The General Proposes

It all sounded innocent enough at the start. Pennsylvania's leading GOPoliticos had decided to give a little dinner for Governor James H. Duff at Washington's swank 1925 F Street Club. Senator Ed Martin, who is the real Republican leader of Pennsylvania, turned up with a select group of capital headliners, including Senators Taft and Vandenberg and General Dwight Eisenhower. Aged Joe Grundy arrived from Pennsylvania with a train of lesser politicians and their wives. After a sumptuous dinner, the ladies retired and the gentlemen fired up their cigars. Then somebody suddenly dispelled the air of pleasant sociability.

The somebody was General Eisenhower. Before the conversational ball had really started rolling, Ike grabbed it and hurled it right down the political alley. The nation, said Ike, needs new and dynamic leadership. It faces great peril and it will require a crusading spirit of deed and sacrifice if it is to win through.

As Ike went on, Bob Taft's face turned pink, then an angry red. No one could miss the implied criticism of present G.O.P. leadership, nor the fact that that criticism had been uttered in the presence of the men who will control Pennsylvania's potent delegation to the G.O.P. convention next June. But Eisenhower plowed right ahead.

He touched on some specific points. The aid program to Europe, he said, must move and move fast. At the same time, inflation must be stopped in its tracks. Labor must be told that it must not increase inflationary, pressures by further wage boosts. Management must become aware of the importance of reducing prices. Above all, said Ike pointedly, leadership must assert itself.

The minute Eisenhower had finished, Taft was on his feet. It was all very well, he snapped, to talk in generalities. "When you come to writing legislation, there is where you get into trouble." How would the General write down the specific details of an anti-inflation program? Just how would he go about it?

A noticeable chill settled over the room. Eisenhower looked at Taft. Taft looked at Eisenhower. Arthur Vandenberg looked at both. Then Ike answered that he had some specific ideas in mind, but there was not time to go into them. On that note the party broke up.

Said one participant later: "There is not the slightest shadow of a doubt in my mind that Eisenhower is running for President. There isn't any doubt either that he seized upon this occasion to register that impression with Pennsylvania political leaders."

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