Ike's Answer

Dwight Eisenhower, while keeping carefully to the letter and spirit of his soldierly duty, this week cleared up three points that will be of importance to the U.S. in the fateful year 1952: 1) he is a Republican; 2) he will not make a pre-convention campaign for the Republican presidential nomination; 3) he will accept the nomination if it is offered to him.

Two minutes before noon on Sunday, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., manager of the Eisenhower campaign, walked into a packed press conference at Washington's Shoreham Hotel. Smiling across a paper-littered table at 150-odd newsmen and photographers, Manager Lodge began:

"I have asked Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire to enter General Eisenhower as a candidate for the presidency on the Republican ticket in the New Hampshire primary. I have assured Governor Adams that General Eisenhower is in to the finish. General Eisenhower has personally assured me that he is a Republican ... I invite you to check this in Paris ... I am speaking for the general and I will not be repudiated."

Lodge quoted from his letter to Governor Adams: "It is worth noting that in our conversations with General Eisenhower he pointed out that he would never seek public office but would consider a call to political service by the will of the party and the people to be the highest form of duty."

Campaign Regulations. How does Lodge know that Ike is a Republican? Lodge answered that Eisenhower had told him, before he left for Europe, "that his political convictions coincided with enlightened Republican doctrine and that the family tradition was Republican . . . He specifically said that his voting record was that of a Republican."

Lodge told the reporters, as he had told Governor Adams, that Eisenhower's candidacy, for the moment, must stay "strictly within Army regulations," which means that as long as Ike is under military orders he will not actively or indirectly campaign in New Hampshire or anywhere else.

Asked one newsman: Is Ike "officially" a candidate? Said Lodge: "I don't know quite what you mean. He isn't like a candidate for Boston alderman." Then he added: "I know he is not running in the New Hampshire primary just for the exercise." After Lodge kept suggesting that they check with Ike to substantiate his statements, one reporter objected: "What if we don't get an answer in Paris?" Ex-Newspaperman Lodge laughed. "You've got a story either way," he said.

When U.S. correspondents in Paris checked SHAPE for Eisenhower's reaction, all they got at first was a no comment from SHAPE press officers. A public relations colonel, told about Lodge's conference, snapped: "So what?" But later Sunday night, Brigadier General Charles T. Lanham, SHAPE public information officer, said that there might be some comment on Monday. Said another officer close to Eisenhower: "Sometimes silence is more eloquent than any statement."

Early Monday morning, Ike carefully read U.S. press reports of Lodge's conference. In between his regular SHAPE appointments, he started working with four close Army advisers on a statement. By 4 o'clock in the afternoon Ike and his officers had finished polishing it. It was just one year to the day since he had taken up his SHAPE command.

A Clear-Cut Call. Said Dwight David Eisenhower: "Senator Lodge's announcement of yesterday, as reported in the press, gives an accurate account of the general tenor of my political convictions and of my Republican voting record. He was correct also in stating that I would not seek nomination to political office . . . My convictions in this regard have been reinforced by the character and importance of the duty with which I was charged more than a year ago . . .

"Under no circumstances will I ask for relief from this assignment in order to seek nomination to political office and I shall not participate in the pre-convention activities of others who may have such an intention with respect to me.

"Of course there is no question of the right of American citizens to organize in pursuit of their common convictions. I realize that Senator Lodge and his associates are exercising this right in an attempt to place before me next July a duty that would transcend my present responsibility. In the absence, however, of a clear-cut call to political duty, I shall continue to devote my full attention . . . to the task to which I am assigned."

The words had all the caution of a man making the most important personal decision of his life. They also adhered closely to the lines of the principle involved: there is no bar in law, tradition or good practice against a military man's accepting public office; there is a bar against men on active duty campaigning for public office. Ike's course was dictated by the position in which he was placed by his service to his country.

With this announcement, Dwight Eisenhower at last publicly gave his supporters in the U.S. the green light, in language which breathed a dignity and a sense of public trust.

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