Hampshire in his quixotic quest of the presidency, Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy has been about as diffident as a campaigner can be without actually withdrawing from the race. But last week McCarthy finally broke the ice, so to speak.

Arrayed in a red helmet, orange sweat shirt, baggy black pants and borrowed skates, McCarthy gamely ventured onto a rink in Concord for his first hockey match since 1938, when he was high scorer for St. John's University in Minnesota. During nine minutes on the ice, he took one spectacular spill and "got a little wobbly" toward the end, as an opposing player put "it. But he also delivered a devastating body check and captured the puck in three face-offs. When it was over, a puffing McCarthy declared: "I didn't think they were that tough."

In his face-off with the President, McCarthy complained that Johnson's pledge-card campaign (TIME, Feb. 9) was tantamount to a denial of the right to a secret ballot and likened it to branding cattle in Texas. At week's end, Robert Kennedy's unauthorized New Hampshire committee said it would heed the New York Senator's pleas to drop its write-in campaign, and most members announced that they would transfer their backing to McCarthy. Even so, there was every indication that McCarthy's drive to check L.B.J. was still moving on perilously thin ice.

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